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Does Eating Bread Make You Gain Weight?

Along some dietary concerns placing carbohydrates as a weight gain factor, bread has become a diet no-no among 43% of Australian women looking to lose those extra pounds. Other people however believe bread in itself or even pastry is not the sole weight culprit. A rising scale simply points to the excess calories you eat. So does bread or pastry really make you gain weight?

Calories In vs. Calories Out

The answer actually depends on how much calories you burn. If you burn more than you chew, the amount of bread and pastry you ingest won’t make you fat. What will make you gain poundage is the eating style of biting off more kilojoules than you expend...do this and almost any edible thing can just set up home in your thighs.

The measure of calories varies with each kind of food. Chocolate cake can be crammed with more kilojoules per slice than a piece of yoghurt cake, which goes to show that no two food kinds are created equal in terms of calories. The same reasoning applies to bread and pastries.

Generally, bread can make you fat if you consume more than you burn through movement or exercise. The ubiquitous white bread made from refined flour packs more calories than the fibrous, wholegrain brown bread; so eating white bread can increase your chances of gaining weight more than the wholemeal kind.

A Chunk vs. a Slice

Another factor to consider is portion size. Just how much bread or pastry are you eating? Munching through more than three thick slices of white bread in a day over a period of time may take your scale’s needle up a few notches if you don’t watch your calorie intake and expenditure. Multigrain breads made of wholemeal flour may afford you more slices but going overboard with it can still make you gain weight. Again you have to watch those calories.

Not All Carbs (And Calories) Are Created Equal

Many people tend to avoid carbohydrates while dieting to lose weight. This practice is not a very good idea as carbohydrates are an important macronutrient that supplies your body’s needs for energy.

Instead, know which carb laden food to avoid and what you actually need to chow down on. Complex carbohydrates from whole grain bread, brown rice, fruits, oats, and vegetables do contain calories but its fibre-rich content makes you feel full on small portions. Simple carbohydrates one the other hand is simply sugar... brown sugar, glucose, corn syrup, and the like. Simple carbs in foods such as soda, cookies, pies, cereal, and juice need to be eaten in large portion sizes to reach the eater’s satiety level. This carbohydrate type also triggers food cravings which make a person eat more than he should, drive up his calorie intake, and subsequently gain weight. Ditto on the third carbohydrate type, refined carbohydrates. Refined carbohydrates, of which white bread is a good example of, tend to drive up one’s weight with the same effect simple carbohydrates render.

So Do Bread and Pastries Make You Gain Weight?

If your bread or pastry is comprised of ingredients based on refined and simple carbohydrates, then the answer is yes, these can if you eat more than you should. The sugar and refined flour in white bread and pastries simply makes you crave for more high caloric foods, encouraging you to consume more calories than you eat.

White bread and pastries made of refined flour also contain high amount of calories for small portions (1 slice, 35 g. of white bread =82 calories; plain muffin, 65 g. =140 calories). In comparison, wholemeal bread and pastry made of wholegrain flour has slightly lower calories (1 slice, 35 g. Of wholemeal bread = 75 calories; wholemeal muffin, 65 g. = 129 calories).

In addition, the wholemeal variety is packed with more nutrients than its refined counterpart, making wholemeal breads and pastries the better choice.

Again, when it comes to weight gain, it is all about the calories. Whether you choose to eat white bread or wholemeal bread, these particular foods will not add to the pounds if you eat the portions within your caloric limit for the day. Increase your portion sizes and that’s when trouble begins.

Nutritionists however advocate consuming bread and pastry made from whole grain flour and less sugar as these pack more fibre, vitamins, and minerals per calorie than the common variety made from refined flour. In addition, bread and pastry made from whole grain flour meet one’s satiety with small portions and do not trigger food cravings which increase appetite and subsequently result in weight gain.

Boosting Your Motivation Towards Success

Many people have goals but few have the motivation and the smarts to reach them. Fewer still have the mental tenacity to claim their goals. Do you have what it takes to be a success?
To find out, you must be clear on what motivates you, what can hinder that motivation, and the possible ways to work around foreseeable obstacles.

What Makes You Tick?

Motivation is that strong desire or interest to behave or do something in a certain way that would bring them towards achieving their goal. It is what keeps one’s interest and commitment to do things on the premise that such invested perseverance would lead them toward an end-goal fulfilment.
Does being in the roster of the top five fittest of a national Crossfit Throwdown been your personal goal? Bagging the bragging rights of being one of the best athletes in the country is your motivation to push yourself daily to improve your endurance, strength, and flexibility.
Motivation however can be derailed or even crushed when perceived insurmountable obstacles come its way. What can one do then to overcome a motivational decline and keep right on track towards success? In other words, what can beef up your mental tenacity towards goal achievement?

