Let’s
get the “Die” out of Diet Several people have expressed their reservations (both on this list
and off) about starting this new “diet” so I wanted to go through the steps we
took again, and maybe set some minds at ease. First of all, please don’t think of it as a “diet.”
This word conjures fear in the bravest of souls! The word “diet” just means
“what you eat.” That’s it. Nothing else. But for so many years, it’s
been construed to mean “I can’t eat this or that or some other thing, or I’ll
get fat!” So let’s just throw that word “diet” out, shall we?
Let’s replace it with “way of eating.” Is that better? What we all are
trying to achieve is a healthier way of eating. There’s nothing scary about that.
Eating healthy food leads to a healthy body and brighter mind, so it’s something we
should want to do. It might be a little harder than grabbing a burger to wolf down while
driving home from work, but isn’t your health and well-being worth a few extra
minutes of your time every day? I know I’ve said these things before, in earlier newsletters, but
maybe it bears repeating, and some of the new people might not know all this if they haven’t
had a chance to wade through all the previous issues yet. When I started changing my
lifestyle habits, it didn’t start with food at all. I had heard that inflammation was
one of the effects of a yeast overgrowth in the body, and that probiotics could correct
the imbalance that was causing the inflammation. I had bad inflammation issues at the
time, and I was willing to try anything. It just so happened I was watching Know the
Cause! and Natasha Trenev of Natren Probiotics was the guest. I’d heard of
probiotics before, but never really looked into what they were, so I knew nothing about
them. Natasha explained it all so clearly, that I decided I had to try it out and see if
it worked. I seriously doubted that it really would work, but I figured I’d give it a
try just to see. So we ordered a 30-day supply, which we thought was outrageously expensive, but hey, what if it did work? At this point, I knew nothing about the bad stuff in all the processed foods we ate on a daily basis. I continued to watch Know the Cause! every day because I wanted to know the cause, and I was so intrigued by what I was hearing about the fungal link to diseases, from arthritis to lupus to diabetes to cancer. I couldn’t afford to buy any of the advertised antifungals, after having paid for those probiotics, so I went through my dried herbs and found a few that were potent antifungals. I started making my morning herb tea with wild thyme, rosemary, and cinnamon, all of which are antifungal. So for one month, that’s all I did – just had my herb tea every morning and a probiotic every evening. By the end of the month, 99% of all my pain had disappeared. This of course, interested Rich, and he reordered a massive supply of
probiotics so I could continue taking them, and he could start taking them too. Maybe six
or seven weeks after I started with the herbs and probiotics, Rich and I had a discussion
about the foods we had been eating. I’ve always liked to cook, so we didn’t eat
all junk food, and the closest burger place to us is 75 miles away, so we didn’t
really eat as badly as we did back in Oregon, but we still stocked up on “convenience”
foods like frozen pizzas and all those little breaded frozen things in boxes they sell at
Sam’s Club (or Costco) that could just be tossed in the oven and heated up. This was
followed by a huge bowl of ice cream every night while watching a movie, covered with
stuff like chocolate syrup, strawberry and pineapple toppings, caramel topping, chocolate
chips, etc. We decided the first thing to go would be the ice cream. We stopped
eating it when we ran out of what we had, and haven’t bought any since. Instead of
ice cream, if we want a late-night snack, we have a bowl of berries (not canned),
sweetened with Xylitol, or a bowl of natural home-made yogurt with stevia and vanilla
added for flavor. Then we got rid of corn. That was really hard because Rich loved those
corn chips and I liked corn on the cob. But by eating one ear of corn, I found out it
caused all my pains to return, so I just eliminated corn from my diet from that day on.
