Is sugar the biggest modern-day scourge of the earth? Is it a soft kill slow suicide?
It used to be thought that our bodies could evolve and adapt with the extra poundage of sugar consumed each year. But come 150lbs yearly on average consumed by each person - I think we've proven that theory false.
It's been said that 1-2 teaspoons of sugar in various forms can change your entire physiology in just seconds. Mood swings can come from the sugar but probably mainly from the intense insulin spikes and dips. The first part of this video shows an almost cruel experiment on children's reactions to eating sugar cubes - later it talks about opioid effects, like drug withdrawals in rats including chattering teeth, high pitched crying, shakes, anxiety and brain chemistry changes.
Sugar consumption is implicated in chronic inflammation, chronic fatigue, immune suppression, feeding cancer, heart disease, and obesity - yeah, I would say that's pretty deadly! From one pre-diabetic sugar-addict to another, here are some resources:
Many people recommend Sugar Blues by William Duffy. It's a riveting true story about a man whose entire life changed after meeting actress Gloria Swanson who told him sugar was poison. He researched and found out why. He weaves the history of sugar throughout in this classic little paperback. It's one of those books that without disgusting the reader, motivates a person to really think about their next bite.
Having a hard time quitting cold turkey? Me too. Just like with tobacco, cravings are often exacerbated by malnutrition and deficiencies. Leaving a vacuum by quitting is a sure way to dive back in. ALSO - since Candida Yeast uses sugar as food, the cravings might actually be coming from the yeast. Starving Candida and the cravings becomes more difficult. Ease yourself in and add the nutrition with Dr. Joel Fuhrman's Eat for Health series of two books, one for diet and recipes, the other to gear up the mind. They are so gentle.
If you're ever at a garage sale or old book shop, look for The Carbohydrate Addict's Diet by Doctors Rachael and Richard Heller. They were both obese, tired and riddled with cravings when they discovered that if they just push carbs into dinner time only, within a 60-minute period, they could reset the whacked-out insulin cycle. The way they described the theory was that a certain set of people - carb addicts - have a leaky insulin valve that starts running the second a simple carb is eaten. They used the method to lose all the weight, cut cravings and fix mood swings - and to help people who weren't making progress in Overeaters Anonymous (OA).
Please, please ignore the parts and recipes that promote using artificial sweeteners - those are neurotoxins and there are natural alternatives available that won't spike insulin.
The video goes into marketing tactics - while compelling, I think the real trouble comes from the cravings, Candida, difficulty withdrawing, and the grotesque, vast prevalence in grocery store foods. Until cravings and diabetic tendency is corrected, it's best to avoid fruit, honey and grains, especially if these trigger reactions.
Many naturopaths can help to stave off or reverse diabetes, eradicate Candida, and curb cravings - it's best to do research, ask questions and find one in your area. A host of issues begin in the gut - be good to it. The naturopath can help with that too.
Showing posts with label Obesity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obesity. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Personal Journey Losing 100 lbs By Juicing
NOTE: Amazing to me that people refer to this as fasting....how is it fasting? It's a selective use of delicious, nutrient dense, all natural food in a blended form! Luscious!
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Turn Off Your Fat Switch
NOTE: Eliminating or drastically reducing delicious, all natural fruit which is high in fructose WILL make a tremendous difference in your ability to lose fat!
Personally, I've found eating only 2 meals between 12pm -8pm and limiting my natural fruit intake, quickly started to melt the inches away.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Thursday, September 13, 2012
8 Key Concepts To Primal Living
With the Primal Blueprint 21-Day Challenge having just begun, it’s the perfect time to go over the Primal Blueprint 8 Key Concepts. I believe that fully grokking these powerful ideas is crucial to success during the challenge. As the saying goes, knowledge is power. Having a firm grasp of these key concepts will provide a framework for – and make you more resolute in – your daily decisions. Read them, commit them to memory, live by them, and you’ll be well on your way to a lifetime of health and wellness.
In the coming days and weeks, I will lay out the path to Primal health in greater detail, but for now, are you ready to learn the basics? Let’s get to it…
1. Yes, You Really Can Reprogram Your Genes
The popular conception of a gene is “a weird collection of DNA and chromosomes and other stuff that determines whether or not you’re going to get this type of cancer, how long you’ll live, and if you’ll get a coronary bypass at some point in your life.” There’s this idea that genes are immutable, that they represent a sort of cosmic destiny for an individual. But, aside from some heritable traits like eye and hair color or the number of fingers on your hands and feet, genes are actually programmable. They “express” themselves in different ways according to information gathered from our environment, our food, and our behaviors. They “turn on” or “turn off” in response to these environmental signals. Thus, though you might have “the gene for type 2 diabetes” – which is really just a genetic proclivity towards the disease, not a sentence – providing the right environmental signals will prevent the gene from ever turning on.
How we eat, exercise, sleep, interact with our social circles, stress, and spend time outdoors (plus tons of other environmental signals) determines how our genes express themselves; how our genes express themselves in turn determines our level of health. Genetic predisposition is not your destiny.
2. The Clues to Optimal Gene Expression Are Found in Evolution
While we can’t sit at a control panel and fiddle with our gene expression like a mad scientist just yet, we can make some very good guesses based on a powerful heuristic: human evolution. Reason being, two million years of selection pressure exerted upon the hominid line designed a healthy, successful, productive, vibrant organism. We didn’t just “happen,” after all. We look like we do and work like we do and have the genes that we do that express themselves the way that they do because of very powerful selection pressures. The habitats in which we lived, the foods we ate, the movements we had to perform in order to survive, the sunlight to which we were exposed, the stressors we faced – these environmental factors shaped our genetic code, and it is to these various environmental stimuli that our genetic expression responds most favorably. The clues to realizing our Primal Blueprint lies scattered amidst our evolutionary history.
Until that day when we can sit a computer terminal and decide which genes we want to express today, and how, the best we can probably do is use human evolution as a base level tool for making lifestyle decisions. You’ll probably refine the details later, but evolution is a darn good place to start.
3. Your Body Prefers Burning Fat Over Carbohydrates
We’ve evolved to be fat-burners (must be why we’re so adept at storing it on our bodies!). It’s easy to see why. Fat burns slow and evenly, providing all-day steady energy levels. Carbohydrates burn quickly, and they’re gone in an instant, leaving you groggy and depleted unless you “carb up.” Furthermore, carbohydrates are an inherently unreliable and fleeting source of energy for our body, with most people only able to store about 400-500 grams of carbohydrates on the body at any one time. Our storage capacity for fat, on the other hand, is virtually endless. Just ten or fifteen pounds of body fat, which is the bare minimum available on even the leanest individuals, can provide tens of thousands of calories. Luckily, reducing carbohydrates and increasing fat intake sends the epigenetic signals necessary to help us revert back to fat-burning, and it only takes a week or two to get things moving in the right direction.
Become fat-adapted, enjoy boundless energy. Free yourself from the shackles of a carbohydrate-based metabolism/dependency.
4. 80 Percent of Your Body Composition Success Is Determined by How You Eat
Food is the single most important factor in body composition. You can exercise all you want but as long as you’re eating garbage, and too much of it, you won’t get very far. For that reason, any real attempt to modify your body composition has to begin by addressing what you put in your mouth. I like to start with the quality of the food you eat. I don’t discount the importance of quantity, mind you, but I do find that honing in on the quality of the food is more crucial and effective. Case in point: 2000 calories of fast food will have a very different effect on your body composition, satiety, and nutrient intake than 2000 calories of grass-fed meat, wild fish, and produce grown in rich, fertile, nutrient-dense soil. The fast food won’t be as satiating, nor as nutrient-dense, as the real food, so you’ll likely be compelled to eat more of it. The fast food will primarily include trans- and polyunsaturated fats, sugary sauces, refined grains, and poor quality meat, which will promote insulin resistance and the storage of body fat while inhibiting fat burning. Eating Primal food, rich in animals, plants, and healthy fat, on the other hand, will normalize insulin sensitivity, thereby allowing fat burning. In effect, quality will determine quantity; you’ll eat less spontaneously when you eat healthy Primal foods. Quality paired with proper quantity will in turn determine your body composition.
Sleep matters, exercise helps, stress has an effect, but how you eat – what you eat and how much you eat – is the prime determinant of your body composition.
5. Grains Are Totally Unnecessary
Despite their exalted position in the Conventional hierarchy of healthy foods, grains are completely and utterly unnecessary. And yes, that even goes for whole grains. I mean, what’s so great about them, anyway? What unique nutrients do they provide? If you want fiber, eat vegetables. If you want antioxidants, eat colorful produce. If you want carbs, eat fruits and tubers. Humans got along fairly well without wide scale grain agriculture for many thousands of years, and there’s no real reason to buy in today, especially when you consider the grain antinutrients like gluten that impair digestion, reduce mineral absorption, and damage the intestinal lining. What is it, then, that necessitates 10-12 servings of whole grains a day? It’s madness. Besides, for all the supposed health benefits that the grain-obsessed like to say are supported with tons of studies, this just isn’t the case when you look a little deeper. Those studies invariably compare whole grains to refined grains, and in that case, the whole grain will generally win out. I’d suspect that if you compared a whole grain-based diet to a grain-free Primal way of eating, you’d get very different results. Unfortunately, that study hasn’t been done.
There’s nothing good in grains that you can’t get elsewhere, and plenty bad that you won’t find elsewhere. Don’t eat ‘em.
6. Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Are Not Your Enemy
Another popular health canard is that dietary saturated fat and cholesterol are horrible, evil things that seek only to clog our arteries, thicken our blood, and pad our waistlines. That’s crazy, of course. Fat, especially saturated fat, and dietary cholesterol are important building blocks for sex hormones like testosterone. Saturated fat helps us absorb nutrients from our food. Saturated fat is inherently the most stable fat, able to withstand heat and light stress without oxidizing, and it’s incredibly satiating. Cholesterol is crucial in the creation of vitamin D from sun exposure. And contrary to popular belief and the protestations of “experts,” neither saturated fat nor dietary cholesterol have been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Sugar, refined PUFA oils, trans-fats? Those are the real enemies. Oh, and consider this: every successful diet is actually a high-fat diet. When you lose weight, whether it’s through low-carb Primal or high-carb vegan, you are consuming ample amounts of highly saturated animal fat. The only thing is that this animal fat is coming off your body, but it’s still saturated animal fat just the same.
A diet rich in animal fat and cholesterol is not just safe, it’s downright healthy.
