We show them how to read labels so they don’t get ensnared in grocery store fat traps. We teach them to look for things like high fructose corn syrup, MSG, dextrose, and sucrose. And we explain how to avoid the hormone smashers that evaporate muscles. These include many sports drinks, juices, and flavored teas with words related to “health” or “nutrition” in their names.

Then we help them select a healthy balance of the right foods. We let our kids pick out their own veggies, which gets them excited about eating them. We also let them help prepare their meals – and that gets them even more excited about healthy eating.

Including your kids in your weekly shopping trip will help them realize how important healthy natural foods are to their bodies. In my family, health is wealth. And in this, we are abundant!

[Ed. Note: Shane Ellison's entire career has been dedicated to the study of molecules - how they give life and how they take from it. He was a two-time recipient of the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Grant for his research in biochemistry and physiology. He is a bestselling author, holds a master's degree in organic chemistry, and has first-hand experience in drug design. Take advantage of his knowledge and insights to look and feel your best in 90 days.]

A 30-year-old mom of two, she swept the competition! (And the women she was competing against were 21- to 25-year-old non-moms.) What is her secret to staying lean and muscular? For one thing, she sticks to five essential foods:

1. Organic eggs
2. All-natural grass-fed beef
3. Wild salmon
4. Avocados
5. Whey isolate

These five fat-burners are staples in her diet. Why are they so critical to keeping the fat off? You see, unlike men, women are very sensitive to the fat-storing hormone insulin. (It’s because they have lower testosterone levels.) These five foods help keep insulin – and blood sugar - low, therefore helping to keep fat off.

These foods are also rich in healthy fats, which help us stay fuller longer, thereby warding off binge eating and snacks.

[Ed. Note: Shane Ellison's entire career has been dedicated to the study of molecules - how they give life and how they take from it. He was a two-time recipient of the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Grant for his research in biochemistry and physiology. He is a bestselling author, holds a master's degree in organic chemistry, and has first-hand experience in drug design. Take advantage of his knowledge and insights to look and feel your best in 90 days.]

I question everything (even my wife’s cooking after seven years of perfect cuisine). And instead of accepting anyone’s opinion about matters related to my health – no matter how famous they are or how many books they’ve sold – I look to biochemistry for my answers.

One of the main factors to consider with your diet is the relative amount of glycation that occurs when you eat various foods. Glycation – a biochemical change that’s associated with aging – is a result of excess glucose (sugar) in the blood. Aside from causing unsightly wrinkles and age spots, it can destroy muscles, joints, and the cardiovascular system. A simple blood test is used to measure it.

In a paper titled “Would carnosine or a carnivorous diet help suppress aging and associated pathologies?”- published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences – scientists found that vegetarians have more glycation than meat eaters. The reason? Vegetarian diets lack some important anti-glycation compounds. These include carnosine, a full spectrum of B vitamins, and acetyl-L-carnitine.

Vegetables, of course, provide tons of other nutritive compounds, notably those with anti-cancer properties. Therefore, I recommend eating both veggies (organic) and meat (grass-fed), locally produced whenever possible. Maintaining a good balance of vegetables and meat will help you slow the aging process… and stay lean.

[Ed. Note: Shane Ellison's entire career has been dedicated to the study of molecules - how they give life and how they take from it. He was a two-time recipient of the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Grant for his research in biochemistry and physiology. He is a bestselling author, holds a master's degree in organic chemistry, and has first-hand experience in drug design. Take advantage of his knowledge and insights to look and feel your best in 90 days.]

Fact is, if you want lean, sexy muscle (at any age), walking is not sufficient exercise.

Sure, walking is better than no exercise at all. But it’s not going to help you burn the fat you need to burn in order to feel great and get noticed. Nobody ever walked themselves out of the Fat Cow Hall of Fame. I didn’t… and neither has Oprah.

When it comes to exercise, the old adage holds true: “No pain, no gain.” Why? Because you need to force the body to produce a family of fat-burning, beer-belly-melting compounds known as catecholamines. When released, these weapons of fat destruction bind metabolic receptors on the outer membrane of fat cells, causing them to be eradicated via thermogenesis and lypolysis. (That’s just a fancy way to say that the fat cells are being demolished.)

Getting rid of fat with exercise happens only when you attain 60 to 80 percent of your max heart rate. If you’ve forgotten how to do the calculation, here it is: 220 minus your age times .60 equals your maximum target heart rate.