The next thing to go was sugar in general. I started reading labels and avoiding anything
that had sugar in it. I realized one day that I no longer had Restless Leg Syndrome (the
doctors say RLS is incurable – Ha!). Unless I eat something with sugar in it, in
which case it comes right back. So I decided I didn’t need sugar anymore either. OK, so far all we’d done was eliminate sugar and corn. We still
ate everything else, but we read the labels on everything we bought and simply didn’t
buy anything with sugar or corn products in them. We’ve since gone on to eliminate
other foods, such as peanut and soy products, sweet fruits, NutraSweet®, and unhealthy
oils and such, but we took it one step at a time and didn’t rush it. That’s the
key - don’t rush it. Pick a food to eliminate, and then eliminate it. After
you’ve gotten used to that, do another, then another. Start taking some of our advice
about healthy snacks and meals and you might find you like them. But don’t go into
the whole thing with the attitude of “Oh, dear, I can’t eat any of these foods!”
and instead have the attitude of “Wow, look at all this stuff that’s good
for me to eat!” And if you slip up? Don’t worry about it! Just go on from there.
Don’t start carrying guilt around with you every day, because that’s going to
make you give up. There is no “failure” involved here. Anything you can do to
improve your life is better than the way it already is, so there’s no failure if you
eat well for a week, then “fall off the wagon” and eat a donut. Your body will
tell you when it’s unhappy, so learn to pay attention to it. And don’t go overboard. Make sure you get plenty to eat every
day. This isn’t about losing weight (although you will, if you have any to lose); it’s
about getting well and not being sick or sore or tired anymore. I’ve been eating
better for just a little over six months now, and I have never once felt deprived. I eat
stuff like butter, cream cheese, mozzarella cheese, cottage cheese, sour cream, cream and
milk (all considered “fattening”) and still I’ve managed to lose close to 25 pounds without even trying. And I
feel better than I’ve felt in 20 years. My sinuses have cleared up, my skin is
better, my dry cracked heels are healed (I think there’s a Country & Western song
in there somewhere!), my Restless Legs Syndrome is gone, the floaters in my eyes are gone,
my hair doesn’t break off anymore, so I have less frizzies, I don’t have that
nasty stomach ulcer anymore, all my joint pain/tendinitis/bursitis is gone, and my energy
and stamina have
increased by leaps and bounds. Rich and I were talking today about how most people are too tired (or
too lazy) to take the time to cook a decent meal once a day, so they end up eating
take-out or frozen junk food, and I said that if they’d eat good food for a while,
they’d soon have so much energy, they’d be able to cook good food and not be
tired at all. It’s true. But you have to take the first baby step to get started. You
can’t start this journey down the Path to Health by sitting on the couch
eating microwave popcorn, candy, potato chips, or ice cream. Country song to sum it up: One Day at a Time (twang)
followed by “Get ‘er done!” J OK. Lannie has told you her story, but I should probably add what
has changed about me since we started all this. Ummmm… let’s see… I have
lost about 50 pounds in the past year and 15 pounds of that just since we changed the way
we eat last summer (and I didn’t even go into this as quickly as Lannie – I
still hung onto a few bad foods for a few months). No, this is not intended as a
weight loss diet. It’s about getting the toxins out of your food, out of your body,
and getting healthy. I have removed most of the pains this old body had, to the point
where I have trashed four or five different pills I used to take and cut another one to
half the old dose. My blood pressure is also down far enough that I have cut my BP meds in
half too. If things continue to get better like this, I suspect that by next year, I won’t
be taking any prescription medications at all. But wait, those are only the most obvious
changes. One of the things that is going to blow the orthopedic doctor out of his socks this summer is when he sees the new X-rays on my knees. If you remember the newsletter from last summer, those X-rays made my knee joints look like craters on the moon, and he wanted to schedule joint replacement surgery for both knees. The X-ray taken just three weeks ago shows pretty smooth bones, so it sure looks like my arthritis is going away and my body is repairing itself. What else?
Oh, I was diagnosed with severe GERD (gastro-esophageal reflux
disease). Disease my butt! While it is a symptom of too much acid, the acid is not
produced by normal human stomach production, but by modified production due to the
influence of fungi, which loves an acid environment. Well, folks, that is
gone – totally! No meds required, thank you very much. And not even the occasional
heartburn – it is simply gone! There are a few other minor things, like the tendinitis in my
shoulders – I haven’t felt that pain since this started. Bursitis? Gone!
