Lychee

Lychee (Litchi chinensis) is a wonderful sweet fruit. The delicious plus sweet taste is suitable to make juice, ice cream and desserts. The fruit was originated from South China but today, it can be found in most countries but the price is quite expensive. Nowadays, there are many lychee products that had formed into cordial. It is too much sugar and causes lychee to less nutritious. It is better to get lychee fruit and make your own juice.

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Yakult as A Probiotic

One bottle of Yakult contains of 6.5 billion cells of good bacteria. These bacteria had been discovered by Dr Shirota and this very genius scientist named the bacteria as Lactobacillus casei Shirota. These bacteria have scientifically proven to reach our gut alive. By the way, I’m not promoting Yakult. I would like to discuss about good and bad bacteria in our intestines. 

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Nutrition for Elderly

The population has grown modestly with people over 60 years old. This shows that the population ages are increasing and people seek for healthy lifestyle. Most study defines elderly as more than 60 years old. Their physiologies are not similar to the younger age. Elderly might suffer with the different production or amount of hormones and changes in body compositions.

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Functional Foods (Metabolic Syndrome)

Nowadays, obesity is a major public health problem, not only in Malaysia, but worldwide. Even more alarming is the increasing numbers of childhood obesity. The presence of obesity is highly associated with metabolic syndrome. When seeing any health care providers, they will focus more and more on macronutrients including carbohydrate, protein and fat intake as dietary management in preventing complications of metabolic syndrome. However, there are some functional foods that have ability to fight against metabolic syndrome (obesity, diabetes, hypertension and dyslipidemia) and cardiovascular disease.

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Warfarin and Vitamin K

Warfarin is a small anticoagulant drug that is used to reduce the formation of blood clots. Most commonly, it is vitally used to prevent heart attacks, strokes or any blood clots in arteries or veins. Warfarin is a vitamin K antagonist. It inhibits the actions of clotting factors II, VII, IX and X in blood. This causes depletion of vitamin K functions and slows down the rate of blood clotting. 

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Skipping breakfast is harmful

Breakfast skipping occurs regularly among workers in Malaysia. The reasons could be busy and have no time to prepare breakfast. There are many definitions for ‘breakfast skipping’. It includes; 1) skip breakfast at least one time per week 2) skip breakfast at least six times per week 3) rarely or never eat breakfast, or eat breakfast less or 2 days per week 4) usually skip breakfast, or never or almost never eat breakfast 5) no breakfast on the day of the survey, dietary recall or food record 6) not eating a morning meal at home.

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Twelve Steps for Heart Healthy Eating

Even you are on medications, following heart healthy eating pattern help to further reduce the risk of heart diseases. Medication is not everything. What you have to do is have fun and enjoy your healthy meals. 

 

1. Never miss three important meals; breakfast, lunch and dinner. 

2. Olive oil, canola oil, peanut oil and avocado can reduce LDL cholesterol level.

3. Add cereals to your breakfast drink and have some whole oatmeal before you start your day.

4. Choose low fat milk or low fat milk products everyday.

5. Say no to chips, high fat crackers and ice cream.

6. Rarely include deep fried food and butter in your meal. Avoid cream and sour cream.

7. Drink plenty of water everyday and avoid the intake of alcohol.

8. Fish and soy products are recommended to be eaten everyday.

9. Have variety of fruits and vegetable everyday. Make them into special snacks or salads.

10. If possible, prepare meals at home and no fast food anymore.

11. Use less sugar and less salt when preparing meals.

12. When buying food products, read the labels carefully. Choose foods with low sodium, saturated fat, trans-fat, and sugar.

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Arsenic in Food

Arsenic is considered as dangerous chemical and major public health concern. According to WHO, (2012), the recommended limit intake for arsenic in drinking water is not more than 10μg per liter. There are two forms of arsenic; inorganic and organic. Inorganic can be found in water and it is highly toxic. While, organic is less harmful and can be found in seafood. 

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Manage Your Diabetes Medications

Most patients have tendency to forget taking their medications every day. Remembering to take medications is not as easy as ABC. Patients who have multiple health problems, they need to take many medications per day. This increases the tendency to forget taking medications. Medications are very important to all patients especially for diabetic patients.

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Coconut

Coconut is often called the “tree of life”. It is used extensively in tropical countries such as Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka etc. The coconut is famous with the production of coconut oil and it becomes so popular. However, the production of corn oil and soy oil against coconut oil because coconut oil is believed to cause harmful to human because of high saturated fat content.