7. Exercise is Ineffective for Weight Management
Exercise is healthy. Exercise is necessary for lasting wellness. Exercise builds muscle and exerts beneficial effects on hormone expression and function. Exercise gets you strong, gets you fit, and keeps you young. I like exercise; I do some form of it every single day, and I recommend that you do the same. But exercise alone is highly ineffective for weight management. For it to truly help manage your weight, exercise must be paired with a healthy eating plan, adequate sleep, effective stress management, ample sun exposure, and healthy amounts of social contact with friends, family, and loved ones. Sure, some people take exercise to the extreme, training for hours and hours on end, all in the quest to burn a few hundred more calories, to “make up for” those donuts at breakfast, to eradicate those love handles. And if you go long enough and hard enough, yeah, you’ll “burn calories.” But at what cost? Exercise is a stressor, after all. Maintained at a chronic, extreme pace and frequency, exercise becomes a chronic stressor that does more harm than good. It makes you hungry. It increases systemic and local inflammation. It depresses your immune system. It fatigues you, leading to less activity throughout the day. You’ll eventually and inevitably burn out unless you eat a massive amount of calories to make up for all that you’ve lost, and, at that point, you’re back at square one.
You can’t out-exercise a bad diet and poor lifestyle.
8. Maximum Fitness Can Be Achieved in Minimal Time With High Intensity Workouts
Study after study shows that the key to optimal health, aging, and fitness is muscle strength and mass. The more lean mass we have, the better we’re able to handle what life can dish out, whether it’s carrying groceries, playing with our kids, saving our own lives in a life-or-death situation, or engaging in the time-tested essential activity known as love-making. Luckily for those of us who relish our free time, the most effective, most efficient ways to build and maintain lean mass are through intense strength and sprint training. Twice a week, spend 15-40 minutes lifting heavy things using functional, full-body compound movements – squats, pullups, pushups, planks – and once every 7-10 days, spend 10-20 minutes doing 8-10 all out sprints. If you don’t want to move heavy weights, you don’t have to; bodyweight exercises are plenty of stimulus for most people. And if you’re not ready to run sprints on a track, plenty of lower-impact alternatives exist, like cycling, swimming, rowing, or even uphill sprints.
Make your short, intense workouts shorter and more intense. Round them out with lots of slow moving – walks, hikes, and the like – throughout your everyday life, and you’ll be incredibly fit and well-rounded, in a fraction of the time most people presume is required. This is Primal Blueprint Fitness.
So, that’s it – the overview of the eight key concepts that comprise the Primal Blueprint. There’s more to it, of course – the 10 Primal Blueprint Laws are elementary and should also be studied – but for the purposes of completing and downright killing the 21-Day Primal Blueprint Challenge, these 8 Key Concepts provide a solid foundation for you moving forward.
What do you say? Does this sound doable? Does this make at least a bit of sense? Are you ready to get Primal?
Let’s do it!
In the coming days and weeks, I will lay out the path to Primal health in greater detail, but for now, are you ready to learn the basics? Let’s get to it…
1. Yes, You Really Can Reprogram Your Genes
The popular conception of a gene is “a weird collection of DNA and chromosomes and other stuff that determines whether or not you’re going to get this type of cancer, how long you’ll live, and if you’ll get a coronary bypass at some point in your life.” There’s this idea that genes are immutable, that they represent a sort of cosmic destiny for an individual. But, aside from some heritable traits like eye and hair color or the number of fingers on your hands and feet, genes are actually programmable. They “express” themselves in different ways according to information gathered from our environment, our food, and our behaviors. They “turn on” or “turn off” in response to these environmental signals. Thus, though you might have “the gene for type 2 diabetes” – which is really just a genetic proclivity towards the disease, not a sentence – providing the right environmental signals will prevent the gene from ever turning on.
How we eat, exercise, sleep, interact with our social circles, stress, and spend time outdoors (plus tons of other environmental signals) determines how our genes express themselves; how our genes express themselves in turn determines our level of health. Genetic predisposition is not your destiny.
2. The Clues to Optimal Gene Expression Are Found in Evolution
While we can’t sit at a control panel and fiddle with our gene expression like a mad scientist just yet, we can make some very good guesses based on a powerful heuristic: human evolution. Reason being, two million years of selection pressure exerted upon the hominid line designed a healthy, successful, productive, vibrant organism. We didn’t just “happen,” after all. We look like we do and work like we do and have the genes that we do that express themselves the way that they do because of very powerful selection pressures. The habitats in which we lived, the foods we ate, the movements we had to perform in order to survive, the sunlight to which we were exposed, the stressors we faced – these environmental factors shaped our genetic code, and it is to these various environmental stimuli that our genetic expression responds most favorably. The clues to realizing our Primal Blueprint lies scattered amidst our evolutionary history.
Until that day when we can sit a computer terminal and decide which genes we want to express today, and how, the best we can probably do is use human evolution as a base level tool for making lifestyle decisions. You’ll probably refine the details later, but evolution is a darn good place to start.
3. Your Body Prefers Burning Fat Over Carbohydrates
We’ve evolved to be fat-burners (must be why we’re so adept at storing it on our bodies!). It’s easy to see why. Fat burns slow and evenly, providing all-day steady energy levels. Carbohydrates burn quickly, and they’re gone in an instant, leaving you groggy and depleted unless you “carb up.” Furthermore, carbohydrates are an inherently unreliable and fleeting source of energy for our body, with most people only able to store about 400-500 grams of carbohydrates on the body at any one time. Our storage capacity for fat, on the other hand, is virtually endless. Just ten or fifteen pounds of body fat, which is the bare minimum available on even the leanest individuals, can provide tens of thousands of calories. Luckily, reducing carbohydrates and increasing fat intake sends the epigenetic signals necessary to help us revert back to fat-burning, and it only takes a week or two to get things moving in the right direction.
Become fat-adapted, enjoy boundless energy. Free yourself from the shackles of a carbohydrate-based metabolism/dependency.
4. 80 Percent of Your Body Composition Success Is Determined by How You Eat
Food is the single most important factor in body composition. You can exercise all you want but as long as you’re eating garbage, and too much of it, you won’t get very far. For that reason, any real attempt to modify your body composition has to begin by addressing what you put in your mouth. I like to start with the quality of the food you eat. I don’t discount the importance of quantity, mind you, but I do find that honing in on the quality of the food is more crucial and effective. Case in point: 2000 calories of fast food will have a very different effect on your body composition, satiety, and nutrient intake than 2000 calories of grass-fed meat, wild fish, and produce grown in rich, fertile, nutrient-dense soil. The fast food won’t be as satiating, nor as nutrient-dense, as the real food, so you’ll likely be compelled to eat more of it. The fast food will primarily include trans- and polyunsaturated fats, sugary sauces, refined grains, and poor quality meat, which will promote insulin resistance and the storage of body fat while inhibiting fat burning. Eating Primal food, rich in animals, plants, and healthy fat, on the other hand, will normalize insulin sensitivity, thereby allowing fat burning. In effect, quality will determine quantity; you’ll eat less spontaneously when you eat healthy Primal foods. Quality paired with proper quantity will in turn determine your body composition.
Sleep matters, exercise helps, stress has an effect, but how you eat – what you eat and how much you eat – is the prime determinant of your body composition.
5. Grains Are Totally Unnecessary
Despite their exalted position in the Conventional hierarchy of healthy foods, grains are completely and utterly unnecessary. And yes, that even goes for whole grains. I mean, what’s so great about them, anyway? What unique nutrients do they provide? If you want fiber, eat vegetables. If you want antioxidants, eat colorful produce. If you want carbs, eat fruits and tubers. Humans got along fairly well without wide scale grain agriculture for many thousands of years, and there’s no real reason to buy in today, especially when you consider the grain antinutrients like gluten that impair digestion, reduce mineral absorption, and damage the intestinal lining. What is it, then, that necessitates 10-12 servings of whole grains a day? It’s madness. Besides, for all the supposed health benefits that the grain-obsessed like to say are supported with tons of studies, this just isn’t the case when you look a little deeper. Those studies invariably compare whole grains to refined grains, and in that case, the whole grain will generally win out. I’d suspect that if you compared a whole grain-based diet to a grain-free Primal way of eating, you’d get very different results. Unfortunately, that study hasn’t been done.
There’s nothing good in grains that you can’t get elsewhere, and plenty bad that you won’t find elsewhere. Don’t eat ‘em.
6. Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Are Not Your Enemy
Another popular health canard is that dietary saturated fat and cholesterol are horrible, evil things that seek only to clog our arteries, thicken our blood, and pad our waistlines. That’s crazy, of course. Fat, especially saturated fat, and dietary cholesterol are important building blocks for sex hormones like testosterone. Saturated fat helps us absorb nutrients from our food. Saturated fat is inherently the most stable fat, able to withstand heat and light stress without oxidizing, and it’s incredibly satiating. Cholesterol is crucial in the creation of vitamin D from sun exposure. And contrary to popular belief and the protestations of “experts,” neither saturated fat nor dietary cholesterol have been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Sugar, refined PUFA oils, trans-fats? Those are the real enemies. Oh, and consider this: every successful diet is actually a high-fat diet. When you lose weight, whether it’s through low-carb Primal or high-carb vegan, you are consuming ample amounts of highly saturated animal fat. The only thing is that this animal fat is coming off your body, but it’s still saturated animal fat just the same.
A diet rich in animal fat and cholesterol is not just safe, it’s downright healthy.
7. Exercise is Ineffective for Weight Management
Exercise is healthy. Exercise is necessary for lasting wellness. Exercise builds muscle and exerts beneficial effects on hormone expression and function. Exercise gets you strong, gets you fit, and keeps you young. I like exercise; I do some form of it every single day, and I recommend that you do the same. But exercise alone is highly ineffective for weight management. For it to truly help manage your weight, exercise must be paired with a healthy eating plan, adequate sleep, effective stress management, ample sun exposure, and healthy amounts of social contact with friends, family, and loved ones. Sure, some people take exercise to the extreme, training for hours and hours on end, all in the quest to burn a few hundred more calories, to “make up for” those donuts at breakfast, to eradicate those love handles. And if you go long enough and hard enough, yeah, you’ll “burn calories.” But at what cost? Exercise is a stressor, after all. Maintained at a chronic, extreme pace and frequency, exercise becomes a chronic stressor that does more harm than good. It makes you hungry. It increases systemic and local inflammation. It depresses your immune system. It fatigues you, leading to less activity throughout the day. You’ll eventually and inevitably burn out unless you eat a massive amount of calories to make up for all that you’ve lost, and, at that point, you’re back at square one.
You can’t out-exercise a bad diet and poor lifestyle.
8. Maximum Fitness Can Be Achieved in Minimal Time With High Intensity Workouts
Study after study shows that the key to optimal health, aging, and fitness is muscle strength and mass. The more lean mass we have, the better we’re able to handle what life can dish out, whether it’s carrying groceries, playing with our kids, saving our own lives in a life-or-death situation, or engaging in the time-tested essential activity known as love-making. Luckily for those of us who relish our free time, the most effective, most efficient ways to build and maintain lean mass are through intense strength and sprint training. Twice a week, spend 15-40 minutes lifting heavy things using functional, full-body compound movements – squats, pullups, pushups, planks – and once every 7-10 days, spend 10-20 minutes doing 8-10 all out sprints. If you don’t want to move heavy weights, you don’t have to; bodyweight exercises are plenty of stimulus for most people. And if you’re not ready to run sprints on a track, plenty of lower-impact alternatives exist, like cycling, swimming, rowing, or even uphill sprints.