Tinnitus in both ears? Gone! Hemorrhoids? About 90% gone. While we’re on the subject
of gross bodily issues, how about regularity? Like most people, I was subject to bouts of
constipation and the occasional diarrhea. Well, whether I can attribute this entirely to a
change in eating styles or not, I’m not sure. It might have been only the fact that I
have a cup of alfalfa tea every morning (the perfect balanced vitamin package), plus daily
probiotics, but I’m as regular as a jeweled Swiss watch these days. One more in that
area: those Cialis ® and Viagra ® commercials are a waste of time, because all traces of
E.D. are gone. Try to get a doctor to explain that one! And you know those rough scaly elbows a lot of us get? Well, I had
elbows like snake skin (oh, yeah, me, too - I forgot
that), and they are smooth as a baby’s butt now.
No creams, no salves. That cleared up because my skin is getting the nutrients it needs
now and it wasn’t before. My skin looks a lot younger than it did before (though
admittedly it is baggy in some areas because of the rapid weight loss – I still have
some firming to do). Oh, and one more thing that even the optometrist can’t
explain: I had an eye exam a few months ago and got new glasses because my eyes are better
than before. He even said I no longer need glasses at all for driving. I have needed
glasses for distance vision for nearly 40 years! Then about 10 years ago, I had to get
bifocals. Now all I need is the reading glasses. Anyone want to bet what I’ll have
(or not have) by next year? Oh, and just like Lannie, the floaters in my eyes are gone. I
hadn’t even noticed until she said hers were gone, then I went outside to stare up at
the blue sky (the best way to see these little irregular particles) and no matter how hard
I tried, I could not find a single floater. Now, dear ophthalmologist, explain that! Like Lannie says above, this is not a diet. This is a
better way of eating; a lifestyle change, and I believe it is a change for the better
because I sure feel like a brand new man. At almost 57 years old, I am wearing the same
size jeans and weigh the same as when I was in the 7th grade. Oh, and I feel
pretty much like a youngster too. So how about you? What do you feel like? Want to change that? Want
to get better like we did? Gee, try eating the right foods instead of letting those big
corporate profit mongers in the food industry suck your wallet dry while sucking the very
life out of your body (they have a pure profit motive and your health is not
important to them, regardless of what the packaging claims!). And, honest, it really isn’t
hard to do this. Piece of cake, baby! (well, a piece of cake without the sugar, of
course.) J FDA
to Check Tuna U.S. to investigate mercury levels in canned fish The Food and Drug Administration will investigate whether tens of millions of cans of tuna sold each year contain potentially hazardous levels of mercury.
Now, the part that ticks me off, besides the fact that we dump
megatons of garbage in the ocean and contaminate these fish in the first place, is that
the fish industry and the FDA think it is OK for our food to contain a certain percentage
of toxic heavy metals. And, if you go to the above site and read the entire article (about
two pages long), the final comments imply the tuna mongers are pissed that we’re even
concerned about this. Once again, corporate profits are more important than your health. What is Arthritis ?by Dr. Ben
Lerner During my first quarter of graduate school, I had to take a course in medical terminology. As I found out early on, chiropractic school was not much different than medical school. We had to learn to diagnose and, interestingly enough, terminology was the key to diagnosis. One of the first words we learned in that class was the term "-itis." "Itis" is Latin for "inflammation of." Other terminology included some words that probably sound familiar to you:
My classmates and I often laughed as we learned these words, because we realized the vast majority of medical diagnoses weren't actually "diagnoses" at all, but merely turning the name into Latin or something fancy to impress our patients. It's also done, not only to impress, but to make an impact on the patient
so they'll be satisfied they have a diagnosis. So if you're told you have
"arthr-itis," "tendon-itis," "burs-itis" or
"stomat-itis," it means your joint, tendon, bursa sack or stomach hurts. Doctors
can then follow medical protocol and write a prescription to give you drugs that will
hopefully ease the pain. (“Ease the pain” is
