Tag: Nutritional Deficiencies

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Best Options in Weight Loss Surgery

If surgery is your only option for weight loss, you will need to gather information and find out what procedures are available before making a decision. Bariatric weight loss surgery is not a procedure to be taken lightly. In fact, it is viewed as a last resort for treating chronic obesity. If you have tried unsuccessfully to achieve a healthy weight using conventional methods, it may be time to consider your weight loss surgery options.

Surgery for weight loss is not cosmetic surgery. Rather, it is classified as medical surgery because of its important health benefits. For this reason, bariatric weight loss surgery is covered by some insurance providers. Morbidly obese individuals have the option to try weight loss surgery if they repeatedly fail to achieve and maintain a healthy weight through conventional methods such as diet and exercise. If you opt for surgery to lose weight, keep in mind that you will experience short-term and long-term effects, and the procedure may necessitate lifestyle changes.

How It Works

Basically, there are only two methods whereby weight loss can be achieved. The first method is to reduce the number of calories consumed by restricting food intake. The second method is through food malabsorption, or making changes in the digestive system so that food is poorly digested and nutrients and calories are not completely absorbed. There are several different surgical procedures to achieve this.

Option #1: Restrictive Methods

The primary goal of a restrictive weight loss procedure is to reduce food intake in order to promote weight loss. This can be done by making the stomach smaller so that it will hold less food while reducing hunger pangs. An individual who undergoes this procedure will find it easier to control meal portions, thus ensuring a steady weight loss with minimal risk of nutritional deficiencies.

Popular restrictive methods of bariatric surgery are LAP-BAND and Vertical Banded Gastroplasty.

Option #2: Malabsorptive Methods

This method promotes weight loss by making changes in the digestive system. The small intestine is rerouted, in effect shortening it so that less food nutrients and calories are absorbed by the body. The primary methods of malabsorptive bariatric surgery are biliopancreatic diversion, Extended Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, and biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch.

Malabsorptive methods are highly successful for significant, long-term weight loss but they come with a number of drawbacks. Individuals who choose this weight loss surgery option can suffer from nutritional deficiencies and must take vitamin supplements. They can also suffer from intestinal irritation, bloating, and bowel movement problems.

Option #3: Combination Restrictive and Malabsorptive Method

The Roux-en-Y gastric bypass reduces the size of the stomach, and a section of the small intestine is bypassed in order to decrease food absorption.

Making Your Decision

If you have run out of conventional weight loss options, it may be time to look into the possibility of bariatric surgery. There are several alternatives to consider and you should discuss each one with your bariatric surgeon. Learn about the pros and cons of the different weight loss surgery options. Keep in mind that what works for someone else may not work for you. Your doctor can help you determine what procedure is best for you.


Best Options in Weight Loss Surgery

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Weight Loss Exercise

How To Follow A Raw Vegan Diet


How To Follow A Raw Vegan Diet

Raw Vegan Diet

The raw vegan diet is the most popular of all raw diets available today. However, it can be difficult to follow in its pure form. Most people who start a raw vegan diet have not previously been vegan, so they need some information about it before they start.

The Vegan Diet

A standard vegan diet includes no animal products at all. That means no dairy, eggs, fish or meat. Vegans will also not consume food that uses animal products or ‘labor’ in the processing, such as honey (bees) or commercially produced wine, which is filtered through fish scales unless marked vegan.

In addition, some vegans will not buy or use leather goods or silk, among other things. However, most vegans eat sugar and other refined foods. They can be overweight and if they are not careful, they can suffer nutritional deficiencies – just like anybody who eats a lot of sugar and snacks.

The Raw Vegan Diet

The difference between vegan and raw vegan is that the raw vegan diet does not include any food that has been heated above 118 degrees F (some say 115 degrees), which is the limit at which the living elements of a plant will be killed.

For example, if you buy raw sunflower seeds and soak them in water, you can make them sprout in a few days, because they still have a living germ. But if you buy roasted sunflower seeds, they have no living element and will never sprout. That is why raw foods are often called ‘living foods’.

Many people believe that there are advantages to the body in eating living foods. In fact, some believe that the body reacts to cooked food as if it were poison. Of course, this has not been scientifically proven.

The raw option cuts out most of the unhealthy aspects of a standard vegan diet, such as sugar. However, following a diet that is 100% raw also means not taking vitamin and mineral supplements, which may be keeping many vegans healthy. For example B12 is an essential vitamin that is only found in animal products. It must be taken as a supplement by long term vegans.

