8 of the Most Unhealthy Beverages You Can Drink

Most high school boys can easily put away an entire pizza at dinner and still be hungry for a snack before heading to bed. Eventually, this sky-high metabolism starts to slow down. The same sort of carefree eating that used to be no big deal as a teenager now leads to major weight gain, so smarter choices are the clear answer. Unfortunately, even the most saintly diet won’t necessarily help you slim down. Portion control is part of the problem because too much of any food, even healthy ones, will lead to weight gain.

Some may still be scratching their heads, knowing they do a good job of keeping their meal sizes appropriate. The culprit could be what’s in the glass next to your plate. A diet of nothing but lean protein and veggies won’t do you any good if you’re washing it down with tons of calorie-laden beverages. While you might think you can adequately balance your drinks with the foods you eat, the science doesn’t support it. One 2011 review of multiple studies found that liquid calories don’t provide the same satiety as solid food, leading to an overall increase in caloric intake.

While some drinks are perfectly healthy to sip often, the list of ones to watch out for is far longer. These eight beverages are among the worst offenders. Keep these drinks out of your fridge, and you’ll be on your way to a healthier tomorrow.

1. Juice and juice drinks

The juicing crowd likes the drinks for their great taste, but also for the health factor. There’s no denying fruit and vegetable juices offer plenty of nutrients, especially when freshly made. The problem comes with calories and portions. If you drink one cup of grape juice, you’ll get a whopping 100% of your daily vitamin C needs, but it’ll cost you 170 calories. Eating a cup of the whole fruits will give you only a fraction of the vitamin C, but you’ll also only consume 62 calories and end up with close to a gram of fiber. You could eat almost three cups of grapes for the same number of calories as that one, small glass of juice.

Katherine Tallmadge, RD and author of Diet Simple, appeared on The Kojo Nnamdi Show to discuss the role juice plays in nutrition. She admitted she starts her day with a glass of OJ every morning, but was quick to defend whole produce. “A lot of the nutrients are concentrated in the seeds and skin of the fruits and vegetables, and that’s often what people don’t eat, ” she said. You can still enjoy some juice, but it’s wise to keep it to eight ounces per day.

Even sneakier than regular juices are the drinks with additional sugar. Stay away from labels that say “juice drink” or “juice cocktail.” These terms are just a clever way for marketers to trick you into buying something with a lot of calories. Some contain as much as 30 grams of sugar in a single serving.

2. Sports drinks

Head to any gym and you’re bound to see folks toting around bottles of neon beverages. The problem with this picture is that most of these people aren’t the types of athletes who sports drinks were designed for.

Many are at least somewhat familiar with the story of Gatorade. It was invented in 1965 by the Florida Gators’ assistant coach to help replenish the electrolytes and carbohydrates players were losing from their hard efforts. Hitting the treadmill for 30 minutes then lifting a few weights doesn’t require nearly the same number of calories or electrolytes. Furthermore, many of us get plenty of these nutrients from the foods we normally eat.

If you are an endurance athlete, it may be wise to go for sports drinks, as long as you do it right. The Washington Post recommends figuring out your hydration requirements by keeping track of how much you sweat. Just step on the scale before and after you exercise. Also, make sure you’re getting enough sodium.

3. Soda

It can’t be any surprise that this fizzy beverage makes the list. Made from little more than artificial flavoring and sugar, soda isn’t doing your body any favors. Let’s actually take a look at the damage. If you were to down 20 ounces of cola, a pretty standard bottle size, you’d be consuming 240 calories, 75 grams of sodium, and 65 grams of sugar. No vitamins, no minerals, zip.

While it doesn’t have the same fizz, sweetened tea falls into this same category. Many packaged versions come with nutrition labels nearly identical to soda. Tea can absolutely be a healthy beverage, but make it yourself. If you must have a little sweetness, try adding a small drizzle of honey.

4. Zero-Calorie Beverages

Diet soda is anything but diet-friendly. Many people look to fizzy drinks and other calorie-free beverages to satisfy a craving for sweets while avoiding the calories they’re hoping to cut. It’s not that simple, though.

