High Carb or Low Carb? How to Eat

We get so much conflicting advice about the right way to eat these days, and here?s more of it: some researchers say we should forget Atkins and return to a high-carb diet, while others says that a high-protein diet helps us to avoid the dreaded Alzheimer’s disease. What’s the truth?

Nutritionist Olga Raz is becoming as famous in Israel as Dr. Atkins was in the US, for her Bread for Life diet. Book editor Debora Yost says, “It’s the diet other publishers didn’t want to touch because it is so anti-Akins and South Beach, but I?ve known all along that there were flaws in those diets and knew it was just a matter of time until carbohydrates would come back in vogue and be part of a sensible eating program.”

The diet features bread, and lots of it?up to 12 slices a day for women and 16 slices a day for men. It takes us back to the time when meat was scarce, vegetables and fruit were seasonal, and bread really was “the staff of life.”

Raz developed her diet after talking to patients who didn’t like the way low-carb diets made them feel. When Raz measured the levels of serotonin in the blood. Serotonin is not only the “happiness chemical,” it also controls whether we feel full and satisfied after eating. Raz found that after a high protein meal, serotonin levels quickly rose but then dropped just as quickly. This is the same effect that sugar has on the body. But after eating whole grain bread, their serotonin level went up and stayed up, meaning they felt satisfied and didn’t overeat.

In contrast to this, a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet devised by researcher Samuel Henderson improved the condition of mice with the mouse version of Alzheimer’s. The brain protein amyloid-beta, which is an indicator of Alzheimer’s, was reduced in the mice that ate a high protein diet.

Researcher Richard Feinman says, “Insulin is often considered a storage hormone since it promotes deposition of fat, but insulin may also work to encourage amyloid-beta production. You might say that fat is the bomb, and insulin (from carbohydrate) is the fuse.”

We hope all you dieters there are learning the right way to lose weight, based on scientific principles, by reading Anne Strieber’s diet book. Chapter 4, “Sweets” (the chapter you’ve all been waiting for) will be up on Monday.

Art credit: http://www.freeimages.co.uk

Scientific studies have shown that keeping your mind engaged is what fends off Alzheimer’s and there?s not better way to do that than to listen to Dreamland radio every week. Subscribers can still listen to Anne?s mouth watering discussion with rock star Carnie Wilson, where they describe their favorite foods. Subscribe today!

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