Category Archives: Dr. Kelley’s Kitchen

FOOD and nutrition: The good, the bad, and the ugly, including some excellent recipes and commentary about certain types of food/meals, which have proven to be of benefit. Also some harsh warnings about food and food-related products, which are over-sold, over-bought and over-used, many of which raise questions as to their safety and nutritional value.

What I’ve Been Researching Lately

mediterranean-saladRecently our government went into a shutdown when a portion of the Republican Party fought to block funding for the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. Many people I spoke to said that the government did have the authority to enact Obamacare and that affordable medical insurance is a right that all people have. My point in writing this article is not to argue the legality of Congress having enacted Obamacare, but rather to discuss health and the medical and pharmaceutical industry in general.

The human body is an amazing creation. First of all if you consider that upwards of half our body is comprised of water, it is simply amazing that it can perform all the functions that it does. But then we have different systems within our bodies, all designed to perform specific functions.

We all know, or at least have heard about, DNA, that genetic blueprint which identifies each of us individually. Well our body is comprised of millions, if not billions, of cells and each of them is identified by its own characteristics to perform certain functions within the body. Continue reading

Your guide to eating alkaline – What are the top alkaline-forming foods?

alkaline_foodsOne of the keys to maintaining optimal health is discovering the correct way to eat food in order to maximize your alkaline potential, and in turn prevent chronic disease from developing in your body. But in order to do this, you have to first learn which foods are alkaline-forming, and which are acid-forming, as well as how to eat them in balance.

The continuous onslaught of chemicals, additives, and genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) throughout the common food supply, not to mention modern society’s heavy reliance on processed, nutrient-stripped foods, is no doubt taking a huge toll on human health. Most people also eat copious amounts of food that promote acidity, which in turn makes them more prone to disease. Continue reading

9 Lies About Fat That Destroyed The World’s Health

The areas of nutrition and disease prevention are full of incompetence.

lol_butterWe have been wrongly advised to avoid saturated fat and cholesterol, despite no evidence of harm.

Here are the top 9 biggest lies, myths and misconceptions about dietary fat and cholesterol.

1. A Low-Fat, High-Carb Diet is The Optimal Human Diet
Back in 60s and 70s, many prominent scientists believed that saturated fat was the main cause of heart disease, by raising the “bad” cholesterol in the blood.

This idea was the cornerstone of the low-fat diet. Because of a few bad studies and misguided political decisions, this diet was recommended to all Americans in the year 1977.

However, there wasn’t a single study on this diet at the time. The American public became participants in the largest uncontrolled experiment in history. Continue reading

Could eating blueberries add years to your life?

bowl_of_blueberriesA bowl of wild blueberries a day could protect against a range of health problems including obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

Regular consumption of the berries over an eight-week period can improve or prevent metabolic syndrome, researchers say.

Metabolic syndrome is the medical term for a combination of diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.

It increases the risk of heart disease, stroke and other conditions affecting blood vessels.

On their own, diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity can potentially damage the blood vessels, but having all three together is particularly dangerous.

Berries are rich in polyphenols – antioxidants that protect cells in the heart and help lower blood pressure. Continue reading

Death Rides a Slow Bus in Hunza

hunzapresentationbyjavedkarim-12925966447964-phpapp02-thumbnail-4How would you like to live in a land where cancer has not yet been invented? A land where an optometrist discovers to his amazement that everyone has perfect 20-20 vision? A land where cardiologists cannot find a single trace of coronary heart disease? How would you like to live in a land where no one ever gets ulcers, appendicitis or gout? A land where men of 80 and 90 father children, and there’s nothing unusual about men and women enjoying vigorous life at the age of 100 or 120?

We see a lot of hands going up. Fine. But first, you have to answer a few more questions before setting out for a place called Hunza, a tiny country hidden in the mountain passes of northwest Pakistan.

Are you willing to live 20,000 feet up in the mountains, almost completely out of touch with the rest of the world? Are you ready to go outside in every kind of weather to tend you small mountainside garden, while keeping you ears open for an impending avalanche? Are you prepared to give up not only every luxury of civilization, but even reading and writing? Continue reading

A glass a day keeps the doctor away…

Drinking up to seven glasses of wine a week ‘cuts the risk developing depression by more than a THIRD’

wineA few glasses of wine each week could ward off depression, according to a new study.
Spanish scientists have found that drinking moderate amounts of alcohol, particularly wine, can be linked with a lower risk of depression.

Those who consumed two to seven small glasses of wine weekly were 32 per cent less likely to suffer from depression compared with people who never drank alcohol. Continue reading

Eat like the Greeks to stay sharp in old age

Mediterranean diet found to lower risk of developing dementia

mediterranean-salad

Eat like the Greeks: Mediterranean food is both delicious and nutritious

Eating a Mediterranean diet is good for the mind, research has concluded.

Scientists say people who eat large quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, fish and olive oil have a lower risk of age-related diseases such as dementia.

The research, by the University of Exeter’s Medical School, is the first systematic review of previous studies into the diet’s benefits to the brain.

It comes after research last month showed the same diet could help counteract a genetic risk of strokes. Continue reading

Robin Quivers says a vegan diet aided her recovery from cancer

robin-quiversRobin Quivers was making all the news Monday morning while Howard Stern played sidekick, a role reversal that gave way to Quivers’ discussion about her long-time battle with cancer.