Research, including this study from 2008, indicates that artificial sweeteners cause us to crave more foodbecause we aren’t getting the calories we associate with the sweet taste. The bad news doesn’t end there. One large study of more than 66,000 women found those who drank artificially sweetened beverages experienced agreater risk of developing diabetes than those who consumed beverages sweetened with sugar. The best zero-calorie beverage has always been, and always will be, water.

5. Energy Drinks

Some people don’t care for the bitter taste of coffee, so they opt for an energy drink to get a caffeine boost. The similarities between a basic cup of Joe and these fizzy drinks pretty much ends there. An eight-ounce portion of one of these high-octane beverages delivers 130 calories and 31 grams of sugar.

The ingredient label is even more concerning. Barbara Lewin, RD and sports nutritionist, told Outside that many energy drinks contain other stimulants that could be harmful. We can’t think of any situation where one of these beverages would be a good choice.

6. Purchased Smoothies

Making smoothies at home can be a healthy way to get in your recommended servings of fruits and vegetables. The ones you buy from juice shops and delis are a different story. Life by Daily Burn featured a list of some of the most shocking beverages out there, and Smoothie King’s The Hulk Strawberry took the top spot.

This 40-ounce monster is almost enough sustenance for an entire day, with 1,928 calories, 64 grams of fat, and 250 grams of sugar. It also provides 50 grams of protein, but who cares. Even the slimmest option, a 20-ounce light version, is 864 calories.

These purchased beverages taste so good because many of them contain ice cream to get the dreamy texture most people achieve with a little yogurt or a frozen banana. Try blending your own using one of these simple recipes from Men’s Health. They’re just as tasty and a lot better for you.

7. Flavored Coffee Drinks 

Most people wouldn’t dream of starting their day with anything other than coffee. The morning brew even boasts a number of health benefits. But adding a bunch of syrup, chocolate, and whipped cream to the drink pretty much undoes all of those advantages.

A 20-ounce white chocolate mocha made with whole milk and topped with whipped cream comes in at 620 calories and 27 grams of fat. Creamy, cold drinks are even worse. It’s enough to make up two breakfasts, but doesn’t offer any of the filling fiber or protein that you need to power you through your day.

You can go for some of the lighter options, but your best bet is to order black and doctor it yourself. Whole milk is fine, just don’t go crazy. Same for the sugar. It’s a beverage, not a dessert.

8. Cocktails 

A daily glass of wine has gotten the green light from plenty of health professionals. Even the occasional mixed drink isn’t a problem, unless you’re going for the wrong ones. Alcohol itself is pretty high in calories, with many falling around 100 calories for 1½ ounces. So adding loads of sugar or high-fat ingredients can quickly turn your beverage into the caloric equivalent of a meal.

Livestrong pointed out some of the worst offenders, including piña coladas and amaretto sours. Looking for some better options? Try these picks from San Diego Magazine.

10 Reasons to Love Beets

Beets are among the best superfoods.  They are packed with nutrition and healing properties. Not counting their delicious taste and incredible versatility, here are 10 reasons to love these delicious darlings of the vegetable kingdom.

Lowers High Blood Pressure: New research on June 30, 2016 in the medical journal Nitric Oxide found that drinking beet juice significantly reduced high blood pressure. That’s great news to the more than one billion global sufferers of hypertension. Another study published in the Journal of Human Hypertension found that raw beet juice was more effective than cooked beets, although both are helpful.

Improves Blood Flow in Heart Disease: Animal research published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise showed that the simple addition of beets to the diets of animals suffering from chronic heart failure resulted in significant improvement in oxygen transport and other blood markers for heart disease.

Boosts Prostate Health: The mineral zinc, found in beets, is essential to prostate health.

Battles Leukemia: In a study published in the Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences, researchers compared the effects of drinking a combination of beet and carrot juice on its own or in combination with the anti-leukemia drug chlorambucil against leukemia. They concluded that “Beetroot-carrot juice can be used as an effective treatment for (leukemia) alone or in combination with chlorambucil when taken orally with regular diet on daily basis.”

Increases Exercise Endurance: Research in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that beets increase oxygenation of the muscles and increases exercise endurance.