Bumping Up Your Motivation

Be Clear on Why You Want Your Goal

You want something but you are not clear if it’s worth all the bother. You want the trophy but just how much and why is it so important? Muddied reasons to these questions do not set you on a clear rainbow towards that pot of gold. Knowing the basis of your motivation will help you improve your mental toughness to keep on looking ahead. For instance, discovering that your motivation is actually fuelled by fear (fear of displeasing someone, fear of not belonging, etc.), will help you decide whether your end goal is actually worth all your time and effort.
Being clear on why achieving something has become your dream will help you acquire that extra mental push to face and surmount looming obstacles that inevitably fall on anyone’s path to real success.

Cultivate a “Solve the Puzzle” Attitude

When faced with a mountain of an obstacle, people simply look up to the top and imagine an arduous, almost impossible climb to get to the other side, enough to dampen most people’s gung-ho spirits. If you are not most people, however, you may choose to follow the motivational patterns of a Mt. Everest climber or be the smarter guy: find a way around the problem. Think out of the box or adopt the patience of a Rubik’s cube puzzle solver. Either way, you are most likely to get to the other side.
Your realities are what you think it is. If you think something is impossible, it will be. Tweak that thought into positive possibles and the probabilities for success will suddenly loom so much more real and attainable.

Build the Present

Look toward the future for the attainment of your goals; but, pour your attention on the present. The future will inevitably come but the present is what you will make of it. The present is what you have right now so make the most of it.
Be mindful of what you do now because every passing moment is all what you have to build on. Learn from your present experiences and interactions and...
“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.” - Eckhart Tolle, ‘The Power of Now’

Learn to Ask for Help

The way to success can veer into an advantageous shortcut if one can just learn to put pride or shyness away and ask for the right help. No one individual can know everything; so two heads, three...a hundred are so much more effectively helpful in getting to the endgame than going all solo.
Getting your dream may need you to give credit where credit is due. As the trite saying goes, “No man stands alone.” Well, unless he chooses to be...which gets him nowhere.

Choose the Company You Keep

People who get you down or always dwell on the negative belong to the wrong sort crowd to hang with if you are after goal achievement. If you can help it, ditch these toxic types and try to find like-minded persons with the same go-getter mentality as you have. This way, you can motivate each other towards your own successes.
If you cannot help but be stuck to family members with a crab mentality, the best way around the problem is to set boundaries as best as you can or simply say little about what you are doing. You will get enough doubts along the road to your goal. You do not need more naysayers to affirm these. What you need is a cheering squad that will push you on toward the finish line.
As long as you have a clear goal in sight, take care not to lose that motivation. Keep in mind that success is a mind game. You get what you believe you can.

What the Colour of Your Urine Says About Your Health

This may sound a little gross but you must check your urine every time you go to empty your bladder. This goes especially for you, ladies, who don’t get an immediate view as the men do. What you must watch is the colour and odour of your urine as these can give some indication of your health status.

If Colour Could Speak

Urine is liquid waste excreted by the kidneys. The bulk of urine is made up of water, salt, urea, and uric acid. Urine carries with it the toxins that have been filtered out of your bloodstream.

Pale Yellow

Healthy pee streams very light or pale yellow in colour. A yellowish tint means a well hydrated bladder. Your water intake is spot on right. On the other hand, if your urine looks like water or is too transparent, you are overdoing your hydration; so, simply reduce your intake a bit. Transparent urine can also be a reaction to a diuretic medication you may be taking.

Dark Yellow

Dark yellow urine indicates that you may not be drinking enough water which is around 8 glasses a day. The dark yellow shows more waste concentration instead of water in the urine. It also smells much more pungent than normal pale yellow pee.
If you are drinking enough and yet peeing dark yellow, look to the food you have been eating. Asparagus, for instance, tends to colour urine darker and lend a strong smell as well. Beets are another food that can turn urine dark yellow. In this case, darker coloured urine is not a problem if the taint is simply from food.
What could be a problem is if the dark yellow colour is a symptom of an illness. It can be a sign of hepatitis, a viral infection that inflames the liver. Blood stains can also darken the yellow colour. If dehydration or food is not the cause of dark yellow pee, see your doctor immediately.