Make your short, intense workouts shorter and more intense. Round them out with lots of slow moving – walks, hikes, and the like – throughout your everyday life, and you’ll be incredibly fit and well-rounded, in a fraction of the time most people presume is required. This is Primal Blueprint Fitness.
So, that’s it – the overview of the eight key concepts that comprise the Primal Blueprint. There’s more to it, of course – the 10 Primal Blueprint Laws are elementary and should also be studied – but for the purposes of completing and downright killing the 21-Day Primal Blueprint Challenge, these 8 Key Concepts provide a solid foundation for you moving forward.
What do you say? Does this sound doable? Does this make at least a bit of sense? Are you ready to get Primal?
Let’s do it!
Friday, August 17, 2012
Wheat Belly FAQ'S
If you’re wondering what the heck this whole Wheat Belly thing is all about, here’s a good place to start.
Is wheat really that bad? I thought that whole grains were good for you?
First of all, it ain’t wheat. It’s the product of 40 years of genetics research aimed at increasing yield-per-acre. The result is a genetically-unique plant that stands 2 feet tall, not the 4 1/2-foot tall “amber waves of grain” we all remember. The genetic distance modern wheat has drifted exceeds the difference between chimpanzees and humans. If you caught your son dating a chimpanzee, could you tell the difference? Of course you can! What a difference 1% can make. But that’s more than modern wheat is removed from its ancestors.
Why do you make the claim that removing all wheat from the diet results in weight loss? ?
Because I’ve seen it happen–over and over and over again. It’s lost from the deep visceral fat that resides within the abdomen, what can be represented on the surface as “love handles,” “muffin top,” or a darned good imitation of a near-term baby, what I call a “wheat belly.”
Typically, people who say goodbye to wheat lose a pound a day for the first 10 days. Weight loss then slows to yield 25-30 pounds over the subsequent 3-6 months (differing depending on body size, quality of diet at the start, male vs. female, etc.). When you remove wheat from the diet, you’ve removed a food that leads to fat deposition in the abdomen. Factor in that the gliadin protein unique to wheat that is degraded to a morphine-like compound that stimulates appetite; remove it and appetite shrinks. The average daily calorie intake drops 400 calories per day–with less hunger, less cravings and food is more satisfying. This all occurs without imposing calorie limits, cutting fat grams, or limiting portion size. It all happens just by eliminating this thing called wheat.
When you examine food labels in the grocery store, you see that wheat is in nearly everything. Is it really practical to remove all wheat from the diet??
Yes, it is. It means a return to real food from the produce aisle, fish and meat department, nuts, eggs, olives, and oils.
It raises a crucial question: Just why is wheat such a ubiquitous ingredient in so many foods, from ice cream to French fries? That’s easy: Because it tastes good and it stimulates appetite. You want more wheat, you want more of everything else to the tune of 400 or more calories per day. More calories, more food, more revenue for Big Food. Wheat is not in cucumbers, green peppers, salmon, or walnuts. But it’s in over 90% of the foods on supermarket shelves, all there to stimulate your appetite center to consume more . . . and more and more.
It also means being equipped with recipes that allow you to recreate familiar recipes that you might miss, like cheesecake, cookies, and biscotti–without wheat, with little to no sugar or carbohydrate exposure, yet healthy. That’s what I’ve done in Wheat Belly.
So does it mean going gluten-free??
Yes, but do not eat gluten-free foods! Let me explain.
Wheat raises blood sugar higher than nearly all other foods, including table sugar and many candy bars. The few foods that increase blood sugar higher than even wheat include figs, dates, and other dried fruits, and rice starch, cornstarch, tapioca starch, and potato starch–the most common ingredients used in gluten-free foods. A gluten-free whole grain bread, for instance, is usually made with a combination of brown rice, potato, and tapioca starches. These dried pulverized starches are packed with highly-digestible high-glycemic index carbohydrates and thereby send blood sugar through the roof. This contributes to diabetes, cataracts, arthritis, heart disease and growing belly fat. This is why many celiac patients who forego wheat and resort to gluten-free foods become fat and diabetic. Gluten-free foods as they are currently manufactured are very poor substitutes for wheat flour.
Anyone who consumes gluten-free foods, like gluten-free muffins, should regard them as an occasional indulgence, no different than eating a bag of jelly beans.
What can you eat on the diet you advocate? ?
Eat real, natural foods such as eggs, raw nuts, plenty of vegetables, and fish, fowl, and meats. Use healthy oils like olive, walnut, and coconut liberally. Eat occasional fruit and plenty of avocado, olives, and use herbs and spices freely. Eat raw or least cooked whenever possible and certainly do not frequent fast food, processed snacks, or junk foods. While it may sound restrictive, a return to non-grain foods is incredibly rich and varied. Many people’s eyes have been closed to the great variety of foods available to us minus the wheat.
Recall that people who are wheat-free consume, on average, 400 calories less per day and are not driven by the 90-120 minute cycle of hunger that is common to wheat. It means you eat when you are hungry and you eat less. It means a breakfast of 3 eggs with green peppers and sundried tomatoes, olive oil, and mozzarella cheese for breakfast at 7 am and you’re not hungry until 1 pm. That’s an entirely different experience than the shredded wheat cereal in skim milk at 7 am, hungry for a snack at 9 am, hungry again at 11 am, counting the minutes until lunch. Eat lunch at noon, sleepy by 2 pm, etc. All of this goes away by banning wheat from the diet, provided the lost calories are replaced with real healthy foods.
What exactly is in wheat that makes it so bad??
Gluten is only one of the reasons to fear wheat, since it triggers a host of immune diseases like celiac, rheumatoid arthritis, and gluten encephalopathy (dementia from wheat).
The protein unique to wheat, gliadin, a component of gluten proteins, is odd in that it is degraded in the human gastrointestinal tract to polypeptides (small proteins) that have the ability to cross into the brain and bind to morphine receptors. These polypeptides have been labeled gluteomorphin or exorphins (exogenous morphine-like compounds) by National Institutes of Health researchers. Wheat exorphins cause a subtle euphoria in some people. This may be part of the reason wheat products increase appetite and cause addiction-like behaviors in susceptible people. It also explains why a drug company has made application to the FDA for the drug naltrexone, an oral opiate-blocking drug ordinarily used to keep heroine addicts drug-free, for weight loss. Block the brain morphine receptor and weight loss (about 22 pounds over 6 months) results. But there’s only one food that yields substantial morphine-like compounds: yes, wheat.
The complex carbohydrate unique to wheat, amylopectin A, is another problem source. The branching structure of wheat’s amylopectin A is more digestible than the amylopectins B and C from rice, beans, and other starches (i.e., in their natural states, not the gluten-free dried pulverized starches). This explains why two slices of whole wheat bread increase blood sugar higher than table sugar, higher than a bowl of brown rice, higher than many candy bars. Having high blood sugars repeatedly is not good for health. It leads to accumulated visceral fat–a “wheat belly,” diabetes and pre-diabetes (defined, of course, as having higher blood sugars), not to mention cataracts, arthritis, and heart disease.
As if that wasn’t enough, there are even other components of wheat that are harmful, such as the lectins in wheat. Lectins are glycoproteins that have the curious ability to “unlock” the proteins lining the human intestinal tract that determine what substances can enter the blood or lymphatic system and what substances cannot. The intestinal tract must be selective in what is allowed to enter the human body else all manner of diseases can be triggered, especially autoimmune diseases. Wheat lectins disable these proteins. This is the suspected explanation for why wheat consumption has been linked to rheumatoid arthritis, skin diseases like dermatitis herpetiformis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, and a variety of other inflammatory diseases.
Beyond gluten, there are over 1000 other proteins in wheat that also have potential for odd or unexpected responses. You might say that wheat is a perfectly crafted Frankengrain that almost appears like it was created to exert maximum health damage in the most desirable, irresistible form possible. I really don’t believe that this monster was created on purpose to hurt people. But the astounding collection of adverse effects, all packed into one food, pushed on us by the U.S. government and other “official” health agencies, explains why this one thing has exerted more harm on us than any foreign terrorist group can inflict on us.
If I go wheat-free, is there any harm in having an occasional bagel or cupcake?
It depends. It depends on your individual susceptibility to the effects of wheat.
If you have celiac disease or any of the long list of inflammatory or autoimmune diseases associated with wheat (rheumatoid arthritis, cerebellar ataxia, peripheral neuropathy, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, dermatitis herpetiformis, etc.), then wheat and gluten avoidance should be complete and meticulous. There’s now way around this and compromises can be disastrous.
If you have an addictive relationship with wheat, e.g. one pretzel makes you want to eat the whole bag, then complete avoidance is also advisable. Because wheat consumption in the 30% of people with this problem cannot stop themselves once it starts, it is best to avoid wheat-containing foods altogether.
Yet another odd observation: Many, though not all, people who have removed wheat from their diet for at least several months have what I call “wheat re-exposure reactions” usually experienced as abdominal cramps, gas, and diarrhea (just like food poisoning); asthma attacks in the susceptible; joint swelling and pain; and emotional effects such as anxiety in women and rage in men. I’ve witnessed many people go wheat-free, feel great, lose 30 pounds, then have an emotional blowup at a birthday party after indulging in just a small piece of birthday cake, then spending the next 24 hours on the toilet with diarrhea.
There are indeed a percentage (20-30%?) of people who can get away with occasional indulgences. Sometimes it’s a matter of running a little test yourself to gauge your reaction. Anyone with a history of autoimmune or inflammatory diseases, or having had celiac markers like an anti-gliadin antibody test positive, however, should not even try this.
If I stop consuming wheat, won’t I develop deficiencies of fiber and B vitamins or other nutrients?
Absolutely not–provided the lost calories are replaced by real, healthy foods. If you replace lost wheat calories with Twinkies, Hohos, and corn chips, then deficiencies can indeed develop. So it’s important to replace lost calories with healthy foods.
If the calories formerly dominated by wheat are replaced with vegetables, raw nuts, cheeses, meats, avocados, healthy oils and other healthy foods, then no deficiency develops. Fiber intake is easily the same or greater than a wheat-containing diet. No deficiency of any nutrient develops: no deficiency of riboflavin, folate, selenium, thiamine, etc. All nutrients are provided in adequate quantities just by returning to real, unprocessed and healthy foods–not a bagel or ciabatta in sight.
Is wheat really that bad? I thought that whole grains were good for you?
First of all, it ain’t wheat. It’s the product of 40 years of genetics research aimed at increasing yield-per-acre. The result is a genetically-unique plant that stands 2 feet tall, not the 4 1/2-foot tall “amber waves of grain” we all remember. The genetic distance modern wheat has drifted exceeds the difference between chimpanzees and humans. If you caught your son dating a chimpanzee, could you tell the difference? Of course you can! What a difference 1% can make. But that’s more than modern wheat is removed from its ancestors.
