Insomnia, the bane of my existence. I know what curse I would use for enemies.
Category: Health
Fat
Twenty years or so ago, it was the low-fat craze — they demonized fat. Then we discovered the body needs fat, and was especially low in Omega 3 fats, so the mantra was eat the right fats. But now the pendulum has swung all the way over to the over consumption of fat — the Keto diet recommends that 70% of what you eat should be fat. The Keto people are even now apologists for how “healthy” saturated fat is. Crazy.
But don’t let it upset you. Just wait another 20 years and fats will be all bad again.
Sugar Addicts
I’m on vacation in Charleston, and every morning I go to a bakery selling “gourmet donuts.” I buy a cup of coffee there, not a donut. But every morning, without fail, I see a parent come in with their children, and they excitedly buy these donuts that have an incredible amount of sugar and unhealthy fat — just way over the top, yet the parents feed their kids this stuff without a thought in the world, no hesitation at all.
I just have to think that the parents are really just completely clueless about nutrition and food to be doing this, for clearly they would not intentionally harm their own children, would they? They simply must have no idea at all how really bad refined sugar is for health, for each one of these donuts is like a sugar nuke — the sugary frosting is so incredibly thick (that’s the “gourmet” part, I guess), and so must be an intense explosion for the taste buds as well as an incredible surge of dopamine. All this a strong reinforcement for a food that could not be worse for health. Makes one wonder about how reprehensible these parents really are — or does ignorance excuse them?
I also see the same people show up every morning at the donut shop — sugar addicts, whether they know it or not.
Leaky Gut
I keep coming across references to problems developing when there are breaks in the lining of the small intestines, which leads to inflammation. Apparently that wall that separates the small intestines from the blood vessels is only one cell thick. It seems that that problem, a leaky gut, can lead to all kinds of problems.
The last one I read about had to do with plaque in the blood vessel. The author asserted that with a leaky gut, proteins that shouldn’t have gotten into the blood vessel, do get in. This causes a white blood cell attack on them but also, indiscriminately, on LDL as well (the white blood cells go crazy attacking all proteins), which can lead to a break down in the cholesterol molecule, which creates the smaller version of the cholesterol that tends to stick to the blood vessel walls. So if this is true, a break in the lining is a prime cause of plaque build up in the blood vessel.
But if there is a break in the lining, a huge range of baddies, like toxins, can get into the blood vessels and cause havoc. I suspect a lot of the autoimmune problems today stem from breaks in the lining of the small intestines, as the white blood cells go on a tear and attack everything. Anyway, here’s a very good reason not to juice, as you toss out that precious fiber, which ultimately keeps that lining intact.
Oils
Everyone knows how much sugar in various forms the food industry puts into processed foods — even bread has added sugar now. What is perhaps less well known is how much oil they add to everything as well. So many processed foods that you wouldn’t think require any added oil have oil added to them. Again, just manipulation of the taste to get people to crave the item. Yet the oil adds a ton of empty calories. Doesn’t seem that our food industry cares very much about your health and well being.
Why Are We All Fat?
Rampant obesity. Why?
Protection Against Cancer
Cinnamon and ground cloves every day. Both with extremely high ORAC values — off the chart. Also, consider broccoli sprouts, turmeric, and cacao.
Fascinating — Micronutrients
Enzymes
The book I’m reading about enzymes makes the argument that, if you supplement with a digestive enzyme pill, this relieves some of the pressure on the pancreas to create digestive enzymes, so that the body can then make a fuller complement of metabolic enzymes, which are critical to your health: Enzyme Nutrition by Dr. Edward Howells.
He argues that you should take a digestive enzyme supplement, but also eat more raw food because the enzymes in raw food have not been destroyed by heat. Again, the enzymes in raw food take the pressure off the pancreas to create digestive enzymes and so you get a boost to your metabolic enzymes.
In other words, he sees an inverse relationship between digestive enzymes and metabolic enzymes. Eat a lot of cooked and/or processed foods without any enzymes, and your pancreas will be doing double time, and your metabolic enzymes will be that much weaker, which leads to serious illnesses.
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What Mysteries Hath Fasting?
They now have discovered what they are regard as human remains in Morocco that are carbon dated back 300,000 years. Our immediate predecessor, Homo erectus, goes back even further — a cool 1 million years.
Guess what, during most of that “deep” time there were no supermarkets on every other block and no industrial farms to keep everyone fed. And then of course there was the harsh weather in winter. Winter was not a bountiful time for food.
No question that for much of our early history, that is, prior to the early Roman Empire (which is only yesterday in the scheme of things), mankind lived a life of the hunter/gatherer with many periods of little food, if not frequent outright starvation. So over those 300,000 years, the body adapted to that circumstance. It adapted by having two sources of nourishment for the cells — glucose or ketones, that is, a sugar from recently digested food or existing stored fat. But the glucose or sugar was given priority so that the fat resources in the body would accumulate, and be available for the next onslaught of starvation.
It turns out that this is the “natural” rhythm of the body — to prioritize the use of glucose when there is plenty of food to be had, but also to burn off the stored fat when the inevitable periods of starvation reared up.
Fast forward to today when we eat with the regularity of a clock and never experience the natural starvation cycle. And so what happens? Instead of being periodically purged of stored fat, the modern body just keeps accumulating it. And now 40% of Americans are considered overweight and obese. It’s not hard to understand why. They no longer practice the healthy practices that evolution has stamped on human digestion over those prehistoric 300,000 years — our real heritage.
But wait, scientists are just starting to peek behind the covers of a return to a more natural rhythm in the form of disciplined FASTING. And researchers are beginning to make astonishing discoveries of the myriad health benefits of serious fasting when the body is depleted of glucose and must use ketones instead. For modern man, there may be some marvelous cures in the offing from fasting, as per the documentary listed below. To wit, it seems cancer cells adore glucose — they thrive on sugar — but are very fussy eaters when it comes to ketones.
It’s all so counter intuitive. You would think the body would get weaker and more vulnerable when not eating, but it appears that it may get healthier, perhaps a lot healthier, if the period of food deprivation is not too extreme. The famous quotation from Nietzsche may apply: “Whatever doesn’t kill you simply makes you stronger.”
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Henry's Views 