another way of saying “treat your symptoms,” not cure you.) "Algia" is another interesting one that means pain. Therefore, "Cephalgia" is a headache. The oft-used diagnosis, "Fibromyalgia," means muscle fiber pain. There's one very serious problem with diagnosing: People feel they have a "condition." Everyone knows, once you have a "condition," you always have a "condition." It's like old phones or luggage that used to last forever. Well, the medical myth that "conditions" last forever has gone the way of the rotary phone too. Arthritis, tendonitis, and fibromyalgia are not death sentences. They're merely Latin terms, combined with fancy medical English phraseologies, for pains that doctors don't understand and conditions for which they have no effective treatment. The key problem for the conventional medicine when it comes to aches, pains and degenerative issues like "arthr-itis": Most doctors are only diagnosing and treating side effects, not the true cause of the problem. While certain types of arthritis can be attributed to extreme genetic weaknesses (they have created names for more than 100 types of arthritis), the most common form conventional medicine treats – they refer to it as "old age" arthritis – is just a side effect. In reality, this type of arthritis is called "osteo-arthritis" ("osteo" means bone, so isn't that name hilarious!). (Yeah, literally, “inflammation of bone joints,” so how many joints do we have that do not include bones?) When someone says his or her right knee has arthritis because, "I'm old," here's how I typically respond: "Really, how old is the other knee?" Properly functioning joints don't degenerate. The
Joint Arthritis is an "inflamed joint." The joints are created by ends of bones meeting. At this point, they are cushioned by cartilage. The knee, hip, shoulder and other bigger joints have a fluid-filled sac called a bursa ("burs-itis"). The inner lining of the joint has a grease-like fluid called synovial fluid, which reduces friction and allows for freedom of movement. If the joint begins to malfunction, this is often coupled by a loss of synovial fluid that would aggravate the bones meeting in the joint. When joints become arthritic, swelling causes stiffness, rigidity, and tissue damage. The body will warn you with pain if the joint moves beyond its present limits. (Now pay close attention because this is important: there is only one reason that you have pain; the body has been damaged in some way and your nervous system/brain are trying to tell you to do something to fix it right now!) It's a vicious cycle because, as mobility decreases, the muscles surrounding the joint also weaken and deteriorate, allowing for further damage to the joint. Eventually, you can have cartilage, ligament and tendon damage, as well as further bone erosion. If these joints are functioning normally and well cared for, however, they just don't "itis." I had an 82-year-old patient who had perfect vertebra, joints, and discs in every part of his spine except for the second vertebrae. Miraculously, he had never had a single trauma his whole life, except one. Because it had only been one, he remembered exactly where, when, and how it happened. When he was 12-years-old, he had fallen off a chair and into an open door. He pointed and showed me the exact point of impact. You can guess where he pointed: To the second vertebra in his neck. Degenerative Arthritis: Their Prevention and Cures The good news about degenerative arthritis: Outside of an extreme genetic circumstance, it can be avoided and even reversed. Common medical wisdom is that if you have arthritis, essentially you're doomed. This could not be farther from the truth. The body does heal. Arthritis is due to a physical or chemical irritant in a joint or the system. (Yeah, it’s called mycotoxins.) If the cause of this irritation is avoided, removed or corrected, your body has a chance to heal. There are endless stories of athletes and people who assumed their physical lives were over, only to reverse the effects of arthritis through a change in lifestyle or help from a chiropractor and go on to become champions. So where do the problems begin? Diet: The majority of carbohydrates, particularly refined
carbohydrates, can aggravate and even cause degeneration. Excess acids in the system do
exactly what they sound like they do: They deteriorate and damage cells. Additionally, the
body's survival mechanism will attempt to neutralize these acids. (Calcium from bone is an
exemplary acid neutralizer.) (And that is exactly where
you get bone spurs – the body’s attempt to neutralize acids in the joints by