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Do We Need Supplement?

Supplement is defined as a thing that is added to something in order to make it complete or enhance the functions. In dietary supplement, mostly it consists of vitamins and minerals. Nowadays, there are many supplement products selling in the market in forms of tablets, capsules, softgels and gelcaps. Do you think that you are the one who really need supplement? Do you know supplements can cause side effects and toxicity?

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Hypertension and Sodium

Hypertension is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. It is very dangerous and very famous to be called as ‘silent killer’. The normal reading of blood pressure is 120/80. If the reading is above 140/90, it is categorized as hypertension. As reported by the Center of Disease Control, 67 million of Americans suffer with high blood pressure. In Malaysia, as been reported by Ministry of Health, 32.3% of Malaysians have hypertension. It should be treated as soon as possible to prevent complications or even death.

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Prevent Colorectal Cancer

Colorectal cancer is an abnormal growth of cells in colon and rectum. It can start either in the inner lining of colon or rectum and grows toward center. In 2002, colorectal cancer was the third most frequently reported cancer in West Malaysia. In 2006, it was reported that male (56.5%) was higher with colorectal cancer compared to female (43.5%). In addition, Chinese had the highest reported to suffer with colorectal cancer. Most colorectal cancer begins in polyps and they can grow to form cancer. Thus, it is important to get early detection and remove the polyps.

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Goat Milk As A Substitute For Cow Milk

Some food products like yoghurt, cheese and milk powder, are made from goat milk. Other than cow, goat also is a main supplier of dairy and meat products. The demand of goat milk is increasing because of the growing population of people. The old says “goat being the cow of the poor people” could be relevant to people with low economy status due to the price is cheaper than cow. The increasing demand of goat milk in many developed countries is because of the increasing production of yoghurt and cheese. Some people prefer goat milk instead of cow milk. This is because cow milk can cause allergy and gastrointestinal problems to some people.

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Cholesterol and Exercise

What are the tricks to reduce cholesterol? When we are talking about cholesterol, we have to know that there are two main types of cholesterol; bad cholesterol and good cholesterol. We are hoping that bad cholesterol will be reduced and good cholesterol will be increased. Instead of healthy eating, exercise can be a vital tool in lowering bad cholesterol. There are many ways of exercise such as walking, jogging, running, swimming, biking and yoga which appear to give impact in lowering bad cholesterol.

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Mangosteen

Mangosteen is a queen of fruit. In Malaysia, mangosteen is called manggis. The mangosteen consists of five to eight soft segmented fleshes. According to NutriWeb Malaysia, 3 big whole of mangosteen contain 33Kcal, 83.9g of water, 0.6g of protein, 1.0g of fat and 5.4g of carbohydrate. It can be eaten like other tropical fruit or made into juice. The juice consists of the whole fruit of the mangosteen pureed or combination with other fruit juice such as apple, blueberry, raspberry, cranberry, pear and strawberry.

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Healthy Gut For Infants and Children

Gut microbiota is also known as gut flora which is microbe population living in intestine. There are more than trillions of microorganisms with at least 1000 different species. Few gut microbiota is common to most people and the rest is specific to individual. Diet has shown to affect the composition of gut microbiota composition. Different people have different composition of gut microbiota due to different diet.

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Fasting and Ramadan

Fasting in Ramadan can improve person’s health. But, if people are not following healthy diet, it can possibly worsen it. Healthy diet should be taken into account to gain full benefits from fasting. Type and quantity of food should be monitored well. Overeating can harm the body and person’s spiritual growth during Ramadan. The diet should be simple and it is not differ too much from non-fasting diet. It should contain all the major food groups include carbohydrate, protein and fat.

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Diet For Diabetes During Ramadan

Fasting during Ramadan is a must for all healthy Muslims. Sick people like diabetes are exempted from the duty of fasting. However, many Muslim diabetic patients wish to fast during Ramadan.

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Diabetes and Ramadan

During Ramadan, Muslims abstain from food, drink, use oral medications and smoking during daylight hours, before fajr (dawn) to sunset. Fasting during Ramadan is obligatory upon every sane, healthy Muslim whose reached puberty and is not traveling during the time of fasting. But how can Muslim diabetic patients restrain from eating their drugs? What are the complications that they may face during Ramadan? 

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