Boosts Gut Health: Beets are a rich source of prebiotics, the foods for healthy microbes or probiotics in your intestines. By eating more beets you’ll feed the healthy bacteria and other beneficial microbes that give your gut health a boost.

Reduces the Risk of Birth Defects: Beets are rich in the B vitamin known as folate, which has been shown in many studies to reduce the risk of birth defects in fetuses.

Aids Diabetes: Beets are high in the nutrient known as alpha lipoic acid, which is one of the most potent antioxidants you can get. Not only does it fight disease-causing free radicals on its own, it recycles other antioxidant nutrients like vitamins A, C and E. Alpha lipoic acid has been found to reduce the nerve damage often linked with diabetes.

Reduces Inflammation in the Body: Beets contain powerful anti-inflammatory compounds known as betalains.

Alleviates Allergies: Beets are high in natural compounds known as anthocyanins, which is the group of natural pigments that give beets their characteristic purplish color. Anthocyanins have been found to alleviate allergies.

You can enjoy raw beets grated on a salad or juiced, and cooked beets in soups and stews.  I love steamed beets tossed with a little flax oil (don’t cook the flax oil though) and sea salt. And, of course, you can also add beets to your juicer or high-powered blender while making your favorite fresh juices or smoothies.

Can’t Fall Asleep? Try These Things ASAP

Tossing and turning? You’re in good company…or at least restless company. A recent Consumer Reports survey found that 27 percent of people have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep most nights.

Sixty-eight percent struggle with sleep at least one night a week. And though we’re spending more and more on sleep aids every year ($41 billion in 2015 and expected to grow to $52 billion by 2020), they don’t seem to be helping any more than staring at the ceiling for hours does.

So what does work? According to researchers, these things do:

Count sheep (seriously).

Stressful thoughts—like “If I fall asleep NOW, I’ll get five hours” and “If I fall asleep NOW, I’ll get four hours”—won’t help you drift off to dreamland. But repetitive, boring imagery might, researchers say.

If you’re worrying, you’re producing the stress hormone cortisol, sleep psychologist Dianne Richards tells ABC Health & Wellbeing. “Once that happens, you’re ‘wired’ and you’re opportunity to sleep takes a nose dive.” And if jumping sheep are too stimulating, Richards says, try something more relaxing, like imagining them standing still as you pet them.

Move your alarm clock.

A major contributor to those anxious “if I fall asleep now…” thoughts that keep you up? Watching the clock, of course. Avoid triggering your body’s stress response—get your clock, wristwatch and phone out of sight, out of mind.

Do squats.

What, doing squats at 2am while wearing pajamas sounds strange to you? Some research shows that diverting blood flow away from the brain and to the legs may actually help you calm the mind and get to sleep easier. Worst-case scenario, you lose a few more minutes of sleep and gain buns of steel.

Turn off your phone.

Yes, logging into Facebook and catching up on what your high school lab partner has been up to the past two decades does sound like a great idea in the middle of the night. But it won’t help you get shut-eye any faster. Not only does it keep your eyes on the time, staying on your phone means you’re getting exposure to blue light. And blue light—which is also emitted by your television, laptop and tablet, just FYI—will keep your brain and body wired, disturbing your sleep and messing with your alertness the next day.

Deprive your senses.

Light tells your body it’s time to wake up—and sometimes it’s not enough to just draw the shades to turn off that wakefulness response. Do whatever you can to get your bedroom even darker: use blackout curtains, put a sleep mask over your eyes and check the room for sneaky sources of light—like a closet light or a power strip with light-up indicators. If you’re prone to being distracted by street noise, consider adding some white noise—there’s an app for that.

Imagine falling asleep.

Picturing yourself falling asleep can help you actually do it—but we mean really committing to it, not just indulging an anxious thought spiral about how much you want to go to sleep. Researchers call it muscle relaxation training—just breathe deep as you picture each part of your body relaxing, from head to toe. In one study of the technique, 82 percent of insomniacs reported a positive impact on falling asleep and staying asleep.

Take a warm shower.

Turn on the air conditioner in your bedroom and take a warm shower while the room cools down. The drop in body temperature as you go from warm water to cool air slows down heart rate, breathing and digestions, signaling to your body that it’s time for sleep.

