The C word......and how to naturally get control over it

No, not that C word. The other big C....cholesterol.

The benefits of reducing cholesterol are numerous, but statins can have lots of side effects. Before taking the 'easy road' of drugs, it may be worth making some serious lifestyle changes.

Here's a great article by Eugenia Killoran, food and fitness journalist on Lowering Cholesterol Naturally – 6 Tips

HERE ARE 6 DRUG-FREE ALTERNATIVES FOR LOWERING LDL (BAD) CHOLESTEROL. 

To avoid a heart attack, research has found that a key strategy is getting LDL (bad) cholesterol way down. Striving for LDL levels of 100 and below is good, but dropping to 80 and lower may be even better.

LDL levels of 81

Ground-breaking research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) studied nearly 9,000 European patients. All had previously suffered heart attacks. The trial found that those who reduced their LDL levels to an average 81 with high-dose statins significantly reduced their risk of major coronary events like heart attacks and strokes at the 4.8 year follow-up compared to patients who reduced their LDL to 104 on usual-dose statin therapy.

Lower LDL Levels are better

In a JAMA editorial accompanying the study, Christopher P. Cannon, MD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School wrote that aggressive LDL lowering is the ideal – “lower is better.”

The JAMA study’s findings echo those of another large 4,162-patient study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine. It concluded that LDL cholesterol levels of 62 were even better than levels of 95 at preventing death, heart attacks, and other cardiovascular-related problems in people with heart disease.

Drugs’ negative effects

In both studies, mega-doses of statins (a doubling and tripling of regular doses) drove LDL levels way down. But in both studies, mega-doses also caused problems. Suffering from adverse side effects like muscle pain, memory loss, and elevated liver enzymes, patients on the high doses stopped taking their medications at twice the rate of patients on regular doses.

Muscle pain, also called myopathy, occurs in 2% to 11% of people treated with statins, reported investigators at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison, and although the pain usually subsides once the statin is discontinued, it can take several months to do so. Like previous studies, the Wisconsin scientists also found that the negative side effects of statins increased as dosages increased.

Medication-free alternatives

“That’s why drug-free alternatives like the Pritikin Program are so important,” advises Dr. William McCarthy, UCLA School of Public Health and member of the Pritikin Scientific Advisory Board.

“For people who cannot tolerate maximum doses of statins, or for those wanting to minimize their dependence on drugs, the Pritikin Program of diet and exercise – or a combination of low-dose statins plus the Pritikin Program – offers a much safer option for lowering LDL cholesterol to levels significantly below 100.”

Lowering cholesterol naturally

In research on more than 4,500 men and women following the Pritikin Program of diet and exercise, LDL levels plummeted 23%, and in just three weeks. The men and women had learned how to live Pritikin-style at the Pritikin Longevity Center, which has been teaching heart-healthy living skills since 1975.

39% drop in LDL Levels

And in a study by UCLA scientists in conjunction with the nonprofit Pritikin Foundation, men and women nearly doubled their reductions in cholesterol, averaging a 39% drop, when they supplemented regular-dose statin therapy with the diet-and-exercise lifestyle of the Pritikin Program.

Non-HDL cholesterol

In fact, not just LDL but all forms of bad cholesterol, known as non-HDL cholesterol, decrease with Pritikin heart-healthy living.

6 Dietary and Lifestyle Tips To Lower LDL Levels

To dramatically lower your LDL and non-HDL cholesterol levels without resorting to high doses of statins (and maybe even eliminating the need for statins altogether), the doctors and dietitians at the Pritikin Longevity Center recommend these 6 dietary/lifestyle tips:

• 1. Limit your intake of foods full of saturated fats, trans fats, and dietary cholesterol.

