I don’t know about you, but do you always feel so drained and overfed, especially in the first few months of the new year? Yes? My condolences. I do not anymore. I’m out of the number. But I’ll also be happy to tell you how I did it. Or as my friend Inke said the other day: “You are always so slim – despite feasting. How does that work?”

“Diets are not about the ‘what’, but the ‘how'”

My answer to that, when her eyes got bigger and bigger: “Very simple: In principle you can eat anything, it’s not about the ‘what’, it’s just about the ‘how’. Carbohydrates are okay, even chocolate is perfectly fine. ”And the best thing is: I actually only found that out on the side while I was trying to eat my family and myself as healthy as possible.

For a year I cooked my way through all the usual diet trends: from paleo and superfoods to apple cider vinegar and algae sweets to bog water, I tried a wide variety of methods.

Carbohydrates make us happy and relaxed

Since then, I’ve always shook my head a little when I hear again that Jennifer Lopez and others are calling out “No Carbs Week” on Instagram again. Carbohydrates only bark, but they don’t bite. They are not angry – on the contrary: They make us happy, let us relax and increase our ability to perceive. The brain needs carbohydrates, otherwise it will cook on the back burner.

“But they should make you fat?” My friend Inke explains to me again. Whereupon I have to laugh: “Yes, we all think so. Because we combine them incorrectly. If we only ate one type of carbohydrate per meal and took enough breaks, we would not gain weight at all. ”

Incidentally, a theory that I stumbled across during my research from Hamburg to Hollywood. Even Hollywood stars are taught that – only not the fat average German.

The body needs carbohydrates – but not too much at once

Need an example? Let’s take our breakfast. Hands up, who eats a jam roll in the morning? Mistake number one! Because there are three types of carbohydrates in jam rolls per se. The first is the cereal in the bun, the second is the fructose from the jam and the third is perhaps a refined sugar for preservation.

Our body then thinks: “Great, I know the grain, I’ll use it, but I’ll put the other two carbohydrates on my hip right away. And then I get tired and lie down first. “Hello afternoon low!

So my trick – if it has to be a roll – would be to top it with a neutral hard cheese. This meal doesn’t make you fat or tired. But please don’t use a soft camembert, because it contains lactose.

Now you also know why I never offer my children a few cornflakes with milk and sugar before school. In terms of metabolism, the dwarfs would prefer to go straight back to bed – with such a combination of milk and industrial sugar and cereals, no wonder.

Select carbohydrates specifically

“But that’s terribly complicated – I have to know all the carbohydrates!” Interjects Inke.

Actually, it’s not difficult. Meat and fish as well as vegetables, hard cheese and eggs are neutral. And you wouldn’t actually eat rice, potatoes and pasta together with that. Actually, I just make sure that I only eat one sugar or only one type of cereal or only one starch together. When I fry something, I don’t mix the fats, I stick with one. In the restaurant, I don’t eat the bread basket empty if I’ve ordered potatoes with the fish anyway. And if it should be a glass of wine (also contains carbohydrates), then I enjoy it best after dinner.

Give your digestion breaks

We come to factor two: The ‘how’ does not only refer to the composition of our meals, but also to the ‘when’. In general, I noticed that we are actually digesting continuously.

In the morning we eat our fattening breakfast, which nobody really needs because it takes away all energy, then we drink a carbohydrate bomb in the form of a café latte with lots of milk and sugar afterwards, push ourselves into the canteen, then need it caffeine again because we’re so tired from eating before we go back in the evening.

Our body actually just wants a break. And maybe a green tea, a smoothie, or just nothing so he can send the cleaning crew through. We eat and eat and don’t even know why.

What can you still eat? It is confusing

I admit, everything has gotten very confusing too: gluten is bad, milk full of hormones, meat the devil, everyone is confused. I often hear that you can continue to eat as normal. It is worthwhile to feed in more precisely. If we buy it cheaply in the bakery for twenty cents, the dough can contain additives such as corn, potatoes, glucose syrup, i.e. sugar, and there are also flavor enhancers.

Do you notice what? Again several carbohydrates and chemistry. And immediately we get fat and tired, have a stomachache like we did in the ninth month and in the end even stomach ache, migraines and sleep disorders. With organic you are on the safe side. And with breaks and some kind of carbohydrate too, I think.

Sinning is allowed – but then there is a long pause

And whoever has sinned, simply waits five instead of two hours. Who is perfect and always obeys all the rules? If I am invited to a friend’s house, I sometimes skip five, but I always return to the one-carbohydrate principle. This also applies to snacking: at the moment I like to treat myself to a bar of chocolate in the evening – from Monday to Friday.

Yes you’ve read correctly. Chocolate is my insider tip, because the cocoa practically covers the sugar, which is why chocolate is just one type of carbohydrate. Or as my nutritionist Dörten Wolff once put it: “If you know how to eat chocolate correctly, it doesn’t necessarily work!”

In my case, eating right means: If I notice that I have to put in another chocolate unit in the evening, then I eat meat and vegetables instead of high-carbohydrates for dinner. My dessert, the chocolate, is my carbohydrate component. Without question, it should be high quality chocolate and not cheap, adulterated one.