Exercise by the numbers, and watch the numbers plummet on your scale too.

[Ed. Note: Shane Ellison's entire career has been dedicated to the study of molecules - how they give life and how they take from it. He was a two-time recipient of the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Grant for his research in biochemistry and physiology. He is a bestselling author, holds a master's degree in organic chemistry, and has first-hand experience in drug design. Take advantage of his knowledge and insights to look and feel your best in 90 days.]

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Periwinkle, for example, had long been used by practitioners of folk medicine in Madagascar. When Eli Lilly looked closely at the medicinal properties of the plant, they identified about 70 different alkaloids – and they made an unexpected discovery: Periwinkle was effective in treating leukemia, as well as a variety of other cancers. 

Remission rates were as high as 50 percent when patients used periwinkle extracts. Despite that evidence, Eli Lilly ended its long-term studies of the plant itself and focused on making more profitable synthetic copycat drugs. 

To date, Eli Lilly’s scientists have replicated only two of the 70 anti-cancer compounds found in periwinkle. Unfortunately, the synthetics don’t replicate the highly sought-after remission rates of their nutritive parents. 

The final story on periwinkle – according to Big Pharma – is that it’s poisonous (even though its extracts have been used for hundreds of years in Madagascar). If Eli Lilly is half as good as Coke at keeping secrets, this potential natural cancer cure will forever remain under the pharmaceutical drug rug, along with many other less profitable, natural cures.

The lesson: Be wary of what you hear from Big Pharma. Choosing natural treatments is almost always your best, first defense against declining health.

[Ed. Note: Shane Ellison's entire career has been dedicated to the study of molecules - how they give life and how they take from it. He was a two-time recipient of the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Grant for his research in biochemistry and physiology. He is a bestselling author, holds a master's degree in organic chemistry, and has firsthand experience in drug design. Take advantage of his knowledge and insights to look and feel your best in 90 days.] 

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Acai berries are great. But acai drinks and other acai products are loaded with sugar – natural and otherwise. Remember your mom telling you to avoid sugar?

Most people don’t do it. The average American chokes down a whopping 160 pounds per year. A healthy human body can’t take more than 10 or 15 pounds annually.

Acai products are marketed as super-antioxidants.Cinnamon is light years ahead when it comes to antioxidant content, but you can get that for pennies on the acai dollar at your local grocery store – which is why marketers aren’t telling you about it.

Acai products do contain a negligible amount of anthocyanidins, natural substances that can be a huge asset to your cardiovascular system. But you can obtain quadruple the amount – for pennies on the acai dollar – from a big organic salad or bilberry (an over-the-counter nutritional supplement).

Still, neither cinnamon nor bilberry is a wonder cure. Nothing can overcome America’s addiction to bad habits, especially wanton sugar consumption. Want a real wonder cure? Remove the marketing noose and abandon sugar.

[Ed. Note: Shane Ellison's entire career has been dedicated to the study of molecules - how they give life and how they take from it. He was a two-time recipient of the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Grant for his research in biochemistry and physiology. He is a bestselling author, holds a master's degree in organic chemistry, and has first-hand experience in drug design.Take advantage of his knowledge and insights to look and feel your best in 90 days.]

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Do you have an addiction to sugary sodas? If so, pay careful attention. I’ll reveal what you need to do to save your health.

In a study comparing the addictive properties of sweeteners, sugar proved more addictive than cocaine. When consumed, sugar increases serotonin levels within the brain. This increases the production of endorphins. Like drugs, these brain chemicals trigger opioid receptors, thereby eliciting the sensation of happiness. This artificial increase in serotonin levels causes the body to down-regulate its natural production and release of serotonin. Addiction begins to creep in.

Serotonin is responsible for controlling mood and appetite. Without serotonin, a person gets depressed and craves more sugar. This forges an emotional bond between happiness and sugar (or soda sweetened with sugar). Sugar addicts become dependent on it to increase serotonin and therefore make them feel happy. That explains why, no matter what I was doing, I would drop it to get my Mountain Dew fix! By leveraging this biochemical addiction, soda manufacturers are making a fortune.

The problem with sugar addiction is that it leads to obesity and Type II diabetes. Not only was I an honorary member of The Fat Cow Hall of Fame (I weighed 205 lbs with 30 percent body fat; off soda today, I’m 170 lbs with 10 percent body fat), I was boosting my blood sugar to dangerous levels. One soda per day increases your risk of diabetes by 85 percent, which can reduce your lifespan by 11 to 20 years.