  Foods with a lot of saturated fat include butter, fatty flesh like red meat, full-fat and low-fat dairy products, palm oil, and coconut oil. If you see partially hydrogenated fat in the Ingredient List of a food label, that food has trans fats. Top sources of dietary cholesterol include egg yolks, organ meats, and shellfish.
  One type of fat – omega-3 fatty acids – has been shown to protect against heart disease. Good sources are cold-water fish like salmon, mackerel, halibut, trout, herring, and sardines.
  To help you translate the above guidelines into daily food planning, here are key guidelines:
  Select nonfat dairy foods only, 2 servings daily.
  Limit your intake of meat, poultry, and fish to no more than 3.5 to 4 ounces per day. From the choices below, which are listed from best to poor, try to select almost always from the top.
  Best Choice: Omega-3-rich fish, such as salmon, sardines, herring, mackerel, and trout. Choose at least 2 times weekly. If you’re using canned fish, such as canned sardines, select very-low-sodium or no-salt-added varieties.
  Good Choice: Most other fish, plus shelled mollusks (clams, oysters, mussels, scallops).
  Satisfactory Choices: Crustaceans (shrimp, crab, lobster, crawfish), Poultry (white meat, skinless) Game Meat (bison, venison, elk, ostrich), optimally free-range and grass-fed
  Poor Choice: Red meat (beef, pork, lamb, veal, goat). For all red meat choices, select cuts that are under 30% fat.
  Red meats are the least desirable choice because they not only tend to have the highest proportion of saturated fats, they are also higher in heme iron, which likely raises the risk of type 2 diabetes and colo-rectal cancer. Red meats also alter the gut’s microbiome, which emerging research indicates may raise cardiovascular disease risk.

• 2. Eat a lot more fiber-rich foods (especially soluble fiber from foods like beans, oats, barley, fruits, and vegetables).

  Foods naturally rich in soluble fiber have proven particularly good at lowering cholesterol. Excellent sources include oats, oat bran, barley, peas, yams, sweet potatoes and other potatoes, as well as legumes or beans, such as pinto beans, black beans, garbanzo beans, and peas. Vegetables rich in soluble fiber include carrots, Brussels sprouts, beets, okra, and eggplant. Good fruit sources are berries, passion fruit, oranges, pears, apricots, nectarines, and apples.

• 3. Choose protein-rich plant foods (such as legumes or beans, nuts, and seeds) over meat.

  Common legumes include lentils, peas, and beans, such as pinto beans, red beans, white beans, and soybeans. They’re full of nutritional riches and are a very healthy, protein-packed alternative to meat. Legumes help lower LDL cholesterol, non-HDL cholesterol, blood sugar, and insulin levels, and may even lower cancer risk.
  Nuts and seeds have been proven to modestly lower LDL cholesterol levels. To avoid blood-pressure-raising salt, choose raw or dry-roasted, unsalted varieties. To avoid gaining weight, don’t eat more than 1 ounce daily since nuts and seeds are dense with calories (averaging about 175 calories per ounce).

• 4. Lose as much excess weight as possible.

  Losing excess weight is beneficial for all sorts of reasons, from improving your cholesterol profile to preventing diseases epidemic in industrialized societies, including type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, gout, and many types of cancer.
  Do keep in mind that it’s important to limit fat intake, even so-called “good” fats like olive oil, because any fat is dense with calories, which means heavy consumption can easily lead to a heavy body.
  NOTE: The above steps contain the key food groups that have cholesterol-lowering properties. The supplements described in Tips 5 and 6 may provide additional LDL lowering.

• 5.Take plant sterol supplements.

  Sterols are naturally occurring substances found in plants. A daily intake of 1 to 2 grams of plant sterols has been shown to lower LDL cholesterol levels. Your best choice is supplements, such as CholestOff (by Nature Made), because they do not have the calories, sugar, trans fats, and/or salt of many foods enriched with plant sterols.

• 6. Take psyllium (such as Metamucil).

  Psyllium husks are seed grains sold as a soluble fiber supplement and laxative. Metamucil is the best known brand, but psyllium is also available in less expensive store brands. Studies have shown that 9 to 10 grams daily of psyllium, the equivalent of about 3 teaspoons daily of Sugar-Free Metamucil, reduced LDL levels.
  To get the cholesterol-lowering benefit, take 1 teaspoon with water no more than 15 to 30 minutes before a meal.

