exercise

Good nutrition is built on three major components called macronutrients. These are protein, carbohydrates and fats. Each of the macronutrients is a vitally important part of a healthy diet and should be included in the right amounts for each individual person. Protein is needed in the diet for a number of very important reasons.

Although eating disorders have been around for a long time, the extensive research on them has existed for only about thirty years. It is known that there is a distinct and definitive correlation between a diagnosis of depression in the early to late teen years and the development of eating disorders. The three eating disorders that are most commonly studied and/or diagnosed are anorexia nervosa, bulimia and binge eating.

Stroke affects about two million people or more every year in the United States and is the third leading cause of death. It affects women about twice as often as men and is a major cause of permanent disability in this country as well (Source: MacLean, 1993). It is important to note that particularly with a first stroke, race is a major underlying and unchangeable risk factor, with African Americans having a risk that is at least two times higher than that of Caucasians.

Old myths are hard to overcome. One of the biggest myths surrounding protein is that a strength training athlete needs to eat a lot of protein so that they can get bigger. This is simply not true and, in fact, too much protein may be dangerous to their efforts. The strength training athlete needs to follow the same diet plan as the endurance athlete. Those who are training for improved endurance eat a diet that is higher in carbohydrates, lower in fat and moderate in proteins. The strength athletes tend to eat a diet that is higher in protein and fat and lower in carbohydrates, sticking to the erroneous belief that carbs are the enemy.

It is a fact of life that people age. Our once young and strong bodies break down and we become frail and weak, only to find ourselves living in a nursing home, unable to care for our most basic needs. The frail and weak nursing home stage is one option for your future, but it does not have to be your end result. You do not have to take the aging process in stride and just accept it. There is something that you can do so that you won’t wind up like the majority of the elderly in our country.

When protein is used by the body it creates a number of wasted products which are usually filtered and removed in the kidneys by an intricate system of nephrons. In the presence of any type of kidney disease, usually chronic kidney disease, these waste products are not filtered out and will back up and increase in numbers, eventually ending up back in the blood system. Chronic kidney disease is based on five stages of progression, typically judged by the glomerular filtration rate, which is a rating of how much blood the kidney can filter.