Orange

Food like rhubarb, blackberries, beets, and senna herbs can turn urine orange. Dyed foods and medications can also tender the same effect. When urine colour is caused by food, the colour stays for a day or two at most. When it stays longer than this, you could have some health problems.
Orange may indicate that the body is too dehydrated. You may be drinking too many diuretics like soda or coffee and not enough water. Orange can also be symptomatic of hepatitis or jaundice. In this case, bile from the liver is what causes urine to turn orange. Urine that continues to show orange for a couple of days should be seen by a specialist.

Pink, Reddish, or Dark Brown

Again, food or medications may be the culprit behind this discolouration. Carrots, blackberries, and beets can taint urine, pink. Expect the following drugs to colour urine as well:

• Laxatives
• Anisindione --- anticoagulant sold as Miradon
• Warfarin -- an anticoagulant sold as Coumadin, Jantoven, Marevan, and Waran
• Cerubidine --- chemotherapy drug
• Prochlorperazine - an antipsychotic with brand names: Buccastem, Compazine, Phenotil, and Stemetil
• Rifampin - an antibiotic
• Pyridium -- can taint urine orange as well
• Vitamin B -- incorporated in many supplements. This can also turn urine orange.
• Tranquilizers -- some of these have dyes which changes urine colour

Aside from food and medications, a more sinister cause of the pink, reddish, or dark brown colour is the presence of blood. Blood in urine may indicate a urinary tract infection (UTI), a kidney disease, a prostate problem, and even a tumour. If you experience pain during urination and urine comes out in the above colours, seek medical professional attention as soon as you can.
Pink, reddish, or dark urine may also be a symptom of chronic dehydration. Chronic dehydration happens when there is a gradual loss of water from the body everyday. The problem could stem from drinking too much diuretic drinks like soda and energy drinks. When it comes to hydration, no beverage can adequately substitute for water; so be sure your intake is adequate everyday.

Blue or Green

As strange as this may sound, yes, some people have peed in tinges of blue or green. The colours may be attributed to food dyes or certain medications like the anaesthetic, propofol and the allergy medicine, promethazine. Because of its blue dye, Viagra has also been behind some blue-tinged pee.
Porphyria can also be the unfortunate cause of blue or purple urine. Porphyria is a group of rare disorders that can cause skin and nerve problems.
Greenish urine may also be caused by food and medications; but illnesses may contribute to its phenomenon as well. Bile from a liver problem, diarrhoea, and pus from a urinary tract infection may turn urine, greenish.

Black

Peeing black is truly a terrifying experience. Anyone peeing black instinctively knows something is very wrong. Granted, a copious ingestion of food dyes can turn urine black. So can eating a lot fava beans and sorbitol. Black urine may also indicate that there is too much medication or chemicals being ingested by the body or that these medications may have harmful chemicals when taken for long periods of time. The first thing to do is stop taking the medicines and see a doctor.
Black urine may be a symptom of health problems, ranging from not dangerous to very dangerous. Muscle damage, for one, is not fatal but really dark urine warns that you have been working out too much. A muscle injury can release myoglobin which can stain urine a very dark colour.
Black urine is also symptomatic of a dangerous illness called Blackwater Fever. It is a complication born out of malarial treatment using quinine. Urine turns black from the presence of a lot of haemoglobins. Blackwater Fever virus literally tears the cells apart so that haemoglobin in them leaks out into the bloodstream. If left untreated, this disease can eventually cause kidney failure and then death.

If Odours and Appearance Could Tell a Tale

Healthy pee smells pungent but it should not be overwhelmingly so. Should it smell heavily of ammonia, it is warning you of high bacterial action so a urinary tract infection may be looming up ahead.
Regular foamy urine may signal excess protein in the body so have your kidneys checked.
Like it or not, our body always tries to tell us what’s wrong or going to be wrong. We need to be in tune with our body and act on changes that seem out of the ordinary. Make it a habit to observe your wastes, urine and fecal matter, as these are good “weather signals” of your system’s health.

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Why Travelling is Good for Your Health

Our brains are workhorses, constantly taking in information, processing and parcelling these out into actions. Although our minds are heavy-duty processors, repetitive information eventually wears down some functions like creativity and interest. Just like a CPU on limited processing power, our brains need to switch off in some areas in order to recharge.
In other words, our brains need a vacation too. What better way to take our minds away from the burdens of stress, mundanity, and repetition of our routines and daily demands than a vacation away from work and home.
Travelling is one of the best ways to boost mental health. Vacations away from our usual habitats give us the chance to reboot. With our minds exposed to new experiences and sensations, our stress levels and boredom get a huge kick aside, making way for creativity, curiosity, and wonderment to surface and refresh our mental wirings.

