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Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Well-Being (Paperback)\nby Andrew Md Weil \nPaperback: 368 pages\nPublisher: Anchor (January 2, 2007)\nLanguage: English\nISBN-10: 0307277542\nISBN-13: 978-0307277541\n

Life Over Cancer: The Block Center Program for Integrative Cancer Treatment (Hardcover) by Keith Block (Author), Andrew Md Weil (Foreword)

The American diet circa 2007 is a disaster - but positive change has begun. Those were the twin themes of the "Fourth Annual Nutrition and Health Conference" held in San Diego, Calif., May 14-16, 2007. The conference was sponsored by the University of Arizona's College of Medicine in conjunction with the Program in Integrative Medicine (PIM); PIM was founded and is co-directed by Dr. Weil. \n\nThe three-day event brought together leading nutrition researchers from around the world, bearing plenty of both bad and good news. Some highlights:

Americans are learning, from Dr. Weil and others, that green tea - a drink made from the unoxidized leaf of the Camellia sinensis plant - is wonderfully healthy. The most important polyphenol in tea is EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate), a potent antioxidant

Stevia comes from an herb in the chrysanthemum family called Stevia rebaudiana. It is native to Paraguay, also grows in Brazil and Argentina, and is cultivated in China. The leaves have been used for centuries by native peoples to make sweet teas, or to sweeten other foods, with no evidence of harm. It is available in the United States, and the European Union as a dietary supplement and is sold here in whole-leaf form or as stevioside, the extracted sweet principle, sold as a granular white powder. The powder has very few calories but is so sweet that to use it, you must dissolve it in water, then dispense the solution by drops. A teaspoon of the liquid is equivalent in sweetness of a whole cup of sugar. Stevia is safe for diabetics and is widely used as a nonnutritive sweetener around the world.

"Vitamin D, often referred to as the "sunshine vitamin," is actually a fat-soluble hormone that the body can synthesize naturally. There are several forms, including two that are important to humans: D2 and D3. Vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) is synthesized by plants, and vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) is synthesized by humans when skin is exposed to ultraviolet-B (UVB) rays from sunlight. The active form of the vitamin is calcitriol, synthesized from either D2 or D3 in the kidneys. Vitamin D helps to maintain normal blood levels of calcium and phosphorus"