“If your LDL levels are still too high after trying these 6 nutrition-based approaches, talk to your doctor about cholesterol-lowering medications like statins, but give these 6 tips your best shot,” encourages Dr. Seth Marquit, MD, Medical Director at the Pritikin Longevity Center. “The right eating plan, like Pritikin, can be powerfully beneficial – and there are no adverse side effects.”

Source: https://www.pritikin.com/your-health/health-benefits/lower-cholesterol/1468-7-tips-for-improving-your-ldl-cholesterol.html

The five best cardio exercises to keep your engine ticking over

Why do cardio?

Cardio exercise is one of what I would call the three main tenets of training, alongside resistance and mobility. Without any of these, your body will naturally atrophy, decreasing in efficiency. 

 

Like resistance and mobility training, cardio offers a range of benefits and should be built into your every week. Briefly, here's how it helps:

Wards off disease. Cardio helps to keep your heart, lungs and blood circulation in good working order. Consequently, it lowers your risk of suffering from a number of scary sounding health conditions, including coronary heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimers.

Burns through blubber. Cardio training sees your body burn calories for energy, which can help you create a calorie deficit – the bottom line to losing weight. If you burn more than you eat, you shed pounds. Clearly there are other factors, but it is important to remember that cardio is one of your most potent weapons if you want to lose weight.  

Improves all round fitness. By increasing the efficiency of your body at performing strenuous activity, cardio works to improve your entire aerobic system. This means that the more moderate to intense cardio exercise you perform, the fitter you will be. 

High Intensity vs Low Intensity 

One of the big debates in fitness is whether to perform cardio at a high or low intensity. There are benefits to both and in my opinion, given an adequate amount of time, a well rounded training program will include both. 

Higher intensity will be better at improving your overall fitness and performance. It will also help you burn a lot of calories during and following exercise, as you’ll benefit from the thermic effect of exercise – essentially, your metabolism stays high long after you've stopped working out.

Lower intensity cardio at a moderate heart rate of between 105-120 beats per minute will allow you to burn a higher percentage of calories from fat, rather than carbohydrate. This is known as the 'fat-burning' zone and is the midlifer's friend, because it attacks the middle age spread without putting your joints under great strain. Low intensity cardio will also keep your heart healthy. Because of its lower intensity, it's a useful tool during periods of accumulated fatigue.

 

1. Best low intensity: walking 

Walking has perhaps the lowest barrier to entry of all the exercises available to us. All it takes is that we head out of the door and walk around the block. Simple!

It’s important not to underestimate the power of walking. It is a great mood booster and helps to reduce levels of stress and anxiety.

From a fat loss perspective, walking within the fat loss zone of 105-120 BPM will massively help your cause. In fact its one of the first things I have new clients do when they first start working with me.

I recommend 20-90 minutes per session, depending on your schedule. 

2. Best high intensity: intervals

Interval training, which is essentially high intensity start/stop training, is the most versatile form of high intensity training. Intervals will vary depending on the particular protocol you are fond of. I recommend the Tabata protocol, which is 20 seconds of maximal exertion, followed by 10 seconds of rest, eight times over.

The Tabata protocol lends itself to a number of different exercises that can be performed at your own pace, including many that need no fitness equipment at all. Doing Tabata at home is easy. 

Exercises include: Bodyweight Squats, Lunges, Press up, Jumping jacks, shadow boxing, step ups

 

3. Most calories per hour: sprinting

Sprinting is estimated to burn 500 calories in a 30 minute session, making it a very efficient form of training.

Obviously you won’t be sprinting for 30 minutes. Your sprints should last 30 seconds or less, and there should be adequate recovery between sprints.

Personally I find sprinting (on a track or a hill) one of the most effective forms of training with which to assist with fat loss – but it's really important you condition your body first before doing it, as otherwise you run a high risk of injury.

4. Most additional benefits: weight lifting

Yes, you read right. Intense weight lifting with short rest periods and moderate weights will give you many of the same benefits of traditional cardio exercise, but can also help to strengthen your muscles, stabalise your joints, and ward off skeletal problems such as osteoporosis.