Why do you make the claim that removing all wheat from the diet results in weight loss? ?
Because I’ve seen it happen–over and over and over again. It’s lost from the deep visceral fat that resides within the abdomen, what can be represented on the surface as “love handles,” “muffin top,” or a darned good imitation of a near-term baby, what I call a “wheat belly.”
Typically, people who say goodbye to wheat lose a pound a day for the first 10 days. Weight loss then slows to yield 25-30 pounds over the subsequent 3-6 months (differing depending on body size, quality of diet at the start, male vs. female, etc.). When you remove wheat from the diet, you’ve removed a food that leads to fat deposition in the abdomen. Factor in that the gliadin protein unique to wheat that is degraded to a morphine-like compound that stimulates appetite; remove it and appetite shrinks. The average daily calorie intake drops 400 calories per day–with less hunger, less cravings and food is more satisfying. This all occurs without imposing calorie limits, cutting fat grams, or limiting portion size. It all happens just by eliminating this thing called wheat.
When you examine food labels in the grocery store, you see that wheat is in nearly everything. Is it really practical to remove all wheat from the diet??
Yes, it is. It means a return to real food from the produce aisle, fish and meat department, nuts, eggs, olives, and oils.
It raises a crucial question: Just why is wheat such a ubiquitous ingredient in so many foods, from ice cream to French fries? That’s easy: Because it tastes good and it stimulates appetite. You want more wheat, you want more of everything else to the tune of 400 or more calories per day. More calories, more food, more revenue for Big Food. Wheat is not in cucumbers, green peppers, salmon, or walnuts. But it’s in over 90% of the foods on supermarket shelves, all there to stimulate your appetite center to consume more . . . and more and more.
It also means being equipped with recipes that allow you to recreate familiar recipes that you might miss, like cheesecake, cookies, and biscotti–without wheat, with little to no sugar or carbohydrate exposure, yet healthy. That’s what I’ve done in Wheat Belly.
So does it mean going gluten-free??
Yes, but do not eat gluten-free foods! Let me explain.
Wheat raises blood sugar higher than nearly all other foods, including table sugar and many candy bars. The few foods that increase blood sugar higher than even wheat include figs, dates, and other dried fruits, and rice starch, cornstarch, tapioca starch, and potato starch–the most common ingredients used in gluten-free foods. A gluten-free whole grain bread, for instance, is usually made with a combination of brown rice, potato, and tapioca starches. These dried pulverized starches are packed with highly-digestible high-glycemic index carbohydrates and thereby send blood sugar through the roof. This contributes to diabetes, cataracts, arthritis, heart disease and growing belly fat. This is why many celiac patients who forego wheat and resort to gluten-free foods become fat and diabetic. Gluten-free foods as they are currently manufactured are very poor substitutes for wheat flour.
Anyone who consumes gluten-free foods, like gluten-free muffins, should regard them as an occasional indulgence, no different than eating a bag of jelly beans.
What can you eat on the diet you advocate? ?
Eat real, natural foods such as eggs, raw nuts, plenty of vegetables, and fish, fowl, and meats. Use healthy oils like olive, walnut, and coconut liberally. Eat occasional fruit and plenty of avocado, olives, and use herbs and spices freely. Eat raw or least cooked whenever possible and certainly do not frequent fast food, processed snacks, or junk foods. While it may sound restrictive, a return to non-grain foods is incredibly rich and varied. Many people’s eyes have been closed to the great variety of foods available to us minus the wheat.
Recall that people who are wheat-free consume, on average, 400 calories less per day and are not driven by the 90-120 minute cycle of hunger that is common to wheat. It means you eat when you are hungry and you eat less. It means a breakfast of 3 eggs with green peppers and sundried tomatoes, olive oil, and mozzarella cheese for breakfast at 7 am and you’re not hungry until 1 pm. That’s an entirely different experience than the shredded wheat cereal in skim milk at 7 am, hungry for a snack at 9 am, hungry again at 11 am, counting the minutes until lunch. Eat lunch at noon, sleepy by 2 pm, etc. All of this goes away by banning wheat from the diet, provided the lost calories are replaced with real healthy foods.
What exactly is in wheat that makes it so bad??
Gluten is only one of the reasons to fear wheat, since it triggers a host of immune diseases like celiac, rheumatoid arthritis, and gluten encephalopathy (dementia from wheat).
The protein unique to wheat, gliadin, a component of gluten proteins, is odd in that it is degraded in the human gastrointestinal tract to polypeptides (small proteins) that have the ability to cross into the brain and bind to morphine receptors. These polypeptides have been labeled gluteomorphin or exorphins (exogenous morphine-like compounds) by National Institutes of Health researchers. Wheat exorphins cause a subtle euphoria in some people. This may be part of the reason wheat products increase appetite and cause addiction-like behaviors in susceptible people. It also explains why a drug company has made application to the FDA for the drug naltrexone, an oral opiate-blocking drug ordinarily used to keep heroine addicts drug-free, for weight loss. Block the brain morphine receptor and weight loss (about 22 pounds over 6 months) results. But there’s only one food that yields substantial morphine-like compounds: yes, wheat.
The complex carbohydrate unique to wheat, amylopectin A, is another problem source. The branching structure of wheat’s amylopectin A is more digestible than the amylopectins B and C from rice, beans, and other starches (i.e., in their natural states, not the gluten-free dried pulverized starches). This explains why two slices of whole wheat bread increase blood sugar higher than table sugar, higher than a bowl of brown rice, higher than many candy bars. Having high blood sugars repeatedly is not good for health. It leads to accumulated visceral fat–a “wheat belly,” diabetes and pre-diabetes (defined, of course, as having higher blood sugars), not to mention cataracts, arthritis, and heart disease.
As if that wasn’t enough, there are even other components of wheat that are harmful, such as the lectins in wheat. Lectins are glycoproteins that have the curious ability to “unlock” the proteins lining the human intestinal tract that determine what substances can enter the blood or lymphatic system and what substances cannot. The intestinal tract must be selective in what is allowed to enter the human body else all manner of diseases can be triggered, especially autoimmune diseases. Wheat lectins disable these proteins. This is the suspected explanation for why wheat consumption has been linked to rheumatoid arthritis, skin diseases like dermatitis herpetiformis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, and a variety of other inflammatory diseases.
Beyond gluten, there are over 1000 other proteins in wheat that also have potential for odd or unexpected responses. You might say that wheat is a perfectly crafted Frankengrain that almost appears like it was created to exert maximum health damage in the most desirable, irresistible form possible. I really don’t believe that this monster was created on purpose to hurt people. But the astounding collection of adverse effects, all packed into one food, pushed on us by the U.S. government and other “official” health agencies, explains why this one thing has exerted more harm on us than any foreign terrorist group can inflict on us.
If I go wheat-free, is there any harm in having an occasional bagel or cupcake?
It depends. It depends on your individual susceptibility to the effects of wheat.
If you have celiac disease or any of the long list of inflammatory or autoimmune diseases associated with wheat (rheumatoid arthritis, cerebellar ataxia, peripheral neuropathy, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, dermatitis herpetiformis, etc.), then wheat and gluten avoidance should be complete and meticulous. There’s now way around this and compromises can be disastrous.
If you have an addictive relationship with wheat, e.g. one pretzel makes you want to eat the whole bag, then complete avoidance is also advisable. Because wheat consumption in the 30% of people with this problem cannot stop themselves once it starts, it is best to avoid wheat-containing foods altogether.
Yet another odd observation: Many, though not all, people who have removed wheat from their diet for at least several months have what I call “wheat re-exposure reactions” usually experienced as abdominal cramps, gas, and diarrhea (just like food poisoning); asthma attacks in the susceptible; joint swelling and pain; and emotional effects such as anxiety in women and rage in men. I’ve witnessed many people go wheat-free, feel great, lose 30 pounds, then have an emotional blowup at a birthday party after indulging in just a small piece of birthday cake, then spending the next 24 hours on the toilet with diarrhea.
There are indeed a percentage (20-30%?) of people who can get away with occasional indulgences. Sometimes it’s a matter of running a little test yourself to gauge your reaction. Anyone with a history of autoimmune or inflammatory diseases, or having had celiac markers like an anti-gliadin antibody test positive, however, should not even try this.
If I stop consuming wheat, won’t I develop deficiencies of fiber and B vitamins or other nutrients?
Absolutely not–provided the lost calories are replaced by real, healthy foods. If you replace lost wheat calories with Twinkies, Hohos, and corn chips, then deficiencies can indeed develop. So it’s important to replace lost calories with healthy foods.
If the calories formerly dominated by wheat are replaced with vegetables, raw nuts, cheeses, meats, avocados, healthy oils and other healthy foods, then no deficiency develops. Fiber intake is easily the same or greater than a wheat-containing diet. No deficiency of any nutrient develops: no deficiency of riboflavin, folate, selenium, thiamine, etc. All nutrients are provided in adequate quantities just by returning to real, unprocessed and healthy foods–not a bagel or ciabatta in sight.
Wheat Has Higher Glycemic Index Than A Snickers Bar?
Wheat belly is a term that describes what is otherwise known as visceral fat. Who gets wheat belly? Well, certainly those who eat wheat. (1) And what exactly is wheat belly? Wheat belly is another way of saying “beer belly” or belly fat.
Essentially, it is a special kind of fat tissue that wraps around the organs in the abdominal cavity, like the kidneys, the intestines, the liver… you get the idea. What makes this fat tissue so interesting is that wheat belly fat, or visceral fat, is an endocrine organ all on its own.
Wheat Belly Fat Releases Hormone Signals
A lot of science has done the work to show that visceral fat, the fat surrounding organs in the abdominal cavity, is very much like any other gland in the endocrine system.
This means that visceral fat produces it own hormones and messages.
Other organs that release hormone signals are glands such as the ovaries, testes, pancreas, the adrenals, and the pituitary gland in the brain.
Visceral fat is not the same as subcutaneous fat, which sits just beneath the skin.
The messages and signals released from fat tissue are pathogenic. Which means that many of the messages promote disease.
So, not only is visceral fat cumbersome, it is also dangerous! We now know that visceral fat:
Can’t get rid of that extra belly fat no matter how hard you try? It may be caused by wheat belly, pro-inflammatory visceral fat that promotes disease!
Controls signaling related to appetite.
Generates insulin resistance, which is a prerequisite to Type II Diabetes. (2)(3)
Increases sensitivity to pain. (4)
Inhibits muscle growth. (5)
Releases pro-inflammatory messages.
What is interesting about pro-inflammatory messages that are produced by visceral fat is that they take part in what is known as a viscous cycle. In other words, inflammation that originates in visceral fat tells the body to make more fat! (6) (7)
How Modern Wheat Differs from Traditional Wheat
As Dr. William Davis points out in his book, Wheat Belly, the grain of our ancestors is not the same stuff that you will find on any supermarket shelf. Even specialty stores would be hard-pressed to carry anything made with the grain that commercial modern wheat originally came from. Dr. Davis explains that the wheat of today:
Is actually a mixture of a grain called einkorn and wild grasses.