• The body’s own stem cells have a positive effect on osteoarthritis-related inflammation in the knee.
• A study now wants to clarify whether they actually build up permanent cartilage.
• A transplant can repair minor cartilage damage in young patients.

After a certain age, signs of wear and tear become noticeable in the knee . After the age of 30, the risk increases linearly. The painful, inflammatory breakdown of cartilage in the operating room and with an artificial knee ends 150,000 times a year. Then smooth metal has to replace the cartilage layer, which allows round, painless movements in a healthy knee.

The idea frightens many people suffering from osteoarthritis. They hope for new methods to rebuild lost cartilage: stem cells should help.

Belly fat provides the best stem cell material

The doctor uses the patient’s belly fat as a starting material. The idea behind it: stem cells can be obtained particularly easily and in relatively large numbers from vascular fat tissue. Injected at the location of the defect, they learn from the microenvironment into which cell type they should develop.

According to this principle, the doctor and stem cell researcher Eckhard Alt uses the undifferentiated cells : Stem cells from the patient’s fat tissue are processed in the operating room within an hour and injected into the patient where he needs them – for example into the osteoarthritis knee.

The founder of the “Interdisciplinary Stem Cells Research Center” in Houston and a private clinic in Munich sees stem cells as the future therapy for chronic inflammatory diseases of the musculoskeletal system – among other things.

The cell extract in the knee does not guarantee success

Some orthopedic practices that offer the procedure honestly state that it is a not generally recognized attempt at healing with no guarantee of success. Rather, it is a final experimental attempt to remedy knee problems without a joint replacement.

“In this so-called ‘point-of-care’ application, a cell extract is injected that not only consists of stem cells,” explains Oliver Pullig from the Fraunhofer Translational Center for Regenerative Medicine in Würzburg. How many stem cells that are supposed to develop into cartilage material actually get into the knee is just as little regulated as the preparation of the suctioned off belly fat.

Stem cells instead of knee prostheses

A Europe-wide study is currently looking for scientific evidence of the anti-osteoarthritis potential of the body’s own stem cells.

A small one with six patients in Würzburg and twelve in Montpellier, France, led to success in 2013: Almost all participants canceled their previously unavoidable operation for a knee prosthesis. “Your complaints had improved throughout,” explains Oliver Pullig. “A reconstruction of cartilage was unlikely with such a large damage.”

The follow-up study that has just begun with 153 participants at ten European locations therefore fulfills a requirement that the German study director Ulrich Nöth from the Evangelical Forest Hospital Berlin-Spandau formulated back then: Stem cell therapy is best suited for patients with middle and middle-aged osteoarthritis. You are no longer eligible for a cartilage transplant, but you are too young to have an artificial joint.

New cartilage from stem cells? A study should show it

Like the pilot study, the ADIPOA2 study uses so-called mesenchymal stem cells from the abdominal fat of each subject. These precursor cells of the connective tissue have the ability to develop into cartilage, bone or fat cells.

Biologist Oliver Pullig explains: “We take 100 milliliters of belly fat from each participant. The stem cells obtained from this are multiplied millions of times in special laboratories. That takes a good two weeks. 51 patients then receive two million of these pure stem cells injected into the joint, 51 patients receive an injection with 10 million cells and 51 patients receive a placebo. “

Results should be available by the end of 2018, and thus scientific proof of whether stem cells fulfill the hope of permanently building cartilage. The scientist is optimistic: “If successful, the therapy with stem cells as a drug could be ready for the market at the next study level. It doesn’t take five years. “

Cartilage transplant only helps to a limited extent

Another method to restore lost cartilage is transplantation, which has been tried and tested for 20 years. So far, however, it has only been successful in the case of centimeter damage in an otherwise intact knee. The operation is laborious and the healing process long.

In the first keyhole surgery, the doctor removes a small piece of healthy cartilage, hardly larger than a grain of rice. These cartilage cells are propagated in the laboratory in three to four weeks. In a second operation, the surgeon places these cells or the cartilage patch on the defective area in the knee.

After that, the knee must not be subjected to any load for six weeks, then only lightly for another six weeks. Only after a year is the joint stable enough for sport to be possible.

Cartilage from the laboratory is expensive

The transplant is only suitable for younger knee patients whose cartilage and joints are free from osteoarthritis. If this therapy is successful, it can prevent further cartilage damage and a later threatened knee prosthesis.

Then, in the long term, the costs of several thousand euros for cells grown in a laboratory will pay off.

Hyaluronic acid can at least relieve pain

If these methods are out of the question, another remedy can help: synthetic hyaluronic acid is often misunderstood as a substance for building up cartilage. However, it cannot produce worn cartilage, but serves as a lubricant and for joint care.

Orthopedic surgeons inject the moisture-retaining gel three to five times at weekly intervals. Hyaluronic acid relieves pain and promotes mobility – permanently for some patients, at least for a year or two for others. Then the treatment can be repeated.