Put on socks.

If your toes are feeling a little too cool after your warm shower, put on socks. Heating cold feet dilates your blood vessels, which tells your brain that it’s bedtime.

HALF OF U.S. FOOD PRODUCE GETS THROWN OUT

Americans throw away almost as much food as they eat because of a “cult of perfection,” deepening hunger and poverty, and inflicting a heavy toll on the environment.

Vast quantities of fresh produce grown in the U.S. are left in the field to rot, fed to livestock or hauled directly from the field to landfill, because of unrealistic and unyielding cosmetic standards, according to official data and interviews with dozens of farmers, packers, truckers, researchers, campaigners and government officials. 

From the fields and orchards of California to the population centers of the East Coast, farmers and others on the food distribution chain say high-value and nutritious food is being sacrificed to retailers’ demand for unattainable perfection.

“It’s all about blemish-free produce,” says Jay Johnson, who ships fresh fruit and vegetables from North Carolina and central Florida. “What happens in our business today is that it is either perfect, or it gets rejected. It is perfect to them, or they turn it down. And then you are stuck.”

Food waste is often described as a “farm-to-fork” problem. Produce is lost in fields, warehouses, packaging, distribution, supermarkets, restaurants and fridges.

By one government tally, about 60 million tons of produce worth about $160 billion, is wasted by retailers and consumers every year—one third of all foodstuffs. 

But that is just a “downstream” measure. In more than two dozen interviews, farmers, packers, wholesalers, truckers, food academics and campaigners described the waste that occurs “upstream”: scarred vegetables regularly abandoned in the field to save the expense and labor involved in harvest. Or left to rot in a warehouse because of minor blemishes that do not necessarily affect freshness or quality.

When added to the retail waste, it takes the amount of food lost close to half of all produce grown, experts say.

“I would say at times there is 25 percent of the crop that is just thrown away or fed to cattle,” said Wayde Kirschenman, whose family has been growing potatoes and other vegetables near Bakersfield, California, since the 1930s. “Sometimes it can be worse.” 

“Sunburnt” or darker-hued cauliflower was plowed over in the field. Table grapes that did not conform to a wedge shape were dumped. Entire crates of pre-cut orange wedges were directed to landfill. In June, Kirschenman wound up feeding a significant share of his watermelon crop to cows.

Researchers acknowledge there is as yet no clear accounting of food loss in the U.S., although think tanks such as the World Resources Institute are working toward a more accurate reckoning.

Imperfect Produce, a subscription delivery service for “ugly” food in the San Francisco Bay area, estimates that about one-fifth of all fruit and vegetables are consigned to the dump because they do not conform to the industry standard of perfection.

But farmers, including Kirschenman, put the rejection rate far higher, depending on cosmetic slights to the produce because of growing conditions and weather.

That lost food is seen increasingly as a drag on household incomes—about $1,600 a year for a family of four—and a direct challenge to global efforts to fight hunger, poverty and climate change.

Globally, about one-third of food is wasted: 1.6 billion tons of produce a year, with a value of about $1 trillion. If this wasted food were stacked in 20-cubic meter containers, it would fill 80 million of them, enough to reach all the way to the moon, and encircle it once. Taking action to tackle this is not impossible, as countries like Denmark have shown. 

The Obama administration and the U.N. have pledged to halve avoidable food waste by 2030. Food producers, retail chains and campaign groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council have also vowed to reduce food loss in the ReFED initiative.

Food experts say there is growing awareness that governments cannot effectively fight hunger, or climate change, without reducing food waste. Food waste accounts for about 8 percent of global climate pollution, more than India or Russia.

“There are a lot of people who are hungry and malnourished, including in the U.S. My guess is probably 5 to 10 percent of the population are still hungry—they still do not have enough to eat,” said Shenggen Fan, the director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington. “That is why food waste, food loss matters a great deal. People are still hungry.”

That is not counting the waste of water, land and other resources, or the toll on the climate of producing food that ends up in landfill.