Is the result of human genetic modification, which in 50 years produced 25,000 varieties of wheat.
Is nothing like the wheat that has been used historically.
What makes the wheat of today so doughy, elastic, and sturdy a crop are years of genetic hybridization bent on increasing crop yield, cutting expenses, and resolving world hunger. It is important to note that today’s wheat is only sturdy when cultivated with fertilizer and under human supervision. In the wild, this wheat would not survive. (8) It is also important to get the gist of Dr. Davis’ message:
Today’s wheat is largely responsible for what we call the obesity epidemic and several other degenerative diseases related to visceral fat, such as high blood sugar, heart disease, and dementia.
Signs of aging, skin disorders like acne and rashes, arthritis, bouts of depression and anxiety, seizures, and gut disorders, including celiac disease, can all be attributed to modern day wheat.
A serving of whole wheat bread has a higher glycemic index than table sugar.
Newsflash: Whole wheat has a higher glycemic index than a Snickers bar.
The fact that wheat has such an incredibly high glycemic index pretty much turns the whole USDA Food Pyramid upside-down. It means that you won’t get complex carbs that slowly release sugar from pasta or a slice of bread. Let’s break this down:
Table sugar is made of simple sugars, and these are easily absorbed.
Wheat, on the other hand, even whole grain wheat, is modern day wheat. Which mean it has been engineered over the last 50 years.
All modern day wheat may indeed be classified as a complex carb.
But the complex carbohydrates in wheat are mostly amylopectin A.
Amylopectin A is highly digestible.
In fact, digestion of amylopectin A begins in the mouth with the enzyme amylase, which accounts for the incredibly high glycemic index of wheat.
Sometimes removing wheat isn’t enough to lose the wheat belly.
Gut dysbiosis plays a key role in the inflammatory cascade and in poor health. It is important to understand the delicate balance of microflora in the gut.
Understanding modern wheat and the role it plays in degenerative disease is clearly an important piece of the puzzle.
We must educate ourselves about why all forms of wheat, even whole grain and organic, are inherently dangerous.
Wheat belly, or visceral fat, is a sign of inflammation often related to a number of other health conditions.
Controlling visceral fat and inflammation is a unique process.
Take the steps and the time to balance your inner ecosystem with foods that heal the gut and that decrease the inflammatory cascade. The Body Ecology Core Program was developed after 30 years of research in order to combat the health issues caused by impaired digestion.
What to Remember Most About This Article:
Wheat belly is otherwise known as a beer belly or visceral belly fat. This visceral fat surrounds the organs in the abdominal cavity and is similar to any other gland in the endocrine system. Wheat belly produces its own hormones and messages that are pathogenic and promote disease.
Modern day wheat that has been genetically modified contributes to this belly fat. Believe it or not, whole wheat has a higher glycemic index than a Snickers bar! But eliminating wheat from the diet may not be enough to get rid of wheat belly. It begins with balancing your inner ecosystem to heal the gut and prevent inflammation caused by belly fat.
Essentially, it is a special kind of fat tissue that wraps around the organs in the abdominal cavity, like the kidneys, the intestines, the liver… you get the idea. What makes this fat tissue so interesting is that wheat belly fat, or visceral fat, is an endocrine organ all on its own.
Wheat Belly Fat Releases Hormone Signals
A lot of science has done the work to show that visceral fat, the fat surrounding organs in the abdominal cavity, is very much like any other gland in the endocrine system.
This means that visceral fat produces it own hormones and messages.
Other organs that release hormone signals are glands such as the ovaries, testes, pancreas, the adrenals, and the pituitary gland in the brain.
Visceral fat is not the same as subcutaneous fat, which sits just beneath the skin.
The messages and signals released from fat tissue are pathogenic. Which means that many of the messages promote disease.
So, not only is visceral fat cumbersome, it is also dangerous! We now know that visceral fat:
Can’t get rid of that extra belly fat no matter how hard you try? It may be caused by wheat belly, pro-inflammatory visceral fat that promotes disease!
Controls signaling related to appetite.
Generates insulin resistance, which is a prerequisite to Type II Diabetes. (2)(3)
Increases sensitivity to pain. (4)
Inhibits muscle growth. (5)
Releases pro-inflammatory messages.
What is interesting about pro-inflammatory messages that are produced by visceral fat is that they take part in what is known as a viscous cycle. In other words, inflammation that originates in visceral fat tells the body to make more fat! (6) (7)
How Modern Wheat Differs from Traditional Wheat
As Dr. William Davis points out in his book, Wheat Belly, the grain of our ancestors is not the same stuff that you will find on any supermarket shelf. Even specialty stores would be hard-pressed to carry anything made with the grain that commercial modern wheat originally came from. Dr. Davis explains that the wheat of today:
Is actually a mixture of a grain called einkorn and wild grasses.
Is the result of human genetic modification, which in 50 years produced 25,000 varieties of wheat.
Is nothing like the wheat that has been used historically.
What makes the wheat of today so doughy, elastic, and sturdy a crop are years of genetic hybridization bent on increasing crop yield, cutting expenses, and resolving world hunger. It is important to note that today’s wheat is only sturdy when cultivated with fertilizer and under human supervision. In the wild, this wheat would not survive. (8) It is also important to get the gist of Dr. Davis’ message:
Today’s wheat is largely responsible for what we call the obesity epidemic and several other degenerative diseases related to visceral fat, such as high blood sugar, heart disease, and dementia.
Signs of aging, skin disorders like acne and rashes, arthritis, bouts of depression and anxiety, seizures, and gut disorders, including celiac disease, can all be attributed to modern day wheat.
A serving of whole wheat bread has a higher glycemic index than table sugar.
Newsflash: Whole wheat has a higher glycemic index than a Snickers bar.
The fact that wheat has such an incredibly high glycemic index pretty much turns the whole USDA Food Pyramid upside-down. It means that you won’t get complex carbs that slowly release sugar from pasta or a slice of bread. Let’s break this down:
Table sugar is made of simple sugars, and these are easily absorbed.
Wheat, on the other hand, even whole grain wheat, is modern day wheat. Which mean it has been engineered over the last 50 years.
All modern day wheat may indeed be classified as a complex carb.
But the complex carbohydrates in wheat are mostly amylopectin A.
Amylopectin A is highly digestible.
In fact, digestion of amylopectin A begins in the mouth with the enzyme amylase, which accounts for the incredibly high glycemic index of wheat.
Sometimes removing wheat isn’t enough to lose the wheat belly.
Gut dysbiosis plays a key role in the inflammatory cascade and in poor health. It is important to understand the delicate balance of microflora in the gut.
Understanding modern wheat and the role it plays in degenerative disease is clearly an important piece of the puzzle.
We must educate ourselves about why all forms of wheat, even whole grain and organic, are inherently dangerous.
Wheat belly, or visceral fat, is a sign of inflammation often related to a number of other health conditions.
Controlling visceral fat and inflammation is a unique process.
Take the steps and the time to balance your inner ecosystem with foods that heal the gut and that decrease the inflammatory cascade. The Body Ecology Core Program was developed after 30 years of research in order to combat the health issues caused by impaired digestion.
What to Remember Most About This Article:
Wheat belly is otherwise known as a beer belly or visceral belly fat. This visceral fat surrounds the organs in the abdominal cavity and is similar to any other gland in the endocrine system. Wheat belly produces its own hormones and messages that are pathogenic and promote disease.
Modern day wheat that has been genetically modified contributes to this belly fat. Believe it or not, whole wheat has a higher glycemic index than a Snickers bar! But eliminating wheat from the diet may not be enough to get rid of wheat belly. It begins with balancing your inner ecosystem to heal the gut and prevent inflammation caused by belly fat.
Wheat Belly 101
Wheat today is not what it used to be. It is more of a hybrid version of 19th century and earlier versions of wheat our ancestors relied on for their daily bread. The same is true for a few other grains.
Today's wheat is a genetic modification of horticultural or agricultural specie combining. This genetic modification is different than laboratory GMO gene splicing. Nevertheless, the amount of 20th century agricultural genetic modification has outpaced the human digestive system's ability to adapt.
The result is that even if you are not a celiac disease sufferer or gluten sensitive, you still could be suffering from the ill effects of wheat and other grains. Even organic whole wheat has a high glycemic index (GI), which over time may increase your glycemic load and create diabetes II.
So although whole wheat grains are considered complex carbohydrates, modern day wheat contains amylopectin A, which is a rapidly absorbed carbohydrate that spikes your blood sugar, but more. The other grains that can contribute to wheat belly include: Barley, rye, triticale (a cross between wheat and rye), bulgur, farina, kamut, seminola, durum flour, and spelt. Bummer, eh?
There are safer grain options, however. Buckwheat, which is not actually wheat, amaranth, rice, hominy, sorghum, tapioca, arrowroot, quinoa, and einkorn are okay. Uncommon einkorn is the ancient traditional wheat our ancestors enjoyed. Oats are controversial. Some argue that oats are contaminated by wheat.
The downside of wheat and some other grains
Beer belly is actually wheat or grain belly, according to Body Ecology. It is visceral fat, or fat that has accumulated around body cavity organs, such as the liver, stomach, or intestines. Subcutaneous fat is just under the skin. It is the flabby, flesh of any part of your body.
Obese folks have both visceral and subcutaneous fat issues. A beer or wheat belly most likely indicates visceral fat. In addition to the obvious potential of diabetes II from obesity, there is another ominous aspect of visceral fat.
Visceral fat acts as a gland, secreting hormones that make the immune system react. This produces more fat to store and protect pathogens from invading our organs. It's the proverbial vicious cycle, and it also produces low level chronic inflammation that can result in various autoimmune diseases.
Cardiologist William Davis, MD, warns against the gluten free diet for losing a wheat belly. The wheat substitutes such as potato flour have high glycemic index issues also, and they can increase your GI load to cause the obesity you're trying to avoid.
Five wheat belly indicators in addition to a bloated belly
1) High blood sugar
2) Skin problems, rashes, acne, and eczema
3) Bouts of anxiety and depression - low energy
4) Gut disorders - yeast infections
5) Early aging disorders that include dementia
Beyond this lies celiac disease, which can be determined by a blood test and/or gut biopsy.
Sprouted grain bread options
Weston A. Price Foundation founders Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, PhD, researched sprouted grains and determined they had a lower GI than grains not sprouted.
The sprouts still contain some gluten, but sprouted grain enzymes break down a good deal of the grains' normally harmful ingredients. They are more nutritious than merely whole grains.
There are the Ezekiel sprouted grain breads. Some bakeries make sprouted wheat and other sprouted grain breads. Whole Food bakeries provide a sourdough, sprouted wheat bread without bromide, a harmful ingredient used by most bakeries.
You might be able to get away with some of the options mentioned in this article instead of being forced into a strict Paleolithic (Paleo) or hunter/gatherer diet to avoid wheat belly.
