Go Green Mediterranean to Lose Fat, Gain Health

Mark Smith • September 29, 2025

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Health News Update: Go Green Mediterranean to Lose Fat, Gain Health                       9.29.25

Hey there everybody: Because food is foundational to all aspects of health, it is important to make sure the foundation of your health is built upon the good stuff…we do not want a crumbling foundation built of low-quality materials…we want the absolute best building blocks to sustain and maintain a healthy Temple. So, if we look around at what the media portrays as ‘food’, it can become confusing as to what is best to eat. Can we trust the media to give us what is good for us, or are they giving us what is good for their share-holders?

 

Fortunately, we can still turn to research and science to answer this question. To be sure, the final and absolute answer is not available just now. Yet the science is advancing rapidly and now we have decent information available if we dig for it. Thus, it is not widely known that there is more of a scientific consensus on what type of food plan best supports a long health span and longer lifespan than what commercials would lead us to believe. Here is a good place to start:  

 

  • A recent study showed the “green” Mediterranean diet reduced visceral fat by 14%, twice as much as the classic Mediterranean diet (MED), which reduced visceral fat by 7%.
  • The benefits of the green MED diet include a reduced risk of developing diabetes, cardiovascular disease, depression, and cognitive decline. 
  • The green MED diet is also shown to lower cholesterol and blood pressure and may be more protective against age-related brain atrophy than the traditional MED diet.
  • According to experts, polyphenols (only available from plants) play a major role in the effectiveness of the green MED diet.

 

 

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/green-mediterranean-diet-reduces-visceral-fat-by-14 Green Med Diet excellent

https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-022-02525-8 Green med diet healthy

 

Bottom Line: Basically, the Green Mediterranean Diet (GMD) is best seen as an unprocessed, whole-food, predominantly plant-based food plan with high marks for health promotion. One of the primary properties of the GMD is that is great at lowering inflammation. Yeah, for that…plus it can be super delicious. I have searched for GMD cookbooks and found several but overall, they were of pretty low quality (in my opinion). Here is some more info on how to go Green plus a good GMD cookbook I did purchase and am happy with:

 

https://www.health.com/green-mediterranean-diet-7095181 info on Green Med diet

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-everything-green-mediterranean-cookbook-peter-minaki/1138725620 cookbook

 

 

By Mark Smith April 6, 2026
Health News Update: Sleep Timing, Mood & Performance 4.6.26 Hello everyone: In taking a history at the start of a healthcare process, I often find people of all ages have sleep schedules that do not match optimal circadian rhythms and have un-knowingly contributed to degrading their health. Sleep is a significant component of leading an anti-inflammatory lifestyle as it fosters autophagy (an immune based essential self-cleaning function, hormonal regulation, stress reduction, immune resilience, optimal aging, and more. As it turns out, getting your sleep timing right lowers depression, reduces morning fatigue, improves physical functions, and can markedly increase your ability to think, recall things and overall cognitive functions. Proper sleep timing aligned with our natural circadian clocks may also decrease mortality risks. Background There is conflict between living according to our endogenous biological rhythms and our external environment, with disruptions resulting in negative consequences to health and performance. This is often documented in shift work and jet lag , but ‘societal norms’ (eg, typical working hours) can create profound issues for ‘night owls’, people whose internal biological timing predisposes them to follow an unusually late sleep-wake cycle. Night owls have also been associated with health issues, mood disturbances, poorer performance and increased mortality rates . Results Overall, participants demonstrated a significant advance of ∼2 h in sleep/wake timings as measured by actigraphy and circadian phase markers (dim light melatonin onset and peak time of the cortisol awakening response), whilst having no adverse effect on sleep duration. Notably, the phase advance was accompanied by significant improvements to self-reported depression and stress, as well as improved cognitive (reaction time) and physical (grip strength) performance measures during the typical ‘suboptimal’ morning hours. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1389945719301388?via%3Dihub resetting sleep timing improves brain function and overall health. Bottom Line: For long term health, assisting recovery, optimal aging, improving immune resilience, lowering your total inflammatory burden thus reducing your risk for developing chronic diseases…it looks like a very good idea to get your sleep cycles in line with your natural biological rhythms. The researchers aimed to accomplish this using only simple practical natural lifestyle methods…no medications. Here is some of what they did: · Avoid blue light after dark. · Get some early morning sunshine…even 5 minutes will help. · Exercise in the morning or early afternoon. · Adopt early time restricted feeding schedules (eTRF). · Fix a time to sleep and stick to it. If you have any chronic health issues, or just want to optimize the aging process, simply adopt a few simple lifestyle strategies. I have seen this clinically be one of the major keys to the success when it comes to overcoming fatigue, brain fog, digestive issues, and any chronic health problem. Best wishes to you for a healthy life!
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By Mark Smith March 23, 2026
Health News Update: How To Fight Inflammation and Chronic Disease 3.23.26 Hello again everyone: You might wonder why I keep focusing on food…so here are some of the reasons: food choices are the leading cause of death in the U.S. and spreading around the world. Poor food choices lead to inflammation which slowly destroy health. It is that simple, plain, and clear and backed by research. The next question: how do we fight back? Introduction The positive impact of food on health was postulated by the ancient Hippocrates, father of modern medicine with his famous quote: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” [1]. In the 21st century, scientists have focused on the effect of nutritional habits in diseases. Nowadays, it is well documented that food plays a noteworthy role in the pathogenesis of chronic diseases namely cardiovascular diseases (CVD), metabolic syndrome, diabetes mellitus type II, and cancer [2–5], as it correlates with others with the lipid pattern, the blood pressure, and the endothelial function. The scientists examine the effect of nutritional habits on disease emergence and progression in both individual nutrient intake and dietary patterns models. Worldwide, two dietary patterns are usually compared—the Mediterranean diet (MD) and the Western diet (WD) [3,6]. The Mediterranean diet reflects the food culture of most Mediterranean countries based on olive oil consumption, seasonal fresh vegetables, cereals, and plants in balance with low consumption of meat [7]. The Western diet, on the contrary, is dominated by high-fat dairy products processed and red meat [8]. However, discordance in the different MD patterns and consumed food doses had been recognized. Without any doubt, those discrepancies could confine and restrict our knowledge on the health benefit mechanisms of the MD [9]. Due to the above, the medical community along with nutritionists and dieticians take a keen interest in MD and its traits [7]. https://www.academia.edu/45378994/biomedicines_Mediterranean_Diet_as_a_Tool_to_Combat_Inflammation_and_Chronic_Diseases_An_Overview?email_work_card=view-paper food choices can fight inflammation and chronic disease Bottom Line: This is a 2020 paper and since then literally hundreds of papers on the MD have emerged showing how the food plan lowers inflammation and the risk for developing multiple chronic illnesses. Even still, lots of research needs to be done to elucidate the many mechanisms of how food impacts our system and how to optimally individualize dietary recommendations. At this point, our best strategy to prevent and/or recover from any chronic condition is to eat as clean and natural as possible. It has become rather obvious that the further away from a natural diet we get, the sicker we become. On top of that, I have yet to see a full recovery from any health issue without the foundation of a predominantly plant-based, unprocessed, whole foods approach…which is why I keep posting about this subject. All the best to you and yours!
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