Within the U.S., discarded food is the biggest single component of landfill and incinerators, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Food dumps are a rising source of methane, a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. But experts readily acknowledge that they are only beginning to come to grips with the scale of the problem. 

The May harvest season in Florida found Johnson with 24,250 pounds of freshly harvested spaghetti squash in his cool box—perfect except for brown scoring on the rind from high winds during a spring storm.

“I’ve been offering it for six cents a pound for a week and nobody has pulled the trigger,” he said. And he was “expecting an additional 250,000 pounds of squash,” similarly marked, in his warehouse a couple of weeks later.

“There is a lot of hunger and starvation in the United States, so how come I haven’t been able to find a home for this six-cents-a-pound food yet?” Johnson asked.

Such frustrations occur regularly along the entirety of the U.S. food production chain—and producers and distributors maintain that the standards are always shifting. Bountiful harvests bring more exacting standards of perfection. Times of shortage may prove more forgiving.

Retail giants argue that they are operating in consumers’ best interests, according to food experts. “A lot of the waste is happening further up the food chain and often on behalf of consumers, based on the perception of what those consumers want,” said Roni Neff, the director of the food system environmental sustainability and public health program at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future in Baltimore.

“Fruit and vegetables are often culled out because they think nobody would buy them,” she said. 

But Roger Gordon, who founded the Food Cowboy startup to rescue and reroute rejected produce, believes that the waste is built into the economics of food production. Fresh produce accounts for 15 percent of supermarket profits, he argued.

“If you and I reduced fresh produce waste by 50 percent like [the U.S. agriculture secretary] Vilsack wants us to do, then supermarkets would go from [a] 1.5 percent profit margin to 0.7 percent,” he said. “And if we were to lose 50 percent of consumer waste, then we would lose about $250 billion in economic activity that would go away.”

Some supermarket chains and industry groups in the U.S. are pioneering ugly produce sections and actively campaigning to reduce such losses. But a number of producers and distributors claimed that some retailing giants were still using their power to reject produce on the basis of some ideal of perfection, and sometimes because of market conditions.

The farmers and truckers interviewed said they had seen their produce rejected on flimsy grounds, but decided against challenging the ruling with the U.S. department of agriculture’s dispute mechanism for fear of being boycotted by powerful supermarket giants. They also asked that their names not be used.

“I can tell you for a fact that I have delivered products to supermarkets that was [sic] absolutely gorgeous and because their sales were slow, the last two days they didn’t take my product and they sent it back to me,” said the owner of a mid-size East Coast trucking company.

“They will dig through 50 cases to find one bad head of lettuce and say: ‘I am not taking your lettuce when that lettuce would pass a USDA inspection.’ But as the farmer told you, there is nothing you can do, because if you use the Paca [Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act of 1930] on them, they are never going to buy from you again. Are you going to jeopardize $5 million in sales over an $8,000 load?”

He said he experienced such rejections, known in the industry as kickbacks, “a couple of times a month,” which he considered on the low side for the industry. But he said he was usually able to sell the produce to another buyer.

The power of the retail chains creates fear along the supply chain, from the family farmer to the major producer.

“These big growers do not want to piss off retailers. They don’t enforce Paca on Safeway, Wal-Mart or Costco,” said Ron Clark, who spent more than 20 years working with farmers and food banks before co-founding Imperfect Produce.

“They are just not going to call because that will be the last order they will ever sell to them. That’s their fear. They are really in a pickle.

The Scary Truth Behind the 7 Staple Foods You Eat Every Day

 A lot of the foods you're eating might not be as wholesome as you think they are, actually. That's exactly what writer Larry Olmsted spends nearly 300 pages discussing in his new book, Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don't Know What You're Eating and What You Can Do About It.  . Based on Olmsted's extensive research and conversations with experts in the food industry, he uncovered some unsettling information. Here's the unfortunate truth about what's really in some of the foods you likely eat regularly, like parmesan cheese and tea.

1. Parmesan cheese

In case you missed it, your parmesan cheese might not actually be parmesan. It might contain — brace yourself — wood pulp. Going for that pricier block of parmigiano-reggiano imported from Italy is completely worth if it you care about what's really in your cheese. "The green can calls itself Parmesan but has nothing in it that I think can actually even be called cheese," James Beard Award-winning author Laura Werlin is quoted in the book.