Today's wheat is a genetic modification of horticultural or agricultural specie combining. This genetic modification is different than laboratory GMO gene splicing. Nevertheless, the amount of 20th century agricultural genetic modification has outpaced the human digestive system's ability to adapt.
The result is that even if you are not a celiac disease sufferer or gluten sensitive, you still could be suffering from the ill effects of wheat and other grains. Even organic whole wheat has a high glycemic index (GI), which over time may increase your glycemic load and create diabetes II.
So although whole wheat grains are considered complex carbohydrates, modern day wheat contains amylopectin A, which is a rapidly absorbed carbohydrate that spikes your blood sugar, but more. The other grains that can contribute to wheat belly include: Barley, rye, triticale (a cross between wheat and rye), bulgur, farina, kamut, seminola, durum flour, and spelt. Bummer, eh?
There are safer grain options, however. Buckwheat, which is not actually wheat, amaranth, rice, hominy, sorghum, tapioca, arrowroot, quinoa, and einkorn are okay. Uncommon einkorn is the ancient traditional wheat our ancestors enjoyed. Oats are controversial. Some argue that oats are contaminated by wheat.
The downside of wheat and some other grains
Beer belly is actually wheat or grain belly, according to Body Ecology. It is visceral fat, or fat that has accumulated around body cavity organs, such as the liver, stomach, or intestines. Subcutaneous fat is just under the skin. It is the flabby, flesh of any part of your body.
Obese folks have both visceral and subcutaneous fat issues. A beer or wheat belly most likely indicates visceral fat. In addition to the obvious potential of diabetes II from obesity, there is another ominous aspect of visceral fat.
Visceral fat acts as a gland, secreting hormones that make the immune system react. This produces more fat to store and protect pathogens from invading our organs. It's the proverbial vicious cycle, and it also produces low level chronic inflammation that can result in various autoimmune diseases.
Cardiologist William Davis, MD, warns against the gluten free diet for losing a wheat belly. The wheat substitutes such as potato flour have high glycemic index issues also, and they can increase your GI load to cause the obesity you're trying to avoid.
Five wheat belly indicators in addition to a bloated belly
1) High blood sugar
2) Skin problems, rashes, acne, and eczema
3) Bouts of anxiety and depression - low energy
4) Gut disorders - yeast infections
5) Early aging disorders that include dementia
Beyond this lies celiac disease, which can be determined by a blood test and/or gut biopsy.
Sprouted grain bread options
Weston A. Price Foundation founders Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, PhD, researched sprouted grains and determined they had a lower GI than grains not sprouted.
The sprouts still contain some gluten, but sprouted grain enzymes break down a good deal of the grains' normally harmful ingredients. They are more nutritious than merely whole grains.
There are the Ezekiel sprouted grain breads. Some bakeries make sprouted wheat and other sprouted grain breads. Whole Food bakeries provide a sourdough, sprouted wheat bread without bromide, a harmful ingredient used by most bakeries.
You might be able to get away with some of the options mentioned in this article instead of being forced into a strict Paleolithic (Paleo) or hunter/gatherer diet to avoid wheat belly.
Friday, July 27, 2012
How To Lose Visceral Fat
It’s not all about looking good. Roll your eyes if you must: everybody’s beautiful in some way. But visceral fat—fat inside the abdomen—is little more than a time bomb wrapped around a belly.Visceral obesity results in fatty acids accumulation in the pancreas, heart, liver, and other organs. This prevents proper organ function, causes improper insulin regulation, and even leads to heart attacks. But don’t stress; if you want to know how to lose visceral fat, try these 4 simple and natural weight loss tips.
How to Lose Visceral Fat – 4 Proven Natural Weight Loss Tips
1. Use Coconut Oil
Although coconut oil got a bad rap in the ‘70s for having high saturated fat content, human studies have shown that coconut oil helps reduce abdominal fat. In one instance, one group of women received 2 tablespoons of coconut oil daily for 12 weeks while the other received none. The group with coconut oil lost some girth and showed a healthy rise in “good” HDL cholesterol levels. As an added bonus, having coconut oil available can also allow you to experience oil pulling benefits.
Replace other cooking oils with coconut oil; it takes like butter (I promise) in baked goods and is mouth-watering in any stir-fry dish.
2. Drink Green Tea
It’s hard to say anything bad about green tea. There has been a connection between green tea and cancer prevention; it helps prevent dementia; it fights free radicals and promote graceful aging, and a 2009 study found that drinking catechin-rich green tea promoted weight loss.
3. Sunbathe for Vitamin D
We’ve already extolled the benefits of vitamin D; one of them is weight loss! A study by researchers at the University of Minnesota reported on the relationship between vitamin D and weight loss, showing that weight loss occurred among people who adopted a balanced diet and had high vitamin D levels. We shouldn’t rob our bodies of the vitamin D found in UVB radiation. To burn some fat, spend short periods outdoors without sunscreen.
4. Avoid Fructose, BPA, and MSG
Countless other toxins likely promote weight gain, but perhaps the three most notable are fructose, Bisphenol A, and monosodium glutamate.
Angel Nadal, a BPA expert at the Miguel Hernendez University in Spain, found that a quarter of a billionth of a gram of BPA triggered the release of twice the regular amount of insulin to digest food. A researcher at UT Southwestern Medical Center reported that fructose (especially when in the form of high fructose corn syrup) may be to blame for obesity, and a study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill showed MSG led to animal obesity but also applied to human subjects.
How to Lose Visceral Fat – 4 Proven Natural Weight Loss Tips
1. Use Coconut Oil
Although coconut oil got a bad rap in the ‘70s for having high saturated fat content, human studies have shown that coconut oil helps reduce abdominal fat. In one instance, one group of women received 2 tablespoons of coconut oil daily for 12 weeks while the other received none. The group with coconut oil lost some girth and showed a healthy rise in “good” HDL cholesterol levels. As an added bonus, having coconut oil available can also allow you to experience oil pulling benefits.
Replace other cooking oils with coconut oil; it takes like butter (I promise) in baked goods and is mouth-watering in any stir-fry dish.
2. Drink Green Tea
It’s hard to say anything bad about green tea. There has been a connection between green tea and cancer prevention; it helps prevent dementia; it fights free radicals and promote graceful aging, and a 2009 study found that drinking catechin-rich green tea promoted weight loss.
3. Sunbathe for Vitamin D
We’ve already extolled the benefits of vitamin D; one of them is weight loss! A study by researchers at the University of Minnesota reported on the relationship between vitamin D and weight loss, showing that weight loss occurred among people who adopted a balanced diet and had high vitamin D levels. We shouldn’t rob our bodies of the vitamin D found in UVB radiation. To burn some fat, spend short periods outdoors without sunscreen.
4. Avoid Fructose, BPA, and MSG
Countless other toxins likely promote weight gain, but perhaps the three most notable are fructose, Bisphenol A, and monosodium glutamate.
Angel Nadal, a BPA expert at the Miguel Hernendez University in Spain, found that a quarter of a billionth of a gram of BPA triggered the release of twice the regular amount of insulin to digest food. A researcher at UT Southwestern Medical Center reported that fructose (especially when in the form of high fructose corn syrup) may be to blame for obesity, and a study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill showed MSG led to animal obesity but also applied to human subjects.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Why Your Food Is Making You FAT
obesityus23
Up a rickety staircase at the Newarke Houses Museum in Leicester, England hangs a portrait of Britain’s first obese man, painted in 1806. Daniel Lambert weighed 53st (335kg) and was considered a medical oddity.
Too heavy to work, Lambert came up with an ingenious idea: he would charge people a shilling to see him. Lambert made a fortune, and his portrait shows him at the end of his life: affluent and respected – a celebrated son of Leicester.
Two hundred years on, I’m in a bariatric ambulance (an alternative term for obese, favoured by the medical world because it’s less shaming to patients) investigating why the UK is in the midst of an obesity crisis.
The crew pick up a dozen Daniel Lamberts every week.
Fifty-three stone is nothing special, it’s at the lower end of the weight spectrum, with only the 80st patients worthy of mention when a shift finishes. The specially designed ambulance carries an array of bariatric gizmos including a “spatula” to help with people who have fallen out of bed or, on a recent occasion, an obese man jammed between the two walls in his hallway. As well as the ambulance, there’s a convoy of support vehicles including a winch to lift patients onto a reinforced stretcher. In extreme cases, the cost of removing a patient to hospital can be up to £100,000, as seen in the recent case of 63st teenager Georgia Davis.
But these people are not where the heartland of the obesity crisis lies. On average, in the UK, we are all – every man, woman and child – three stone heavier than we were in the mid-60s. We haven’t noticed it happening, but this glacial shift has been mapped by bigger car seats, swimming cubicles, XL trousers dropped to L (L dropped to M). An elasticated nation with an ever-expanding sense of normality.
Why are we so fat? We have not become greedier as a race. We are not, contrary to popular wisdom, less active – a 12-year study, which began in 2000 at Plymouth hospital, measured children’s physical activity and found it the same as 50 years ago. But something has changed: and that something is very simple. It’s the food we eat. More specifically, the sheer amount of sugar in that food, sugar we’re often unaware of.
The story begins in 1971.
Richard Nixon was facing re-election. The Vietnam war was threatening his popularity at home, but just as big an issue with voters was the soaring cost of food. If Nixon was to survive, he needed food prices to go down, and that required getting a very powerful lobby on board – the farmers. Nixon appointed Earl Butz, an academic from the farming heartland of Indiana, to broker a compromise. Butz, an agriculture expert, had a radical plan that would transform the food we eat, and in doing so, the shape of the human race.
Butz pushed farmers into a new, industrial scale of production, and into farming one crop in particular: corn. US cattle were fattened by the immense increases in corn production. Burgers became bigger. Fries, fried in corn oil, became fattier.
Corn became the engine for the massive surge in the quantities of cheaper food being supplied to American supermarkets: everything from cereals, to biscuits and flour found new uses for corn. As a result of Butz’s free-market reforms, American farmers, almost overnight, went from parochial small-holders to multimillionaire businessmen with a global market. One Indiana farmer believes that America could have won the cold war by simply starving the Russians of corn. But instead they chose to make money.
By the mid-70s, there was a surplus of corn. Butz flew to Japan to look into a scientific innovation that would change everything: the mass development of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), or glucose-fructose syrup as it’s often referred to in the UK, a highly sweet, gloppy syrup, produced from surplus corn, that was also incredibly cheap.
HFCS had been discovered in the 50s, but it was only in the 70s that a process had been found to harness it for mass production. HFCS was soon pumped into every conceivable food: pizzas, coleslaw, meat. It provided that “just baked” sheen on bread and cakes, made everything sweeter, and extended shelf life from days to years.
A silent revolution of the amount of sugar that was going into our bodies was taking place. In Britain, the food on our plates became pure science – each processed milligram tweaked and sweetened for maximum palatability. And the general public were clueless that these changes were taking place.
