Grapefruit diet?

I remember the "grapefruit diet" from over 40 years ago. It was a popular, fad diet. All you ate was grapefruit. It excluded other foods.

However, there is a new blind study that shows grapefruit should be an addition, not a solitary source of food for weight loss. In the study, the subject eats 1/2 grapefruit before each meal. Grapefruit juice was nearly as effective. The effect was genuine when compared to placebo.

Here's the latest study...
http://bit.ly/1V8x2XJ
Also found here....
http://1.usa.gov/1WWNpgl

This latest research also supports gut health studies found elsewhere. 

I was sharing some of the information on gut health with a person who doesn't believe in probiotic science, calling it "woo-science." Even though the ties to health are documented in blind studies conducted by real scientists. I've heard of people nay-saying science before, but this was my first experience with one. 

Probiotics and gut health may be all the rage, but that doesn't mean they aren't important. We are just learning about this stuff. Science and health news is still developing because nobody thought to study good health, only disease mechanisms. 

I'm interested in all this because of disease and it's link to a healthy lifestyle. The links to nutrition are impossible for me to ignore. I don't know if I'm a throwback or what, but I have always believed that food, nutrition and lifestyle are the basis for a healthy life.  

I may not always eat in a healthy way, and my lack of exercise may be partly to blame for my health problems. But that doesn't mean I don't see the connections!

New Project Research Indications

I've been researching adult onset pre-diabetes for my new book project. All the research is leading back to gut health. It's absolutely amazing!

Periodontal disease, heart disease, auto-immune diseases, kidney diseases, Diabetes type 2, retinopathy, inflammation, and so much more....

These conditions are somehow affected by gut health. And if someone has had antibiotics just once in their lives, their gut health has been compromised.

That means that most of us have compromised gut health.

So, what to do about gut health?  Well, I can tell you that most probiotic or prebiotic supplementation doesn't survive the stomach acids. The stomach is designed to break down food which is then sent to the small intestine where the nutrients are extracted. Most of our beneficial bacteria live in the small intestine. Probiotic and prebiotic supplements are attacked by stomach acids in normal digestion and don't live through the process.

This does us no good at all. Most of our supplements are not "live cultures" so a typical vitamin tablet would be fine in this process. But because pre- and probiotics are live cultures, they mostly don't survive. Out of a typical 30,000 cells, perhaps 3,000 survive to inhabit the small intestine. But there is a better way....

To date, the best indications to supplement or improve gut health include using apple cider vinegar and fermented foods.


The long-term solution is to consume fermented foods several times a week. Miso, sauerkraut, kefir, kim chee, and the like.... There are several good websites on how to prepare your own fermented foods.

For short term and to jump-start the process, try some apple cider vinegar.

Stay tuned. I'm not finished with the book yet. I'm learning an awful lot about this.
These findings are so incredible, I just had to share them now.