2. Steak

A package of steak that says "grass-fed beef" might not actually mean much. "Grass fed just means it ate grass at some point in its life, which every cow does," said Casey Cook, a former US Army Special Forces soldier. After that, there's a chance the cow could have eaten corn, grain, and any number of hormones.

3. Honey

Honey laundering is real. Be sure to read the ingredient list the next time you buy honey, and go for local whenever possible. Because there are so few federal standards for honey, you could "end up with an unlabeled blend, adulterated with impossible-to-detect cheap sweeteners or illegal antibiotics," Olmsted discovered in a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article.

4. Olive oil

Pure olive oil is basically fruit juice (pressed olives), but so much of the olive oil you find on shelves is contaminated with unsettling additives. In the "Spoiled Oils" chapter, Olmsted writes, "Most of our oil comes from Italy, where Italian investigators have found all sorts of other unsavory substances: hydrocarbon residues, pesticides, and pomace oil, the most common adulterant, sometimes laced with mineral oil as well as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, proven carcinogens that can also damage DNA and the immune system." Yikes!  

5. Tea

There could be a lot of unidentifiable ingredients in a variety of dried herbal teas. The book describes an experiment in which Rockefeller University's Dr. Mark Stoeckle and his students "tested herbal teas and a third of them had things not listed on the label, like 'weeds.' It didn't matter whether they were low end or high end."

6. Cheese

"Bearing in mind that the US has the most lax cheese-labeling laws of pretty much any developed nation, American 'cheese,' with its saturated fats, emulsifiers, and other additives, ventures so far from the basic definition that it can't legally be called cheese, and when I was younger, it used to be widely known as 'American cheese food.'"

7. Spices

"Spices, especially when sold dry — as most are — have lots of similarities to tea, so there is plenty of fraud."

5 Foods That Can Mess With Your Hormones

Hormonal balance can be a tricky thing. The human endocrine system produces more than 70 different hormones with complex functions and intricate patterns of interaction. Hormones’ purpose is, essentially, to tell the body how to function. Hormones are responsible for triggering sleep, ovulation in women, sperm production in men, energy, the fight-or-flight response, weight loss and gain, and all other manner of important functions and procedures.

This intricate system is an easy one to throw out of whack. When the hormonal system is tampered with endlessly, as is the case in an environment rich in toxins and artificial biological cues, hormonal imbalance can start to impact our health 

We already know that there are a lot of elements in our environment that interfere with our hormones. Even something as simple as light pollution can throw them out of whack. Heck, we even electively choose to alter our natural hormonal clocks with medications.

With all these assailants present in our environment, you may be interested in eliminating hormonal impactors wherever possible. A great place to start? Your food. Steer clear of these five foods that are known to impact hormonal balance:

Dairy 

Dairy is a persona non grata when it comes to hormonal health. Think about it: Dairy is made from the milk of non-human animals. Any mammal that’s producing milk, human or not, has a complex cocktail of hormones flowing through her body. Adding a product so rich in hormones is bound to mess with your own endocrine system if you’re even the least bit sensitive to dairy.

Sugar

Sugar is next up on our list of most wanted hormonal offenders. Sugar’s biggest impact has to do with the hormone insulin. When you consume sugar (including glucose, which is present in even the healthiest of carbohydrates), your body must produce insulin in order to convert it to energy. Too much insulin production can lead to insulin resistance over time, a precursor to Type 2 diabetes.

But that’s not the only problem with sugar in regard to hormonal health.

“When insulin spikes, typically after a meal high in sugar, this can lead to lower levels of an important protein known as sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG),” states the Women’s Health Network. “SHBG binds excess estrogen and testosterone in the blood, but when it’s low, these hormone levels increase. Insulin also increases the production of testosterone, which is then converted into even more estrogen by fat tissue in the belly.”

Stevia

Stevia is often considered a healthy replacement for sugar, and it may very well be a healthier alternative—but more research is still needed on its effects on the endocrine system. In fact, according to Mindbodygreen, stevia was historically used to help prevent pregnancy in women. We’re not banking on it being a particularly effective method of contraception, but it’s good to know that there’s a chance it could impact your hormonal system.