Going raw also removes other vegan staples such as tofu and other soy-based products, bottled sauces, and cooked beans. Some beans can be included in the diet in their sprouted form.

Alternatives To The Raw Vegan Diet

If after reading this you decide that the raw vegan diet is not for you, there are variations that may still give you a lot of the potential health benefits of a raw vegan diet.

First, you can be 100% raw without being vegan. You might follow a raw vegetarian diet which could include unpasteurized dairy products and perhaps raw eggs. Including dairy products will take care of many of the concerns that people have about calcium on a raw vegan diet. However, you need to be aware that there are certain health risks in consuming unpasteurized dairy.

Second, you can be vegan without being 100% raw. This option allows you to follow a high raw diet while still using some cooked or processed foods such as tofu or vitamin and mineral supplements. Most people will have to do this if only because of the B12 requirement, if they plan to follow a raw vegan diet for a number of years.

How To Follow A Raw Vegan Diet
This is my recommendation for a cheap and easy book to learn the essentials of the Raw Food Diet. Whether you want to start today doing Raw completely or if you just want to test out the Raw Food waters this book is a must. This specific easy to use Raw Food diet will help you lose weight, look younger, and have great energy. Learn more about Raw Food here now.

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Avoiding Dangerous Raw Foods

Avoiding Dangerous Raw Foods

Avoiding dangerous raw foods is not difficult if you are careful. A raw foods diet is probably one of the healthiest diets that a person can follow, but like all restrictive diets, it has its dangers. In this article we will consider some of those dangers and how to avoid them.

Avoiding Dangerous Raw Foods

Salmonella And Other Bacterial Diseases

It is unfortunately true that raw food is more likely to carry bacteria such as salmonella, that can cause serious food poisoning. Salmonella is most often found in raw meats, eggs and dairy products. Cooking destroys it, as does pasteurization – a process which involves heating to high temperatures, which is done on most commercially sold dairy products and fruit juices, among other foods.

Avoiding dangerous raw foods and some of these bacteria are more dangerous for unborn infants in the womb than for adults. Therefore, you might want to reconsider following a raw foods diet if you are pregnant or planning a pregnancy.

You can avoid most risk of food poisoning on a raw foods diet by following the raw vegan version which avoids all of these foods. However, that has its own challenges – see the section on vitamin B12 below.

There have been cases of salmonella traced to other raw foods such as lettuce. Thorough washing can help, but in any case, this is a risk that applies to virtually everybody, so don’t let the cooked food fans scare you with this one. There are very few people who eat no raw food at all.

Nutritional Deficiencies and Vitamin B12

It is important to make sure that you are getting the full range of vitamins and minerals on a raw foods diet. You need to consider whether you are getting enough calcium, iron (especially for women of childbearing age), zinc, and omega-3 fatty acids. Although this is not really avoiding dangerous raw foods it is critical that you are not dificient in these essential nutrients as well.

There are raw foods that can supply these nutrients and you will need to ensure that they are included in your diet. Having a wide variety of nuts and seeds will help to ensure that you get enough minerals, for example. Ground flax seeds can provide essential fatty acids.

The need for vitamin B12 is something that anybody following a raw vegan diet needs to be aware of. It is not an issue for those on a diet that includes raw meat or dairy products.

B12 is an important nutrient: without it, we will eventually suffer brain damage as well as other serious health problems. The human body does produce B12 but not in a way that allows us to use our own. For example, it is found in breast milk and other human secretions. But unless we happen to be consuming quantities of these, we need to get B12 from another source, and there is no vegetable source.

This means either consuming animal products or taking a supplement. Animal products are not vegan, and supplements are not raw. So B12 can be an issue for people who want to follow a 100% raw vegan diet.

However, the body does store B12. So some people, who have eaten plenty of animal products up to now and are not considering being vegan for more than a year or two, hope that they may have enough B12 to see them through. If you decide to take this risk, you should at least be tested for B12 levels before you start a vegan raw foods diet, and then annually.

Avoiding Dangerous Raw Foods
This is my recommendation for a cheap and easy book to learn the essentials of the Raw Food Diet. Whether you want to start today doing Raw completely or if you just want to test out the Raw Food waters this book is a must. This specific easy to use Raw Food diet will help you lose weight, look younger, and have great energy. Learn more about Raw Food here now.

So when thinking about Avoiding dangerous raw foods there are really tow things to think about Bacteria, or the preseence of bad bacteria and vitamin and mineral deficiencies.