The addiction can be totally overcome in about three weeks. To do it, you need plenty of exercise and sunshine, along with L-tryptophan from grass-fed beef and whey isolate. Natural sweeteners like stevia and agave can help you ease off the soda (use them to make a natural soda from sparkling water and lime), as can herbal teas (like Yerba Mate).

[Ed. Note: Shane Ellison's (www.thepeopleschemist.com) entire career has been dedicated to the study of molecules - how they give life and how they take from it. He was a two-time recipient of the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Grant for his research in biochemistry and physiology. He is a bestselling author, holds a master's degree in organic chemistry, and has firsthand experience in drug design. Take advantage of his knowledge and insights to look and feel your best in 90 days.]

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That enzyme is telomerase.

Telomerase acts as a shield for your genetic blueprint – DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). It protects it from getting shorter and older. The more telomerase you have, the healthier and stronger you are.

One of the best ways to preserve or enhance your body’s telomerase production – and your functional lifespan – is to limit your food consumption to three meals per day. This helps to optimize your “hormonal intelligence” – which, in turn, preserves the enzymes that shield DNA from premature aging.

The trick to limiting your food consumption is to eat foods that are not only satisfying but also have a minor effect on the output of insulin (the fat-storing hormone). This would include avocados, grass-fed beef, coconut oil, seeds, nuts, and eggs.

[Ed. Note: Shane Ellison's (www.thepeopleschemist.com) entire career has been dedicated to the study of molecules - how they give life and how they take from it. He was a two-time recipient of the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Grant for his research in biochemistry and physiology. He is a bestselling author, holds a master's degree in organic chemistry, and has first-hand experience in drug design. Take advantage of his knowledge and insights to look and feel your best in 90 days.]

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A high triglyceride level (usually anything over 200 mg/dL) is simply the result of an energy imbalance within your body. Rather than fat and glucose (sugar) being utilized, they float aimlessly in the blood.

Since metabolism likes to be as tidy as possible, it packages unused fat and sugar into a storage molecule known as a triglyceride. Once merged, triglycerides are then stuffed into your belly, your muscles, or even your liver.

With high triglycerides, Stan risks obesity, Type II diabetes, and heart disease. In one fell swoop, his doctor prescribed a round of cholesterol-lowering drugs, anti-diabetic meds, and, for safe measure, blood pressure drugs.

Since Stan reads the headlines while sipping his sugary cup of joe, he knows these drugs aren’t his best option. Instead, he chose to follow my natural recommendations.

The natural enemy of triglycerides is a hormone known as glucagon. High triglyceride levels are usually accompanied by high insulin. Insulin stores fat while smothering glucagon production. Bring it back to the surface, and glucagon will smash triglycerides, as well as all the medical complications that accompany them.

How do you do it?

First, space your meals out by five hours. This will help insulin simmer down and cause your body to produce glucagon. Make sure you are consuming mostly healthy fats from seeds and nuts , grass-fed beef, real butter, cod liver oil, and avocados.

Second, start supplementing with a teaspoon of psyllium husk and about 300mg of alpha-lipoic acid daily. This will slow the absorption of calories and speed up sugar metabolism, reversing your body’s energy imbalance.

Finally, start exercising.

[Ed. Note: Shane Ellison is a two-time recipient of the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Grant for his research in biochemistry and physiology and is a best-selling author. He holds a master's degree in organic chemistry and has firsthand experience in drug design. Get the benefit of his knowledge and insight with his no-BS practical guide to living young naturally without dangerous, prescription drugs]

For more natural ways to avoid illness, stay healthy, and live longer, sign up for ETR’s free natural health newsletter]

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To get over an illness as quickly as possible, they need plenty of sleep. But a hacking cough or stuffy nose can prevent them from getting enough shuteye. To solve this problem, you might consider valerian root. (That’s what I give my kids.) This plant provides a mouthful of sedative compounds that help kids sleep soundly and without interruption.

[Ed. Note: Shane Ellison is a two-time recipient of the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Grant for his research in biochemistry and physiology and is a best-selling author. He holds a master's degree in organic chemistry and has firsthand experience in drug design. Get the benefit of his knowledge and insight with his no-BS practical guide to living young naturally without dangerous, prescription drugs.

For more natural ways to avoid illness, stay healthy, and live longer, sign up for ETR's free natural health newsletter.]

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