Soy

Soy is another infamous disruption of hormonal balance. Soy (even the organic, all-natural kind) is an endocrine mimicker, meaning that it maintains a similar chemical structure to estrogen in the body. This can lead to an array of reproductive and hormonal issues, including uncontrolled cell growth and breast cancer.

Even if you believe the links to breast cancer to be alarmist, there’s reason to believe soy can impact your reproductive cycle in other ways.

“But even though it mimics your natural hormone, soy isn’t identical to your body’s estrogen, and eating too much of it confuses your body into thinking it has enough real estrogen in supply,” writes Alisa Vitti for Mindbodygreen. “This signals your endocrine system to slow down estrogen production, subsequently slowing the production of luteinizing hormone (LH), and effectively shutting down ovulation.”

Red Meat

And finally, we get to one of the most obvious sources of hormonal imbalance of all: red meat.

Eating too much red meat can be problematic, particularly for women who are already experiencing hormonal issues such as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). A study by researchers at the University of Massachusetts found that eating red meat can decrease the body’s production of SHBG, which regulates testosterone levels in both women and men. 

What are the health benefits of sunlight?

The sun is central to our very existence. This singular star and, more specifically, the energy we receive as sunlight influence our daily rhythms, weather, and the seasons.

Sunlight is also used by plants to produce food, not just for themselves but for the entire food chain. So what could be the benefits of direct exposure to this life-giving energy?

Vitamin D and Its Multiple Benefits

Our body requirements of vitamin D, the “sunshine vitamin,” are usually met by casual exposure to sunlight. The importance of this vitamin was first acknowledged during the Industrial Revolution in northern Europe.

Children living in cities where sunlight could not penetrate through the polluted atmosphere showed retarded growth and developed skeletal deformities.

Later studies revealed the extensive benefits of this wonder vitamin – it is required for overall well-being and especially for optimal bone health and muscle strength.

It also helps reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, cancer, multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, depression, and a host of diseases.

Sunlight and Sleep: Wake Cycles

Melatonin, a hormone produced in the body during the night, controls the body’s sleep and wake cycles.

This hormone also acts as an antioxidant and helps fight infectious diseases, inflammation, and cancer, while counteracting immunodeficiencies and UVR-induced skin damage.

The production of this hormone is strongly linked to optical exposure to morning sunlight and varies with the seasons.

Sunshine and Happiness

As the numerous happy songs on sunshine vouch, sunlight is often associated with happiness in popular culture. Science also seems to back this connection. The production of the hormone serotonin, responsible for overall well-being and happiness, is influenced by sunlight.

This neurotransmitter plays an important part in functions such as mood balance, social behavior, appetite, digestion, sleep, memory, and sexual desire. Studies show that serotonin levels are directly related to the duration of bright sunlight and vary with seasons.

They are also an important factor in seasonal affective disorder.

Other Positive Effects of Sunlight

A growing body of research shows that sunlight can independently affect other physiological functions.

Sunlight helps prevent autoimmune diseases, reduces melanoma risk, and promotes healing of skin disorders like psoriasis.

Exposure to sunlight aids in the production of nitric oxide, which reduces blood pressure and thus the risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke.

Sunlight affects the behavior of our genes and reduces their inflammatory responses.

 Chronic inflammation is linked to heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

Striking the Right Balance

In recent times, the adverse effects of sunlight have taken center stage, especially in relation to skin cancer and photo-aging. Given the numerous positive effects of sunlight, is it possible that the benefits outweigh the risks? Many scientists seem to think so. As Grant et al. state in their research paper, “sunshine is good medicine.”

A Swedish study even showed that avoiding the sun is as risky as smoking in all causes of mortality.

Lengthy exposure to sunlight, however, can raise health risks without increasing the benefits.

To minimize these risks, avoid sunburn and excess exposure to UVR. You should also increase antioxidant intake and limit fat consumption. Factors such as skin color, length of exposure, and geographic location also play a role here.

Sun protection is recommended when the UV Index is more than 3.