2008 July | How To Lose Weight

Take Yeast Rice For Your Heart

Chinese food is often known to be unhealthy due to the common use of MSG – the artificial flavouring that has been accused of causing a wide variety of ailments from hypertension to heart attacks. But there is also the healthy side to Chinese food, one of which is yeast rice.

Chinese yeast rice or rice fermented using a certain yeast species has been found to reduce the risk of heart attacks in people who have already had one. The study was published in The American Journal Of Cardiology that stated the test was done on over 4,000 men and women who have had heart attacks within 5 years. They were randomly selected to take 600mg of yeast rice a day while another batch were given placebos.

Results showed that over 5 years, those who took the rice yeast extract reduced their risk of heart attacks by 45%. Compared to the group that took the placebo, those that took the yeast, had one-third the risk of death from heart attacks and the need to improve blood supply to the heart by operation.

The rice yeast is used as a food preservative, a spice and an ingredient in rice wine but the findings do not apply to the red yeast extract sold in health food stores as the study was done using a “carefully constituted compound” that is completely different to what is sold commercially.

Drink Red Wine To Lose Weight

Sounds too good to be true, but red wine can help fight obesity and it certainly ranks among easy ways to lose weight. That’s what latest studies have shown. Grapes and red wine contain a compound called resveratrol that has been observed to slow the development of fat cells and have other anti-obesity properties, according to the University of Ulm in Germany.

The findings show that with “pre-fat cells” – laboratory experiments successfully showed that resveratrol prevented these cells from maturing into full grown fat cells, thereby effectively preventing the storage of fat in cells.

Certain cytokines, which are substances linked to the development of obesity related disorders such as diabetes and clogged coronary arteries, are produced by resveratrol. In addition, resveratrol also stimulated the production of a protein called adiponectin that is known to decrease the risk of heart attacks. Obesity diminishes the production of this protein.

So it would seem that drinking a small glass of alcohol each day is better than not drinking at all with the only side effect being a hangover headache. However, for some, even small amounts can increase the risk of other health worries such as breast and colon cancer, therefore it may not be worth the risk.