There are a lot of protocols out there around weight lifting. The one I would start with is escalated density training, which involves squeezing the most amount of volume of exercise into a given training period. 

For example: 

Kettlebell swing vs dumbbell squat and press vs barbell clean 

Set a timer for six minutes and perform 6 reps of each exercise, back to back until the timer sounds.

5.  Best for social: dancing

Moderate intensity dance workouts will burn approximately 450 calories – not bad, given that dancing also helps enhance mobility and bodily awareness, which is important for offsetting diseases of cognition in later life.

The other great benefit is the social element. Whether you consider yourself a good dancer or not, attending classes (or something less formal) will bring with it numerous opportunities to meet people and be merry. What's not to like?

Scott Laidler is a film industry personal trainer from London. Visit Scott at www.scottlaidler.com for online personal training and free fitness resource

Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/five-best-cardio-exercises-keep-engine-ticking/

Weekly FX insights

This week we’ll begin with our monthly and weekly forecasts of the currency pairs worth watching. The first part of our forecast is based upon our research of the past 16 years of Forex prices, which show that the following methodologies have all produced profitable results:

• Trading the two currencies that are trending the most strongly over the past 3 months.
• Assuming that trends are usually ready to reverse after 12 months.
• Trading against very strong counter-trend movements by currency pairs made during the previous week.
• Buying currencies with high interest rates and selling currencies with low interest rates.

Let’s take a look at the relevant data of currency price changes and interest rates to date, which we compiled using a trade-weighted index of the major global currencies:

Monthly Forecast November 2018

For the month of November, we forecasted that the best trade would be short EUR/USD. The performance to date is as follows:

Weekly Forecast 18th November 2018 

Last week, we made no forecast as there was no strong counter-trend moves.

This week, we again make no weekly forecast.

Less than 44% of the important currency pairs or crosses moved by more than 1% in value over the past week. This volatility is increasing, but we expect it is likely to decrease again the coming week.

This week has been dominated by relative strength in the New Zealand Dollar, and relative weakness in the British Pound.

You can trade our forecasts in a real or demo Forex brokerage account.

Key Support/Resistance Levels for Popular Pairs

We teach that trades should be entered and exited at or very close to key support and resistance levels. There are certain key support and resistance levels that should be watched on the more popular currency pairs this week, which might result in either reversals or breakouts:

AUD/USD

Let’s see how trading two of these key pairs last week off key support and resistance levels could have worked out:

We had expected the level at 0.7165 might act as support, as it had acted previously as both support and resistance. Note how these “flipping” levels can work well. The H1 chart below shows the how the price rejected this level right at the Tokyo open last Tuesday, marked by the up arrow in the price chart below, forming a bullish pin candlestick which broke up right away. This is often a great time of day to enter trades involving Asian currencies such as the Australian Dollar, and such candlesticks are often useful indicators of reversals when their wicks or the wick of the structure rejects key levels. This trade was been profitable so far, achieving a maximum positive reward to risk ratio of slightly less than 10 to 1.

USD/CHF

We had expected the level at 1.0110 might act as resistance, as it had acted previously as both support and resistance. Note how these “flipping” levels can work well. The H1 chart below shows the how the price rejected this level early in the London session last Tuesday, marked by the down arrow in the price chart below, forming a bearish pin candlestick which broke down right away. This is often a great time of day to enter trades involving European currencies such as the Swiss Franc, and such candlesticks are often useful indicators of reversals when their wicks or the wick of the structure rejects key levels. This trade was been profitable so far, achieving a maximum positive reward to risk ratio so far of a little more than 5 to 1.

source: https://www.dailyforex.com/forex-technical-analysis/2018/11/trading-support-and-resistance-november-18-2018/105887

What is Wealth?

Interviews have been edited and condensed.

Anuj Peddada, Colorado Springs

Anuj Peddada and his family immigrated to the United States from India when he was 6, and he remembers the sparseness of those early years. “We really had nothing,” he said. “We were in poverty.”