Quivers underwent surgery last year to remove a large mass in her pelvic area and chemotherapy to attack a tumor on her bladder. On Monday, Quivers discussed her year-long absence from the Sirius XM show’s studio, and staffers tweeted and posted about it as well.

During her ordeal, Quivers has been largely mum about her health, with only Stern and other members of her inner circle privy to the details. Stern said Monday, “I thought she was a goner” and had also said that he would not continue doing the show without her. Continue reading

The Three-Day Sugar Detox: How to banish sweet stuff from your life to look younger AND lose weight

beat-sweetsIf you can’t get going in the morning without a sugary coffee, need a treat to boost your energy in the afternoon and have tried and failed to cut down on eating carbs, then you could be a sugar addict.

It’s no secret that too much sugar is bad for our health. The NHS recommend about 70g of sugar a day for men and 50g for women but many of us are exceeding this.

Either by regularly indulging in treats such as cakes or thanks to ‘hidden sugars’ in products like low-fat yoghurts, excess sugar consumption can cause weight gain, energy slumps and even wrinkles. Continue reading

Eating too much red meat could increase the risk of Alzheimer’s

Scientists warn build-up of iron may damage the brain

Piece of Raw Beef on PaperEating too much red meat could trigger Alzheimer’s, suggests new research.

Scientists found that a build-up of iron – abundant in red meat – could cause oxidant damage, to which the brain is particularly vulnerable.

Researchers say this could in turn increase the risk of Alzheimer’s. Continue reading

Top 5 Alkaline Foods and Why You Should Care

Red_AppleWe’ve all heard the term pH balance before, but do you know what it actually means? The pH scale is one that measures the acidity or alkalinity of something. In the case of alkaline foods, we are concerned with the pH of your body. Eating certain foods may affect this measurement, which can lead to several potentially negative health effects.

Ph levels are measured on a scale of 0 to 14. 7.0 is considered neutral; 0 is completely acidic, and 14 is completely alkaline. Your blood needs to be slightly alkaline, with a pH somewhere between 7.35 and 7.45. Generally, your body adjusts its pH levels automatically, keeping your blood right within that target area. However, some argue that many of today’s processed and unhealthy foods are acid-forming and throw off that natural balance. Continue reading

Butter vs Margarine: The Big Fat Butter Lie

lol_butterIs butter bad for you? For decades, the food processing industry has used advertising campaigns to successfully lie about the urgent and proven need to replace “unhealthy” butter with “healthy” margarine. But now we know that this teaching was nothing more than made-up. In the battle of margarine vs butter, you may now be surprised which comes out on top.

Even back in the 60s and 70s sufficient scientific evidence indicated that butter was far better than margarine for good health. Who knew? Nevertheless, the industrial fake food industry relentlessly convinced millions of us to eat margarine for health reasons. The commercial processed fake food industry merged with Madison Avenue, the AMA, and mainstream media to instill a whopper of a lie by reinforcing margarine as better for you. They claimed in unison that saturated fats made you fat and promoted cardiovascular disease. Continue reading

Soy products linked to cancer in lab tests: Four very convincing reasons to cut soy from your diet today

On a road trip to Kansas City, MO in the spring of 1999, Dr. Kelley shared with me his insight on diet. “If you take an Eskimo”, he stated, “and ship him off to Japan for a year and place him on a healthy Japanese diet including soy, he’ll be dead before the year is over. If you send a Japanese person to Alaska, he’ll die of the fatty diet served there.”

The problem in the U.S. is, that if we are told that something is good for us – we’ll overdose on it, believing that it will REALLY be good for us. All in moderation my son… all in moderation. (Ed.)

soy-beansAs time goes by, people are steadily waking up to some of the proven facts about soy, such as the knowledge that most soy is GMO. If that is the case, one can deduce that to solve the problem one can simply buy organic soy products. While it’s true that organic soy is healthier for you than GMO soy, there are other facts about soy that pose serious health risks. Here are four facts that debunk soy as a healthy food choice.

Four reasons to phase-out most soy products on the market Continue reading

Broccoli’s a wonder veg… and now we know why

  • Chemical only found in the food helps maintain ‘batteries’ that power body’s cells

brocolli_babeNext time your child asks why they have to eat broccoli, you can give them the reason – thanks to scientists who made people eat it every day for three months.

They discovered that a chemical found solely in the vegetable helps maintain the health of the tiny ‘batteries’ which power the body’s cells.

This, it is thought, helps ward off health problems including cancer and heart disease.

Scientists from the Institute of Food Research in Norwich ran detailed blood tests on men and women before and after they ate the vegetable. Continue reading

Drinking more than five cups of tea ‘cuts risk of prostate cancer by a third’

  • Men who drink five cups also have 25 per cent less chance of reaching cancer stage II
  • Naturally occurring compounds in tea called flavonoids inhibit cancer cells

tea_cupDrinking five or more cups of tea a day lowers the risk of advanced prostate cancer by a third, research shows.

Men who drink five or more cups daily have a 33 per cent lower risk of developing stage IV prostate cancer, scientists found.

They also have a 25 per cent reduced risk of reaching stage II, compared with those who drink just one cup a day.

Stage II is where the tumor has grown inside the prostate gland but not spread. By stage IV the cancer has typically spread to the lymph nodes, bones or liver.

It is believed naturally occurring compounds in tea called flavonoids inhibit cancer cells from forming tumors. Continue reading