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Digestive Health

Gut Health Recommendations for the New Year

by Jackie Fishman | February 1, 2016

David Perlmutter, MD, FACN, ABIHM is a board-certified neurologist and fellow of the American College of Nutrition. Perlmutter is the author of: The Better Brain Book and the New York Times Bestseller, Grain Brain. Here, he gives his top three health recommendations for 2016.

• Exercise – Yes, you’ve heard it so many times before, but our understanding of what exercise does to enhance health is undergoing a revolution. It has been recognized for decades that aerobic exercise in particular is associated with risk reduction for various inflammatory and degenerative conditions, including type 2 diabetes, depression, high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, arthritis, osteoporosis, fibromyalgia, chronic back pain and even low libido.

The breakthrough has been the discovery that aerobic exercise actually changes the expression of our DNA. These changes in gene expression turn on pathways that increase our body’s production of antioxidants while reducing inflammatory mediators and stimulating detoxification pathways.

The science supporting what and how exercise does its magic is really compelling. So consider 20 minutes of aerobics, every day.

Eat More Olive Oil – The health benefits of EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) are vast. A recent NIH study shows dramatic risk reduction for colon cancer in individuals who added EVOO to their diets.

This simple dietary modification was shown in both men and women to be associated with more than a 40 percent reduction in risk for dementia, as well as a more than 60 percent risk reduction in the development of breast cancer in women.

Olive oil consumption is associated with reduced risk for colon cancer and, in women, reduced risk for developing type 2 diabetes. Adding olive oil helps with your efforts to eat more fat, something we all need to increase.

• Choose Organic Foods – Whenever possible, organic foods should be your choice.

Food “experts” will often publish information that challenges the idea that organic foods are better from a nutritional perspective, but I will say that organic foods are non-GMO (genetically modified organism) foods and that makes a whole lot of difference.

GMO foods threaten human health. Why? Because the overwhelming number of GMO foods that make up a substantial portion of the American diet are foods grown from genetically modified seeds that make the plant resistant to the weed killer glyphosate. That means when you choose to eat foods from GMO plants, you are likely eating foods laced with glyphosate, the active ingredient in the commercially available product RoundUp.

Even wheat, not a GMO product, is doused with this herbicide to speed its maturation. So when the World Health Organization tells us that glyphosate is likely a human carcinogen, we have to take notice. Even more worrisome are newer studies showing that when glyphosate is combined with other ingredients to make commercial products, the toxicity may be increased as much as 1,000 fold.

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