Travel Reduces Stress and Anxiety

One may love his job but the day-to-day stresses can kill the joy with a burnout. With high levels of chronic stress and anxiety, people can increasingly get disconnected with what they are doing. When this happens, the enjoyment they once felt at their jobs goes quickly down the drain of discontentment, boredom, and apathy.
It is important to switch off from the stressors for some time in order to recharge with a much needed vacation. Travelling can offer novel experiences that can positively shift the mind’s focus into other interesting occupations.
According to studies by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, those who chronically worked eleven or more hours a day instead of a regular eight, stood at higher risk of developing depression, even if they do not hold a record of prior mental health problems. When the mind is not given a reprieve from dealing with sameness everyday, it eventually gets mired in a psychological rut which bogs down one’s mental health and therefore, one’s overall well-being.

Travel Strengthens Relationships

Social interaction and deep personal relationships are necessities for emotional and mental well-being. Travelling can cause families and friends to bond over new shared experiences. New activities in a novel environment can put a spin on relationships that may not be achievable in one’s usual setting. The absence of the usual daily cares during travel may also help long-time couples focus on each other and get to know one another in a new way.
The solo traveller benefits friends and family too. One may come back recharged and in high spirits, thus lending himself as a better friend, co-worker, husband, or son.

Travel Improves Brain Resiliency

As one approaches his middle to senior years, it becomes even more important to exercise the brain by subjecting it to new experiences. Much like exercise maintains muscle flexibility and endurance, travelling, and other activities that stimulate the brain maintain its resiliency. Travelling enriches one’s life experiences and in doing so, it builds new synapses in the brain to keep it healthier and functioning well longer. Seeing new things, absorbing new cultures, and getting new sensations excites the brain and contributes to its well-being. In this case, taking regular annual vacations may actually help stave off degenerative brain diseases such Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

Travel Improves Cognition

Because one is faced with a new environment when travelling, one needs to tap on skills of making new friends, explore, remember many new details, and make decisions outside one’s normal routine. All these intellectual activities flex the mental muscles of focus, awareness, memory, analysis, and creativity.

Travel Encourages Emotional Flexibility

Because travelling allows the mind to regard the world from different perspectives, it can impact attitudes. Glitches in travel plans such as itinerary changes and long flight delays can help one exercise patience and tolerance. Witnessing problems up-front which other people in other cultures have to endure may also cause one evaluate their perceptions of their own situation. Suddenly one’s own personal problems may seem miniscule to others’ conditions. The teenager who bemoans the fact that he cannot have the latest Air Jordans may suddenly deem himself lucky to own his big brother’s two- year-old hand-me-down kicks when he sees poor boys in a Third World country playing ball in bare feet. Such reframing of one’s perspectives may lessen the focus on the self and perhaps encourage a more people-oriented attitude and behaviour. Less focus on the self could well reduce depression and anxiety.
Since the word health usually conjures images of physical fitness, there is a huge tendency for many people to disregard mental health as a major component of overall well-being. As such, many do not see the value in taking a mental and emotional break by indulging in a vacation. You however now know the value of getting away for awhile. Consider travelling as a good investment for your mental health if you want to significantly improve your productivity, creativity, or even your positivity in life.

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Why We Need a Digital Detox

With the thrust towards a global economy, the world is increasingly becoming wired. Unplugging from this reality is certainly a challenge. Just as cars have become an integral part of modern life, the internet has become so much part of our lifestyle that most of us really cannot do without. Our cellphones, tablets, and computers seem like appendages that, when taken away, make us feel crippled like a fish out of water. This of course holds especially true for the generation that has grown up in an era where digital technology has become an integrated part of life.
What most of the wired generation do not realize however is that there is life outside the world of screens. Unplugging from time to time is necessary for a host of physical and mental health benefits. One needs to connect to nature; spend time with people in the flesh instead of an onscreen video; and engage in outdoor activities; all for the reasons of personal growth, health, and better productivity.