There was one product in particular that it had a dramatic effect on – soft drinks. Hank Cardello, the former head of marketing at Coca-Cola, tells me that in 1984, Coke in the US swapped from sugar to HFCS (In the UK, it continued to use sugar). As a market leader, Coke’s decision sent a message of endorsement to the rest of the industry, which quickly followed suit.
There was “no downside” to HFCS, Cardello says. It was two-thirds the price of sugar, and even the risk of messing with the taste was a risk worth taking when you looked at the margin, especially as there were no apparent health risks. At that time, “obesity wasn’t even on the radar” says Cardello
Up a rickety staircase at the Newarke Houses Museum in Leicester, England hangs a portrait of Britain’s first obese man, painted in 1806. Daniel Lambert weighed 53st (335kg) and was considered a medical oddity.
Too heavy to work, Lambert came up with an ingenious idea: he would charge people a shilling to see him. Lambert made a fortune, and his portrait shows him at the end of his life: affluent and respected – a celebrated son of Leicester.
Two hundred years on, I’m in a bariatric ambulance (an alternative term for obese, favoured by the medical world because it’s less shaming to patients) investigating why the UK is in the midst of an obesity crisis.
The crew pick up a dozen Daniel Lamberts every week.
Fifty-three stone is nothing special, it’s at the lower end of the weight spectrum, with only the 80st patients worthy of mention when a shift finishes. The specially designed ambulance carries an array of bariatric gizmos including a “spatula” to help with people who have fallen out of bed or, on a recent occasion, an obese man jammed between the two walls in his hallway. As well as the ambulance, there’s a convoy of support vehicles including a winch to lift patients onto a reinforced stretcher. In extreme cases, the cost of removing a patient to hospital can be up to £100,000, as seen in the recent case of 63st teenager Georgia Davis.
But these people are not where the heartland of the obesity crisis lies. On average, in the UK, we are all – every man, woman and child – three stone heavier than we were in the mid-60s. We haven’t noticed it happening, but this glacial shift has been mapped by bigger car seats, swimming cubicles, XL trousers dropped to L (L dropped to M). An elasticated nation with an ever-expanding sense of normality.
Why are we so fat? We have not become greedier as a race. We are not, contrary to popular wisdom, less active – a 12-year study, which began in 2000 at Plymouth hospital, measured children’s physical activity and found it the same as 50 years ago. But something has changed: and that something is very simple. It’s the food we eat. More specifically, the sheer amount of sugar in that food, sugar we’re often unaware of.
The story begins in 1971.
Richard Nixon was facing re-election. The Vietnam war was threatening his popularity at home, but just as big an issue with voters was the soaring cost of food. If Nixon was to survive, he needed food prices to go down, and that required getting a very powerful lobby on board – the farmers. Nixon appointed Earl Butz, an academic from the farming heartland of Indiana, to broker a compromise. Butz, an agriculture expert, had a radical plan that would transform the food we eat, and in doing so, the shape of the human race.
Butz pushed farmers into a new, industrial scale of production, and into farming one crop in particular: corn. US cattle were fattened by the immense increases in corn production. Burgers became bigger. Fries, fried in corn oil, became fattier.
Corn became the engine for the massive surge in the quantities of cheaper food being supplied to American supermarkets: everything from cereals, to biscuits and flour found new uses for corn. As a result of Butz’s free-market reforms, American farmers, almost overnight, went from parochial small-holders to multimillionaire businessmen with a global market. One Indiana farmer believes that America could have won the cold war by simply starving the Russians of corn. But instead they chose to make money.
By the mid-70s, there was a surplus of corn. Butz flew to Japan to look into a scientific innovation that would change everything: the mass development of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), or glucose-fructose syrup as it’s often referred to in the UK, a highly sweet, gloppy syrup, produced from surplus corn, that was also incredibly cheap.
HFCS had been discovered in the 50s, but it was only in the 70s that a process had been found to harness it for mass production. HFCS was soon pumped into every conceivable food: pizzas, coleslaw, meat. It provided that “just baked” sheen on bread and cakes, made everything sweeter, and extended shelf life from days to years.
A silent revolution of the amount of sugar that was going into our bodies was taking place. In Britain, the food on our plates became pure science – each processed milligram tweaked and sweetened for maximum palatability. And the general public were clueless that these changes were taking place.
There was one product in particular that it had a dramatic effect on – soft drinks. Hank Cardello, the former head of marketing at Coca-Cola, tells me that in 1984, Coke in the US swapped from sugar to HFCS (In the UK, it continued to use sugar). As a market leader, Coke’s decision sent a message of endorsement to the rest of the industry, which quickly followed suit.
There was “no downside” to HFCS, Cardello says. It was two-thirds the price of sugar, and even the risk of messing with the taste was a risk worth taking when you looked at the margin, especially as there were no apparent health risks. At that time, “obesity wasn’t even on the radar” says Cardello
Thursday, May 17, 2012
UCLA Proves HFCS Makes You Fat & Stupid
The laughable habit of ordering a huge fast-food meal and washing it down with a diet soda might actually be smarter than it sounds, if the results of a new study published Tuesday are any indication.
The nutrition industry's favorite bogeyman, high-fructose corn syrup, took yet another massive hit when a UCLA study in the Journal of Physiology showed the ubiquitous additive makes lab rats less clever.
The study addressed the interaction of omega-3 fatty acids and high fructose intake. It found that rats fed a diet deficient in omega-3s had difficulty navigating a maze they'd already been trained to find their way through, and that a steady diet of HFCS as their drinking water only made their difficulties worse. On the other hand, the rats fed both HFCS and omega-3s did better all around than did the sugar-only group.
The researchers were less surprised to find that HFCS also gave the rats metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance, often precursors to diabetes, obesity, or both.
The study results were limited to the effects of HFCS, not sugar derived from beets or cane or fructose from fruit.
"Our findings illustrate that what you eat affects how you think," UCLA professor Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, one of the co-authors of the study, said in a press release. "Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain's ability to learn and remember information. But adding omega-3 fatty acids to your meals can help minimize the damage."
This is foul news, not only for the legions of people who insist on drinking regular Coke (KO) and Pepsi (PEP), but for the Corn Refiners Association. The six-member group, which includes Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Tate & Lyle Americas (TATYY.PK), has been fighting a losing battle trying to rehab HFCS' image. Despite any real evidence to support the idea, it's now a given that sugar is somehow better for you than HFCS.
Seeing the writing on the wall, ConAgra (CAG), Starbucks (SBUX), and Kraft (KFT) have removed the offending ingredient from some or all of their products, the Wall Street Journal notes. That list of sinking ship deserters is only likely to get longer as more studies are undertaken.
The corn refiners have even tried to lobby the Food and Drug Administration to change the blackened name of its product from "high-fructose corn syrup" to "corn sugar," an effort unlikely to bear fruit anytime soon.
The nutrition industry's favorite bogeyman, high-fructose corn syrup, took yet another massive hit when a UCLA study in the Journal of Physiology showed the ubiquitous additive makes lab rats less clever.
The study addressed the interaction of omega-3 fatty acids and high fructose intake. It found that rats fed a diet deficient in omega-3s had difficulty navigating a maze they'd already been trained to find their way through, and that a steady diet of HFCS as their drinking water only made their difficulties worse. On the other hand, the rats fed both HFCS and omega-3s did better all around than did the sugar-only group.
The researchers were less surprised to find that HFCS also gave the rats metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance, often precursors to diabetes, obesity, or both.
The study results were limited to the effects of HFCS, not sugar derived from beets or cane or fructose from fruit.
"Our findings illustrate that what you eat affects how you think," UCLA professor Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, one of the co-authors of the study, said in a press release. "Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain's ability to learn and remember information. But adding omega-3 fatty acids to your meals can help minimize the damage."
This is foul news, not only for the legions of people who insist on drinking regular Coke (KO) and Pepsi (PEP), but for the Corn Refiners Association. The six-member group, which includes Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Tate & Lyle Americas (TATYY.PK), has been fighting a losing battle trying to rehab HFCS' image. Despite any real evidence to support the idea, it's now a given that sugar is somehow better for you than HFCS.
Seeing the writing on the wall, ConAgra (CAG), Starbucks (SBUX), and Kraft (KFT) have removed the offending ingredient from some or all of their products, the Wall Street Journal notes. That list of sinking ship deserters is only likely to get longer as more studies are undertaken.
The corn refiners have even tried to lobby the Food and Drug Administration to change the blackened name of its product from "high-fructose corn syrup" to "corn sugar," an effort unlikely to bear fruit anytime soon.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
America Your Diet Is Killing You!
Forget what all the medical journals say about it. Completely ignore the daily health trumpet known as the MSM (mainstream media) on the topic. Even your health coach, massage therapist or chiropractor may be unaware of this little factoid.
The # 1 KILLER in Western Civilization is OVEREATING … coupled with eating the wrong foods for your body type … in the wrong combinations … in the wrong proportions … at the wrong time of day … in the wrong season … with the wrong attitude.
We’d love not to have to write another word on the subject, except that we just got a LOT of peoples’ attention, didn’t we?!
So, here it goes, for Americans especially. The first title that we chose for our upcoming book was:
AMERICA! Your diet is killing you.
You can’t be serious! Oh yes we are sir or madam, and here’s why.
Overeating places an awesome burden on the body, especially when it is done on a regular basis. According to Ayurveda, a person should always leave the meal table with a little remaining hunger. This “keeps the pump primed” … continually. It allows for the right mix of food, liquid and air to undergo an efficient digestive process in the stomach and beyond.
In a previous blog we mentioned that the optimal mix of these elements is as follows:
Ayurvedic Prescription for Every Meal:
Stomach contents after completing any meal should look like this:
1/2 Food
1/4 Liquid
1/4 Air
Remember there is fluid in your food, you just don’t see it until after its properly masticated.
This is the First Basic Law of Eating that is often broken 24/7 by many of the eaters in the world. How do they get away with it, you ask? They don’t, it just appears that they do.
This is where things can get very interesting so lets look an automobile engine by way of comparison. Hopefully you have heard of a carburetor. If not, here’s a nice photo from the Carburetor Gallery folks.
Let’s go back to the GI (gastrointestinal) tract and especially the stomach which bears a great burden in this whole story. Just because we eat unaware that there REALLY is an order behind the science of eating doesn’t mean we can go on breaking the rules for a lifetime with seeming impunity.
By the way The Health Coach has broken them many times in the past, as he continues to try his very best not to violate them in the future, so he fully appreciates the challenges involved. The Health Coach has been sensitized to this particular health crisis because of 20+ years of so many clients with issues around eating.
AMERICA —> Your food is killing you, because your understanding of what, how and when to eat is not fully baked.
What else is so critical about eating that it is actually the #1 KILLER in America? There doesn’t have to be anything else as serious as overeating, but there is. That’s because chronic, compulsive, carnivorous overeating is a reflection of a mental aberration, emotional imbalance, or psychological flaw. As a matter of fact, if you look at where it occurs to the greatest extent, you find that the richest nations suffer from it. Let’s take a closer look at this character.