Mr. Peddada, 53, works as a radiation oncologist at the Penrose Cancer Center in Colorado Springs. With more than 22 years of practice under his belt, he is at the top of his field.

"It’s the freedom to have some choices,” he said, explaining what wealth has meant to him. “It means you have the luxury of being able to provide for your family and determine how much work you want to do.”

Mr. Peddada works a lot. On his days off, he pores over medical journals for hours, breaking in the afternoon for a mountain-biking venture with his son – a hobby Mr. Peddada says his wife and daughter are too smart to pursue. 

But, added Mr. Peddada, who treats cancers and brain tumors, the reading doesn’t feel like work. “My job is a calling. I love what I do.”

Wealth, he said, “is experiences and time to do the things you want to do.” — Avalon A. Manly 

Kyle Webb, Los Angeles

For Kyle Webb, 32, wealth is about opportunity and access. His financial and business success came from two places: One was luck and the other was being born to entrepreneurially minded parents.

Mr. Webb is the chief financial officer of his family’s business, Webb Family Enterprises, which operates 16 McDonald’s franchises in Southern California.

He said that his parents set him up with his first McDonald’s franchise and that, along with a good education — a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Morehouse College and an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California — set him on his track. Webb says he is not quite what he would call wealthy yet, but he has a clear view of what that will be.

“Having the financial freedom to contribute to the things that you want to contribute,” Mr. Webb said. “That’s measured by earning twice the income that is required to sustain your cost of living via passive income.”

He said that wealth “provides access to more,” and that it should extend for “future generations to be able to have, again, more access and more opportunities and to be able to extend it to other people whether they are in your familial line or if there are opportunities for other people in your community that you feel warrant opportunity.”

Citing the McDonald’s tagline “America’s best first job,” Mr. Webb takes pride in the way his family’s business extends both access and opportunity to its employees. — Jarrett Hill

Rachel Talton, Akron, Ohio

Wealth is about community, good health and service to others for Rachel Talton. Ms. Talton, 52, is founder of the Flourish Conference for Women in Leadership, and chief executive of Synergy Marketing Strategy & Research in Akron, Ohio.

“I know we are blessed financially because we have the freedom to do the things that we want not only today but tomorrow,” said Ms. Talton, who lives with her husband in the suburb of Richfield.

As a little girl, Ms. Talton knew she wanted to help people, and yearned to be a psychiatrist. In college, she realized she “might not become the scientist I wanted to be” but had a way with words, and switched to marketing. She ultimately earned a doctorate at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Financial success doesn’t guarantee happiness, she said, but it provides a kind of freedom.

“Wealth means loving what you do and the contributions that you make,” Ms. Talton said. “It means being able to be financially free to do the things you love, to live the way you want to live. But it also means being healthy, and to know that your family and the ones you care about are healthy and spiritually whole, and that they’re contributing.

“If every day I feel I’ve given back, and I have the freedom to do the things that I love and serve other people, then I’m happy to be happy. It makes me so fulfilled.” — Carlo Wolff

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/your-money/what-is-wealth.html

How many trades do you need to win to make a profit?

Let me get it out of the way: the winrate in trading it completely irrelevant on its own. Many traders put way too much emphasis on the winrate and do not understand that a winrate does not tell you anything about the quality of a system or a trader.

You can lose money with a 80% or even with a 90% winrate if your few losers are so big that they wipe out your winners. On the other hand, you can have a profitable system even with a winrate of 50%, 40% or onl 30% if you are good at letting winners run and cutting losses short.

It all comes down to your reward risk ratio.

The reward to risk ratio (RRR, or reward risk ratio) is maybe the most important metric in trading and a trader who understands the RRR can improve his chances of becoming profitable.

Independent trader, James Booth, explains more...

Source: https://www.tradeciety.com/how-to-use-reward-risk-ratio-guide/

Trading Psychology – 5 Tips To Help Control Your Emotions When Trading

At one time or another in your trading career, you will not doubt encounter the pitfalls of emotional trading. Here's one traders story.....