The Benefits of Unplugging

More Awareness and Appreciation of Life’s Moments

When people are focused on their cellphones or tablets, they are not present. They do not seem to be living in the now. That is because they are not. Absenteeism from the real world when one is tethered to their device causes the person to disengage from things happening in his environment. The more immersed an individual is in his game or apps, the more he is unable to live in the present and appreciate life at the moment. Life with all its glorious moments is happening right in front of people and they miss out because they are too busy to spare those moments a glance.
Many real experiences do not repeat themselves but people are too caught up in their screens to even know what they are missing. Camaraderie with real people is one example; learning new skills from a person who has more to impart than a YouTube video how-to is another. Experiences are what enrich our lives and contribute to our personal growth. Technology may be changing the world, but the nature of life has not. We need to engage all our senses in the real world, not in the virtual reality of the net, to get the most out of living.

Improved Sleep and Cognitive Functions

Research has proven that blue light emitted by PC, laptop, and mobile gadget screens can impair sleep patterns. Light from electronic devices inhibits melatonin and can keep one awake for three hours longer. Sleep deprivation is a serious health issue that can impair cognitive functions such as memory, decision making, and concentration. Lack of sleep may also likely lead to low productivity in both the work and classroom setting. Giving up screen time at least an hour ahead of sleep time will help get one’s circadian rhythm back to normal.

Better Moods and Healthier Self Image

It seems like if you aren’t part of the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or social media app crowd, you are a social nobody. Be that as it may, it doesn’t help your mood nor your ego to keep checking friends’ posts every half hour or so.
We have that innate desire to evaluate ourselves based on how we live and what we own, do, feel, and think. We inevitably compare ourselves with others. Social media gives that opportunity to heavily immerse ourselves in snapshots of other people’s lives. We forget that photos and comments may not be all that it is made out to be. Those smiling faces may be contrived. After the flash has gone off, how does one know what the real score was behind the pics? A blissful twosome vacay in photos can hide the fact that things may still not be working out for the couple. Who knows? Yet, many choose to believe photo smiles validate a life better than their own.
Those who engage heavily in comparisons using social media tend to feel worse about themselves and consequently garner low self esteem. One must realize that other people’s lives are not as fantastic as they make it out to be in pictures and blogs. Stop lurking around other people’s accounts all the time and learn to appreciate what life has to offer you in the real world, not in that virtual reality you crave. Work on real relationships; smell real roses. It’s much more satisfying, you’ll see.

More Creativity, Less Consumption

Surfing, gaming, and social media addictions only fire up the consumer side of people...just taking and absorbing information but never taking the time to process these to create new ways, thoughts, or things to “give back” what one has learned. Time to unplug and power down those gadgets to get one’s creative juices flowing.
Emails, text messages, digital work hubs, and other digital related activities coupled with the modern lifestyle of multi-tasking demands much from our cognitive capacities. Powering down frees up our brain from constantly working with attention and memory and gives it space for contemplation and deep thought. It has been known that creative geniuses spawn their creative ideas by indulging in copious alone time for reflection deep thinking.

Detoxing from the Digital Addiction

Yes, our constant wired state can be an addiction. Just think...how antsy do you get when your mobile gadget is taken away from you? And just like any addiction, one needs a rehab of an unplugging from time to time to get some real bearings. The question is how to get a digital detox:
Choose a specific time in a day to power down. First hour of the morning, last hour before bedtime, an hour or two after work...you call the shots on whatever time works for you. What is important here is that you discipline yourself to get time off everyday from answering cell phone messages and calls, checking emails, playing that 30-minute game, and lurking through Facebook and Twitter. You may use this time to meditate, walk around the neighbourhood, or observe your environment. Live the moment.
Decrease the urge to go online. Instead of plugging into the net anytime you feel like it. You may choose to limit non-work related surfing or social media checkups to a specific period, once or twice a day, gradually weaning yourself to once every two days, etc.
Use apps to block non-productive sites or sites you do not need for work. Although the net may be crucial to your productivity, non-related work sites are simply a click away and are tremendous distractions. Fortunately, there are apps available that block access for a specified period to time-wasting but personally tempting sites like Facebook or your fave cooking blog.
Although many people have set the trend towards unplugging, this positive phenomenon needs to gain more ground. We owe it to ourselves to guard our self esteem, relationships, health, and career.

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Reference:

http://www.heart.org/

How Vital is Zinc?

In our quest for achieving or maintaining our ideal weight, we generally tend to think of cutting calories and counting macronutrients. Micronutrients are often relegated to the “Let’s think about these later” category so that oftentimes we tend not to realize that we short-change ourselves of these essential vitamins and minerals.

