Category: Health

Sugar Addicts

A fairly high percentage of Americans are now sugar addicts. “Addicts” is not hyperbole as the mechanism of their addiction is the same for more classic addictions — the pleasant release of dopamine. A major culprit in this widespread addiction is the food industry turning out process foods with incredible amounts of added sugar. This is an industry providing the “hit” to their addicts.

What is the fallout to this sugar addiction? One significant ramification is that the palate of these sugar addicts becomes extremely narrow. What they seek out, generally speaking, from their food are sugar, fat, and salt — the calling cards of process foods. Those are the acceptable tastes, and what doesn’t fit into that scheme, like sour or bitter tastes, is avoided. Unfortunately, sour and bitter foods are some of the most healthy and nutritious, and for a palate with a healthier range of acceptable tastes, even some of the most delicious.

But a more sinister implication is that cancer loves sugar. Massive and regular injections of pure sugar into one’s system is a breeding ground for tumor growth. And they wonder why there is so much cancer. Look no further than the now common sugar addiction.

Premeal “Cocktail”

Suntan Lotion

Not a big fan of suntan lotion for 2 reasons. The first is that you want to have UV light impact your skin to convert the cholesterol in the skin cells to vitamin D3. A large percentage of population is deficient in Vitamin D, which means, overall, weaker support for your immune system (Vitamin D is critical for the immune system) as well as poor absorption of calcium and therefore weaker bones.

The second reason is that whatever you put on your skin gets absorbed through the skin. Your skin is basically highly porous. In effect, whatever you lather on your skin, you will ultimately be ingesting through the skin. And this happens without the protection provided by the intestines with regard to the food that you actually eat, i.e., the protective barrier incasing the small intestines because when you lather a substance on the skin, it penetrates right into the blood vessels — no protective barrier. All those crazy chemicals in the suntan lotion — no doubt many of them toxic — are going right into your blood vessels, through the porous skin.

So the issue with sunshine is how much is the right amount, and how much turns into a risk for skin cancer? There’s a healthy amount and an unhealthy amount. Figure that out, and skip the toxic suntan lotion.

Edible

Small Changes Make a Millionaire

Make a small change for better health outcomes in your diet each day. Can be even a very tiny change, but is nevertheless a clear improvement health-wise. But do it every single day without fail. Use some kind of reminder in the morning in order to decide from the get-go what the small change will be for that day. If you miss a day, make 2 small changes the next day to catch up.

In 12 months, your overall diet will be transformed almost completely for vastly better health.

Like the age-old saying goes, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. So it is with diet, also.

Roasted Sweet Potato, Oil Free

5-Day Fast

Completed my first 72 hour fast today. Hunger wasn’t the issue. It was fatigue. Felt fatigue in both my legs and arms. But I do Joel Fuhrman GBOMBS diet with high carbs from complex carbs and whole foods with lots of vegetables and fruit — 200 to 300 grams of carbs a day. So when glycogen/glucose go through the floor, I feel it. My goal is to be able to do two 5-day fasts per year, for the autophagy benefits. Getting there with these baby steps.

Keto or Not Keto?

Hardening of the Arteries

Now they think that the blood cholesterol is not harmful unless it is affected by inflammation. What appears to happen is oxidative stress produces free radical overflow that can change the blood cholesterol from this elongated shape into a shorter and stickier shape, and it is this altered cholesterol that sticks to the artery wall.

LDL cholesterol is a necessary compound for the body. Among other things, it is in all your skin cells, and it is the compound that is turned into Vitamin D with sun exposure. But, nevertheless, I would argue that having excessive blood cholesterol sets the stage for hardening of the arteries from plague (the smaller, stickier LDL) buildup to happen should there be inflammation.

Health — No Accident

Health — No Accident

Health isn’t an accident, it is a choice. You make choices when it comes to nutrition, exercise, rest/sleep, etc. Make the right choices and you get health. If you make the wrong choices, then…

The person who smoked since their teenage years and died prematurely from lung cancer made the wrong choice. It was no accident, it was not fate, it was not in his genes. That person did it to himself.

If you eat a diet low in fiber, you will have intestinal issues and probably leaky gut, which leads to all the autoimmune disorders.

If you eat a diet high in meat and dairy, you are more likely to have heart disease, cancer, and intestinal issues.

If you eat a diet high in saturated fat and dietary cholesterol, you are more likely to have heart disease.

If you eat a lot of refined sugar, refined flour, and processed foods, you are like to have significant weight gain, insulin resistance, and ultimately diabetes.

If you don’t discipline yourself and get regular exercise, you will subject yourself to all the major diseases.

If you don’t get regular and deep sleep, you are not allowing the body to repair itself, and you will suffer the consequences.

All of the above are choices. Make the right ones, not the wrong ones, for the sake of better health. It’s your choice.

Teas

Easy Health Tricks

First thing I do in the morning is drink a half glass of water, as I wake up slightly dehydrated. But instead of just plain water, I put in a few drops of chlorophyll. It is supposed to clear out metallic toxins in the body.

When I drink my black coffee in the morning, it isn’t exactly black. I have this concoction of turmeric/ginger/cinnamon with a pinch of pepper. I add a half a teaspoon of this to the coffee. All three ingredients are supposed to have wonderful anti-inflammation properties.

Bread Again

My Experiment

I’ve been doing this experiment now for about 10 years in retirement. It has been an acceleration of what I was doing before retirement, as I have taken it to a much more intense level.

You see, I’ve grown a bit skeptical of the medical community being in a position to ensure my health. It seems what they offer relative to major illnesses and a general deterioration in one’s health is either pills (bandaids really) or surgery — not real cures.

Which brings me to nutrition. I believe that nutrition plays a huge role in one’s health. You are what you eat is literally true. And I think for the body to achieve maximum health, you have to feed it optimum vitamins and minerals. It’s just that simple. As the ancients understood, treat food as thy medicine. So instead of thinking that the medical community can safeguard my health, I came to believe that nutrition was the main pillar of health, not doctors.

As a consequence, the experiment has been to eat a diet that maximizes nutrition to as high a level as possible, which of course means that you have to have knowledge of nutrition. I’ve been reading about nutrition now for 25 years. I started reading about it in the mid-90s when I was seriously overweight and needed to find a diet that would help me lose the weight (a high fiber diet was the discovery then). So I have the knowledge, guided mostly by Joel Fuhrman and his Eat To Live treatise, but many other books and videos.

I call myself an “almost vegan,” as I’ll go for 6 months totally vegan and then 6 months where I eat a small amount of turkey, back and forth, but very little meat even when I’m eating the turkey (a single slice a day max).

I use cronometer and plan every meal precisely. I also do 19:5 intermittent fasting. My most recent major change has been to try to introduce more variety in my meals, so I started to use the service Leafside for their soups and sweet bowls, but even with those, they are just the starting point, as I add many and various nutritional powders to each to achieve true nutritional excellence. (Note: Leafside plugs their meals as nutritious certainly, but also very easy to make, which they are, but I didn’t go with them for that reason — ease of preparation. I just wanted to introduce a significant level of more variety in my diet with these 12 meals per month, as variety itself is a significant aspect of nutrition — the more the better. I also liked the endorsement by Michael Greger, a recognized authority on nutrition, so I knew from the get-go that their meals were of a high standard nutrition-wise.)

I’m always on the lookout to ratchet up the nutritional intensity of my diet, even with tiny little changes at any time. Now, what I eat on a daily basis is nothing like what anyone else is eating, I’m pretty sure. It is a totally unique diet that has never been done before — by anyone.

So the experiment continues.

Dragon Fruit