Obesity (most recent) by country:
1. USA
3. UK
6. Australia
7. New Zealand
9. Luxumbourg
11. Canada
12. Spain
13. Ireland
14. Germany
23. France
Even the Japanese at #28 have begun to take on the obesity profile, since they have been overtaken by Americana.
What these nations all share is a very high standard of living across compared to the third world countries. However, all the world knows that when anyone becomes too “fat, dumb and happy”, a little quality called GREED starts to take over the mindset, the heart space and the psyche. Then, even though we have plenty we want more, which often comes at the expense of others.
Incidentally, this is actually where we are as a global village because of the extent to which American society has exported its overeating and over-consumption habits across the planet. Therefore, if we can begin to change our attitudes here and alter our habits en masse, perhaps the ripple effect will influence all who fall under our sway for the better.
This is not meant to be an environmental advocacy or social commentary piece, but these many intermingling issues must be looked at holistically if we are to get a grip on them. All one has to do is look at the energy consumption on a per capita basis to see who’s eatin’ the place up … on every level. The consumer society, after all, was perfected in the ole USA and consumption takes many diverse forms. Just look at our oil and gas, coal and nuclear energy consumption. For that matter, just size up our carbon footprint and you’ll quickly see that like the British Commomwealth (formerly the British Empire), the sun never sets on it.
The # 1 KILLER in Western Civilization is OVEREATING … coupled with eating the wrong foods for your body type … in the wrong combinations … in the wrong proportions … at the wrong time of day … in the wrong season … with the wrong attitude.
We’d love not to have to write another word on the subject, except that we just got a LOT of peoples’ attention, didn’t we?!
So, here it goes, for Americans especially. The first title that we chose for our upcoming book was:
AMERICA! Your diet is killing you.
You can’t be serious! Oh yes we are sir or madam, and here’s why.
Overeating places an awesome burden on the body, especially when it is done on a regular basis. According to Ayurveda, a person should always leave the meal table with a little remaining hunger. This “keeps the pump primed” … continually. It allows for the right mix of food, liquid and air to undergo an efficient digestive process in the stomach and beyond.
In a previous blog we mentioned that the optimal mix of these elements is as follows:
Ayurvedic Prescription for Every Meal:
Stomach contents after completing any meal should look like this:
1/2 Food
1/4 Liquid
1/4 Air
Remember there is fluid in your food, you just don’t see it until after its properly masticated.
This is the First Basic Law of Eating that is often broken 24/7 by many of the eaters in the world. How do they get away with it, you ask? They don’t, it just appears that they do.
This is where things can get very interesting so lets look an automobile engine by way of comparison. Hopefully you have heard of a carburetor. If not, here’s a nice photo from the Carburetor Gallery folks.
Let’s go back to the GI (gastrointestinal) tract and especially the stomach which bears a great burden in this whole story. Just because we eat unaware that there REALLY is an order behind the science of eating doesn’t mean we can go on breaking the rules for a lifetime with seeming impunity.
By the way The Health Coach has broken them many times in the past, as he continues to try his very best not to violate them in the future, so he fully appreciates the challenges involved. The Health Coach has been sensitized to this particular health crisis because of 20+ years of so many clients with issues around eating.
AMERICA —> Your food is killing you, because your understanding of what, how and when to eat is not fully baked.
What else is so critical about eating that it is actually the #1 KILLER in America? There doesn’t have to be anything else as serious as overeating, but there is. That’s because chronic, compulsive, carnivorous overeating is a reflection of a mental aberration, emotional imbalance, or psychological flaw. As a matter of fact, if you look at where it occurs to the greatest extent, you find that the richest nations suffer from it. Let’s take a closer look at this character.
Obesity (most recent) by country:
1. USA
3. UK
6. Australia
7. New Zealand
9. Luxumbourg
11. Canada
12. Spain
13. Ireland
14. Germany
23. France
Even the Japanese at #28 have begun to take on the obesity profile, since they have been overtaken by Americana.
What these nations all share is a very high standard of living across compared to the third world countries. However, all the world knows that when anyone becomes too “fat, dumb and happy”, a little quality called GREED starts to take over the mindset, the heart space and the psyche. Then, even though we have plenty we want more, which often comes at the expense of others.
Incidentally, this is actually where we are as a global village because of the extent to which American society has exported its overeating and over-consumption habits across the planet. Therefore, if we can begin to change our attitudes here and alter our habits en masse, perhaps the ripple effect will influence all who fall under our sway for the better.
This is not meant to be an environmental advocacy or social commentary piece, but these many intermingling issues must be looked at holistically if we are to get a grip on them. All one has to do is look at the energy consumption on a per capita basis to see who’s eatin’ the place up … on every level. The consumer society, after all, was perfected in the ole USA and consumption takes many diverse forms. Just look at our oil and gas, coal and nuclear energy consumption. For that matter, just size up our carbon footprint and you’ll quickly see that like the British Commomwealth (formerly the British Empire), the sun never sets on it.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Monday, September 5, 2011
Perverse Effect Technology On Children
A research review regarding the impact of technology [video games, ipods, smart phones] on child development, behavior, and academic performance.
+Infants watch 2.5 hours per day of TV and 25% have TV's in their bedrooms.
+Children use 7.5 hours per day of entertainment technology, and 75% have a device (TV, video games, internet, movies, cell phones and iPods) in their bedroom.
+30% of children will enter kindergarten developmentally delayed
+14.3% of children, have been diagnosed with a mental illness
+25% of children are obese
+30% of children require special education assistance
Impact Statement
Attachment to technology is "detaching" children from humanity, with consequent increased childhood psychological and behavior disorders, accompanied by prescription of dangerous psychotropic medication.
Media violence is now been categorized as a public health risk due to causal links to child aggression. Brain development research shows that technology overuse by children results in "pruning" tracks to the frontal cortex, adversely affecting executive functioning and impulse control.
Early studies now indicate electromagnetic radiation emitted from technology is harmful to adult physical and mental health, with no studies to date on children. Schools continue to escalate use of "educational" technologies without ANY research evidence to show efficacy or safety.
It is now time to manage balance between activity and technology, a concept termed Balanced Technology Management,
Technology Use Overview
Two thirds of children report their parents do not restrict their access to technology, and 75% of these children have TV's in their bedrooms (Kaiser Foundation Report 2010).
+Infants watch 2.5 hours per day of TV and 25% have TV's in their bedrooms.
+Children use 7.5 hours per day of entertainment technology, and 75% have a device (TV, video games, internet, movies, cell phones and iPods) in their bedroom.
+30% of children will enter kindergarten developmentally delayed
+14.3% of children, have been diagnosed with a mental illness
+25% of children are obese
+30% of children require special education assistance
Impact Statement
Attachment to technology is "detaching" children from humanity, with consequent increased childhood psychological and behavior disorders, accompanied by prescription of dangerous psychotropic medication.
Media violence is now been categorized as a public health risk due to causal links to child aggression. Brain development research shows that technology overuse by children results in "pruning" tracks to the frontal cortex, adversely affecting executive functioning and impulse control.
Early studies now indicate electromagnetic radiation emitted from technology is harmful to adult physical and mental health, with no studies to date on children. Schools continue to escalate use of "educational" technologies without ANY research evidence to show efficacy or safety.
It is now time to manage balance between activity and technology, a concept termed Balanced Technology Management,
Technology Use Overview
Two thirds of children report their parents do not restrict their access to technology, and 75% of these children have TV's in their bedrooms (Kaiser Foundation Report 2010).
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Fat Children Seized From Parents
Four obese children are on the brink of being permanently removed from their family by social workers after their parents failed to bring their weight under control.
In the first case of its kind, their mother and father now face what they call the ‘unbearable’ likelihood of never seeing them again. Their three daughters, aged 11, seven and one, and five-year-old son, will either be ‘fostered without contact’ or adopted.
NOTE: The UK must also make tremendous profits when children are seized, the same as are CPS. The money starts flowing for each stolen child. If the health of the children were in question, how easy would it be to teach them to eat properly? By avoiding industrial false foods, synthetics and sugars their weight would normalize.
Tragedy upon tragedy and the poor parents fed them what the advertisers told them to.
In the first case of its kind, their mother and father now face what they call the ‘unbearable’ likelihood of never seeing them again. Their three daughters, aged 11, seven and one, and five-year-old son, will either be ‘fostered without contact’ or adopted.
NOTE: The UK must also make tremendous profits when children are seized, the same as are CPS. The money starts flowing for each stolen child. If the health of the children were in question, how easy would it be to teach them to eat properly? By avoiding industrial false foods, synthetics and sugars their weight would normalize.
Tragedy upon tragedy and the poor parents fed them what the advertisers told them to.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
McDonalds, I Was Loving It!
Mommy Mommy, Why Am I Fat?
Excerpted from Mommy Mommy, Why Am I Fat Richard C. Cook, veteran Project Manager for the U.S. Treasury Department and Policy Analyst for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration:
"Cheap, mass-produced foods are largely based on grains and beef raised by massive agribusiness firms, so that the atrocious American diet is inextricably linked with capitalist enterprise controlled by Wall Street."
"American farming at present is completely incapable of supplying nutritious foods on a scale that would make a difference. In order to furnish natural and healthy foods to poorer markets would require a revolution in American farming where small family farms using heirloom seeds and natural farming methods would once again become prosperous.
Unfortunately, this sector has been destroyed by agribusiness and by the federal government policies, not to mention bank lending practices, that favor it. We also have a massive food chemical industry, closely aligned with the pharmaceutical industry, that thrives on doctoring unhealthy and non-nutritious food, with the aid of the Food and Drug Administration which approves their chemical formulas."
"In other words, a big part of the U.S. economy, again under the control of Wall Street, gets rich off making kids obese and unhealthy to the point where we no longer have the capability of producing anything else on a large scale."
This article is wroth reading and reflects the dismal health of the majority of North Americans who apparently prefer to eat garbage, "food like substances" rather than real food.
"Cheap, mass-produced foods are largely based on grains and beef raised by massive agribusiness firms, so that the atrocious American diet is inextricably linked with capitalist enterprise controlled by Wall Street."
"American farming at present is completely incapable of supplying nutritious foods on a scale that would make a difference. In order to furnish natural and healthy foods to poorer markets would require a revolution in American farming where small family farms using heirloom seeds and natural farming methods would once again become prosperous.
Unfortunately, this sector has been destroyed by agribusiness and by the federal government policies, not to mention bank lending practices, that favor it. We also have a massive food chemical industry, closely aligned with the pharmaceutical industry, that thrives on doctoring unhealthy and non-nutritious food, with the aid of the Food and Drug Administration which approves their chemical formulas."
"In other words, a big part of the U.S. economy, again under the control of Wall Street, gets rich off making kids obese and unhealthy to the point where we no longer have the capability of producing anything else on a large scale."
This article is wroth reading and reflects the dismal health of the majority of North Americans who apparently prefer to eat garbage, "food like substances" rather than real food.
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