We need to shift our focus too on how much we are feeding ourselves of micronutrients. One such crucial mineral is zinc. All healthy body tissue must contain zinc in some quantity. At least 300 various enzymes need zinc to do life-sustaining chemical functions as well. These facts underscore the reliance of the human organism on zinc as an essential ingredient of healthy functioning and well-being.

The Role of Zinc

Zinc has so many crucial benefits that this article will simply highlight some:

Supporter of the Immune System

Some of the strength of an individual’s immunity relies heavily on zinc. For one, zinc has anti-microbial properties; hence, it is found in the body’s first line of defence which are the barriers thrown up by skin, lungs, throat, and the mucous membrane linings of the respiratory and digestive systems. Zinc is also present in saliva. Zinc destroys inhaled or ingested bacteria before these can do some damage.

Zinc also controls inflammation. Research on mice lacking zinc revealed a devastating inflammatory response to sepsis compared to mice with normal zinc levels. An individual with insufficient zinc levels would be susceptible to an overwrought immune system when faced with a threat. Without adequate zinc to put some brakes on, inflammation can get out of hand.

Helps in Thyroid Hormone Production>

The hypothalamus needs zinc to manufacture TRH, a stimulator hormone that signals the pituitary gland to activate the thyroid into producing its T3 and T4 hormones. Triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4) play roles in regulating metabolic processes, reproductive system, calcium balance, and cell production of protein. When zinc is insufficient, the thyroid gland becomes underactive and causes the condition known as hypothyroidism of which chronic weakness, tiredness, weight gain, and depression are common symptoms.

Assists in Bone Formation

The body stores 2-4 grams of zinc for enzyme, protein, and amino acid synthesis in the eyes, brain, kidney, liver, muscles, and bones. Although zinc has an indirect role in bone formation, it nevertheless plays an invaluable assistive role by being a trace mineral used to manufacture collagen and alkaline phosphatase (ALP), both important factors in bone development.

A British researcher, Dr. Ellen C.G. Grant, wrote the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in 2005 that the root cause of osteoporosis is not reduced oestrogen levels or calcium deficiency. She contends that the reduction in alkaline phosphatase is a major contributory factor to osteoporosis in menopausal women. When ALP enzyme activity is diminished, calcium content in bones gets depleted as well. This phenomenon may be blamed on the low levels of zinc, magnesium, and manganese.

Essential for Brain Health

Zinc plays a very active role in regulating neuronal and hippocampal communication in the areas of memory and learning. Adequate zinc intake is then important for optimal brain function and the slowing down of cognitive function deterioration as people age. Low levels of dietary zinc have shown increased risk of dementia and also a decline in sexual health.

Zinc in the brain may be found in more concentrated amounts than in any part of the body. Zinc deficiency has been found to play a key role in depression, ADHD, seizures, difficulties with learning and memory abilities, anxiety, and mental health problems such as bipolar disorder.

Supports the metabolism and roles of other nutrients

Omega-3 and Omega-6 essential fatty acids require zinc to be changed into forms that support these nutrients’ anti-depressant and anti-inflammatory benefits. Vitamin B6 also needs to partner with zinc to help reduce symptoms of PMS and depression. Zinc also boosts the functions of Vitamin A in improving night vision, moisturizing skin, reducing the occurrence of frequent colds, and preventing mouth ulcers.

Getting Enough Zinc

The Australian Ministry of Health recommends that adult men consume 14 mg/day and women, 8 mg. /day. Pregnant women, however, need a much higher intake at 11 mg. / day.

Dietary zinc has its best food sources in beef, shrimp, spinach, kidney beans, oysters, flax seeds, and garlic. A lot of foods contain zinc so unless one has an absorption problem, maintaining adequate zinc levels is relatively easy.

Be aware, however, of foods, beverages, and other factors that reduce zinc benefits. These include:

• Alcohol -- puts the brakes on zinc absorption and hastens its excretion
• Refined sugar -- requires zinc to metabolize thereby depleting your stores
• Diuretics -- includes coffee, soda, and tea. These increase the elimination of zinc from your system by as much as 60%.
• Excess calcium and iron supplementation --- too much calcium or iron decreases your zinc stores
• Excess copper supplementation --- can reduce zinc levels. Copper is present in multi-vitamins, water flowing through copper pipes, copper IUDs, birth control pills, and the like.
• Vitamin D deficiency -- reduces the effectivity of zinc
• Stress -- stimulates the production of cortisol and adrenaline, the chronic presence of which diminishes the body’s stores of zinc
• Low protein intake -- prevents zinc from metabolising efficiently
  

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