🏋️‍♂️ Health Tips and Tricks

Cholesterol, insulin resistance and blood pressure.
Dietary tips and tricks to avoid the need for medications.

(disclaimer, not a Dr so not medical advice)

Did you know the US medical establishment is quietly lowering the normal ranges for blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Why? Humans haven't recently mutated have they?

The changes for cholesterol levels will mean 30 million more Americans being told they need to take statin medications, many of them in the 30 - 50 age group.

Cholesterol and blood pressure meds tend to be for life.

Pharmaceutical companies have already made over $1 trillion from statins but I guess that's just not enough.

Doctors are on the payroll as well, they will mention dietary considerations but the real money is in drug dealing and no mistake.

So, the average western diet is carbohydrate heavy, especially simple carbs like sugars, while the lifestyle is relatively exercise free, more so  as we age.

This is a recipe for chronic high cholesterol, insulin resistance (> type 2 diabetes) and high blood pressure.

Too many carbs will make you overweight but the routine glucose and insulin spikes after big carb heavy meals overloads the liver leading to chronic disease.

The objective simply put is to flatten the glucose and insulin spikes in the blood after a meal and encourage a more steady glucose release preventing liver overloading.

Sugars, starches and carbohydrates are all broken down into glucose. Sugars fastest, complex carbs slowest.

Glucose provides energy while insulin aids glucose transportation into cells.

High glucose spikes after a carb heavy meal overloads the liver and short-shifts the normal liver processes straight into cholesterol and large molecule fat production.

High insulin spikes (that automatically accompany high glucose spikes) will over time blunt cell insulin receptor sites which transport glucose into the cell leading to cells becoming insulin resistant.

One obvious help would be to simply eat and drink less carbs and do more exercise.

Actions

Get a periodic routine path blood test from general health practitioner (GP should recommend if over 60 years, annual if normal, 3 monthly if abnormal)

copy and paste relevant sections of blood test results into AI asking for specific dietary and lifestyle changes for your particular results.


General Tips to Avoid Chronic Disease

decrease carbohydrate intake in general. cut out sugars. replace simple, refined, processed carbs with complex hard, rough carbs e.g. brown bread and brown rice, rough, steel cut oats rather than smoothed creamed oats.

decrease tropical fruits, (high in sugar, low in fibre, increase other types)

decrease root vegetables, (high in starches, low in fibre, increase other types)

increase protein intake to compensate decreased carb intake.

space meals at least 4 hours apart, avoid snacks. Topping up glucose every 2 hours means the body will never need to go into fat burning mode.

don’t eat 3-4 hours before bed

exercise a big muscle group 30 min after main meals e.g.10 min walking or some squats (can reduce glucose spike by 20%)

apple cider vinegar, mix 2 table spoons in glass of water, drink before main meal (can reduce glucose spike by 25%)

1 crushed clove stalk in morning coffee shown to increase blood vessel elasticity, study in older people. (-15mmHg systolic after 3 weeks, own personal experience)

decrease butter intake by half, replace with extra virgin olive oil (replacing saturated fats with unsaturated fats)

increase omega 3 (fish oils) intake

eat ‘resistant starches’ (to gut absorption) like green bananas, celery, refrigerated cooked potatoes, rice and pasta. Refrigeration crystallises the cooked starch molecules, remains resistant even after reheating.

Alcohol is carbs.

slow down the speed carbs pass through the digestive system by eating complex carbs and adding protein or fat.

read ingredients labels, reduced fat means reduced flavour often compensated for by adding sugar – avoid, the original fat is better than the added sugar, slower gut absorption = decreased glucose spike.

Blood pressure readings can be deceptive especially in a clinical setting. Should be calm, resting BP. If BP is an ongoing concern better done at home with own machine (a cheap one from Amazon is fine), set everything up then wait 5 minutes before pressing the start button.

List is not exhaustive, you are welcome to add any of your own on this health topic or any other.

Stay Organic

Eis wrote: Sun Aug 09, 2026 5:36 am Stay Organic

Indeed, organic is a very useful reference. By law food manufacturers are not allowed to tamper with the product supposedly. Next trip to the supermarket take a magnifying glass to read the super small print on the ingredients labels and compare.

Yogurt is a good case in point, yogurt, whether organic or not, should only have milk and 2 live cultures on the label but compare others you will find added artificial flavourings, artificial colouring, preservatives, fillers and 2 or 3 different types of sugars, all of which kill the live cultures dead before you even buy destroying any possible healthy pro-biotic effect, not only that but they will be 3 times the price and more incredibly still it will likely be their best seller.

Intermittent fasting:

To revise a few key points, the modern western diet is carbohydrate rich and especially prominent are simple carbs, starches and sugars as are routinely found in processed foods.

This diet accompanied with a relatively sedentary lifestyle has caused an obesity epidemic.

A simple carbs and sugar rich diet also encourages the need to eat more regularly which contributes to liver overloading and constant glucose and insulin spikes which has caused a type 2 diabetes epidemic.

Most people are walking around with hundreds of thousands of stored calories presumably in case the supermarket gets shut down for a week.

The price is a shorter life plagued with chronic illness and for what? The supermarket never got shut down at all. It's so tragic.

The solution is to pretend the supermarket did get shut down.

Turns out the body can survive very well fasting for 74 hours, in fact there are some very real health benefits to occasionally doing so.

Without being so drastic, even just intermittent fasting through the day on a regular basis also has real health benefits, not least overall weight loss and regular liver unloading allowing the liver to get rid of accumulated fat from within and around that was just dumped there during the overloading process.

The removal of visceral fats that surrounds all organs, not just the liver, restores functional ability and health.

So intermittent fasting then. Many people find the 16-8 program works well though there are others to choose from.

The particular hours are down to you but say your last meal of the day is at 6pm, then all carbs in the blood are gone by 10pm and if breakfast is held up till 10am the next morning then that's 16 hours fasting and 12 hours when the body is in fat burning mode, it has to be, it can't not be.

After breakfast at 10am then lunch at 2pm and last meal in the evening at 6pm again.

If you have excess fat consider doing 5 days a week. Give it a go for a few weeks and see what happens. And it's not a 'every day for life' thing but a strategy you can dip into and out of as needs be.

But what to do between waking up and 10am? I find a large pot of black coffee followed by a large pot of green tea fills the gap perfectly well, no hardship at all.

And allowing the body to spend time during the functional part of the day in real fat burning mode means you will lose fat, you can't not.

Who could have guessed? Turns out that your own body fat is the best meal to start the day.