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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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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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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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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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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Snacks for Type 2 Diabetes

Snacks have to be included in the dietary menu planning for people with Type 2 Diabetes. Most people think that food for snacks contain high in sugar and fats. Or else, when it comes to snacking, people often think it should be taken to help curb hunger. But, what is the right definition of ‘snacks’ for people with Type 2 Diabetes.

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An Introduction of Carbohydrate

Carbohydrate contains sugar that can provide primary energy for human being. It consists of monosaccharide, disaccharides and polysaccharides. Monosaccharide is a single component and cannot be broken down into simple sugar, while disaccharides and polysaccharides can be broken down into simple sugar. Carbohydrate can be found mostly in plant. It has many functions including act as storehouse of chemical energy (glucose and glycogen), as part of plants’ structures (cellulose), make up cell walls of fungi and exoskeleton of insects (chitin) and components of nucleic acids. 

A summary of photosynthesis to make carbohydrate

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Who Needs Bariatric Surgery?

An increase number of people who are overweight and obese makes the clinicians to work harder to prevent the occurrence of obesity-related diseases. Bariatric surgery helps extremely obese people to lose weight. But, it is not a guarantee of successful weight loss and maintenance. It is not cheap. The procedures need expertise and specialists from many areas that need to be paid. Having bariatric surgery is a serious decision and it should be decided wisely.  

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Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid (PUFA)

There are two type of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA); omega-3 fats and omega-6 fats. These fats are essential fatty acids means that the body cannot produce them. PUFA has more than one double-bonded (unsaturated) carbon in the molecule. PUFA food are liquid at room temperature and when chilled. There are many examples of food high with PUFA such as corn oil, soy oil, regular safflower, sunflower oil, cottonseed oil and flaxseed oil. Many fish also contains PUFA including salmon, mackerel, herring and trout. 

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Monounsaturated Fatty Acids (MUFA)

Monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA) is called as a ‘good fat’. MUFA has one double-bonded (unsaturated) carbon atom. Foods made up mostly of MUFA are liquid at room temperature and changed to solid when they are chilled. There are many examples of MUFA including vegetable oils such as olive oil, canola oil, sunflower oil, peanut oil, sesame oil, sunflower oil, avocado and nuts such as almonds and peanuts.

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Carbohydrate and Diabetes

People with diabetes always feel that they have a very limited choices for food especially carbohydrate food. Stop worrying it. It does not have to mean feeling restricted. Let’s learn more about carbohydrate food.

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Trans Fat Is A Trouble Maker

It is clear that we need to include fat in our diet. There are many types of fat which can provide benefits or may prove to be unhealthy if too much is eaten. Here, the story is about trans fats or their full name is trans fatty acids. Natural trans fats can be found in cheese, beef, lamb and mutton. Food such as biscuits, cakes, cookies, crackers and other snack food often contain high amount of trans fat in the from of hydrogenated vegetables oil.

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