When I just started trading on my own I lost a little over $10,000 the second week. I had made the full-time jump and therefore was desperately emotional to make it work. Looking back now, I probably did things I would never do today. I pushed trades into the market when it wasn't a good time to trade, I let trades run up huge losses without stops, and took any profit I got quickly.


I had never been an "emotional trader" but all of a sudden I was stuck. My emotions had got the best of me. So what changed right? Well, I went back and started to revisit the roots I learned trading for Deutsche Bank that I'm going to share with you below.

The Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO)

Here's the scenario: you've been sitting on the sidelines while watching the market rally nearly 100% off the March lows from 2009. Are you itching to jump in and buy? Are you frustrated because you are missing profits that others are making?

Many traders I've been talking to feel this way right now and it's not uncommon. We have all watched the market rally much further than anyone expected. And, it's not just the swing trader who feels this way. Day traders are feeling the heat as a trending market offers little entry opportunity.

Even though it may be hard, sitting on your hands can be one of the most difficult things a trader NEEDS to learn. If fact, I really do feel like it's a requirement for a successful trade - one lesson I learned quickly during my first few weeks trading at home. We have to treat trading like a business not a hobby - and sometimes waiting for the right entry is part of the business.

Treat Trading Like A Business

After talking with some former traders whom I worked with, I realized I was doing 1 thing completely wrong! I was blindly waking up each day and trading with no real direction - how stupid of me right? Sure I had traded for the banks and knew what to do - but being at home was completely different.


What helped me get over the hump was to treat trading like my own personal business. I wrote a business plan, had specific achievable goals, and daily activities to keep my emotions out of the way. What this helped me do was to remove my emotions from the traditional Fear and Greed cycle.




The trader who can remove themselves from this cycle and treat it like a business is much less likely to force trades out of boredom or because he/she feels an internal pressure to be productive. Case in point - this is where I went wrong when I lost that $10,000.

Let's Control Those Emotions Shall We

Productivity can be extremely helpful when starting to trade. If you are bored then you are more likely to make stupid trades. If you are business searching, analyzing, reading, etc then you are more likely to find amazing trades with great risk/reward.
Here are 5 practical tips to help you learn to be productive and control your emotions:

1. Learn Something New About Trading. Maybe you have wanted to learn more Iron Condors or Credit Spreads, or maybe you have been wanting to learn more about RSI and MACD indicators. Well, stop thinking about it and schedule some time to sit down and do the hard work - pick up a book, get some coaching, watch a video tutorial.

2. Perform Some In-Depth Market Research. You have to be curious about something that's happening in the market right now right? Down times in the market can be great opportunities to do some intense market research.

3. Paper Trade Until You Fall Over. I STILL paper trade each week. I test out new strategies, new indicators, new ideas with paper money first before I ever put real money to work. Focus on a particular setup and paper trade it on a simulator 10 or 20 times. A great new tools is thinkorswim's ThinkBack trading that allows you to "replay" an entire day of trading just as if you were reliving it all over again!

4. Write A Trading/Business Plan. If you don't have one you need one and if you have one you need to revise it monthly. These can always be improved. Take a section of your plan and think carefully about how you can improve it, and then do it already!

       5. Analyze 5 Completely New Charts. Pick out stocks or ETF's you'd like to trade and analyze
       the charts carefully, making a list of the bullish and bearish reasons to trade it. This will help you 
       think carefully about the trade and remove your emotions completely after making the list

Source: https://optionalpha.com/trading-psychology-5-tips-to-help-control-your-emotions-when-trading-options-9866.html

Yesterdays trade.....still waiting to see how this one plays out

Trade placed on 08/11/18 - taken on the pullback after the breakout.
Still waiting to see how this plays out....

Candlestick patterns

Video that has been described as 'liquid gold'......

What do you think, is this video worth its time in gold?

Yesterday's trade

The thing I love about technicals, is that the same rules apply across different timelines. Here's a nice little 2:1 short trade I placed yesterday on a 5 min chart.

Entry: 1749, on breakout of consolidation, taken on the confirmatory pullback
Stop loss: 1759, Just above the pullback
Target: 1723, at the next support/resistance