directing more calcium to that site.) Therefore, as you consume sugar, flours, grains and other refined carbohydrates, your blood stream ends up in acid overload and you actually give yourself degenerative arthritis. Dairy and caffeine are two additional major acid culprits. Furthermore, fats play a major role in the inflammatory process. Excess
omega-6 and omega-9 fats will add fuel to the fire of arthritis while taking a high quality fish oil helps to quench "the
fire." (This is a good place to add something else
we learned about NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammation drugs, like Aleve®, etc.):
Taking those chemical inflammation reducers also inhibits the body’s ability to
sythesize its own glucosamine, thereby preventing your bones and cartilage from repairing
itself. If you feel you must take NSAIDs, please be wise enough to take Glucosamine
supplements for the duration of NSAID consumption.) Because your level of hydration is also a major factor, water also puts out the fire of arthritis. Walking around on dry joints is just as deadly as it sounds. Note: Clearly this doctor knows some of the foods that are bad for
you, even if he doesn’t know why they are bad. That puts him a step ahead of
other doctors, but he still doesn’t have the whole picture. Alignment and Balance: Think of the tires on your car. When they're misaligned, they wear unevenly. The musculoskeletal system operates the same way. 1. Muscular imbalance: The vast majority of people in today's culture have muscular imbalance. This occurs when the anterior muscles are tighter or stronger on one side of the body than they are on the other. This can happen when muscles in the back are tighter or stronger than those in the front or if the difference has to do with the right and the left. Most people have a combination of both. This dysfunction can occur by sitting at a computer in such a way the shoulders are rolled forward, causing a tightening in the front of the neck, shoulders, chest, hamstrings and calves and a weakening of the rear shoulder, back, abdominal and leg muscles. This incredibly popular imbalance can create a host of degenerative conditions in the neck, back, knees and shoulders. This also commonly occurs due to "handedness" or old injuries that have gone un-rehabilitated. 2. Postural Imbalance: If you stand in front of a mirror, close your eyes and march up and down, you will eliminate your righting reflex and see your true posture. When you open your eyes, you may be surprised at what you see. Look at your hips and shoulders. Is one side higher than the other? Is one side rotated in front of the other? Are they more forward than backward? Look at your head. Do you have "forward head syndrome," in which your chin is jutted out over your chest? Is your head rotated one direction more than the other or bent sideways to the left or to the right? If you found postural imbalance, certain areas of your spine, hips, knees, ankles and feet are bearing more weight than others. These stress areas are going to break down very quickly compared to other areas of your body. For example, if your right hip is rotated forward and that hip is lower than the other, you are putting tremendous strain on the inside of the right knee, foot and ankle, as well as certain areas of the lower spine. Therefore, you are very likely to have trouble or "arthritis" in those joints. 3. Joint misalignment: If the joints of the spine and extremities (arms, hands, legs and feet) are traumatized or overused in some way, they can get out of proper position. Again, using the tire metaphor, the points of imbalance will get overused and there will be wear and tear on the joints and discs. Treatment of
Muscle Imbalance, Posture and Joint Misalignment The most common and disastrous treatment of these conditions I've described is medication. Medication masks the problem allowing you to go on causing massive further damage. Pain is not a warning to be ignored. Doing so is how people end up "old," in wheelchairs, and on operating tables. Muscular imbalances can be detected by chiropractors as well as personal exercise trainers. I recommend seeing a professional who has been trained to identify and correct these conditions. To put it simply, stretching the weak side and strengthening the strong side is necessary here. The exercise and stretching program must be imbalanced to suit your imbalance. Arthritis is not a terminal disease. If that's what you've been told, fire your doctor. The Dangers of Processed Meats In a recent study, over 1,500 patients suffering from colorectal adenomas (precancerous polyps of the colon) were given a survey about their diet. Several years later, they were examined again to see if their polyps had returned. The patients who consumed diets higher in processed meats experienced a greater risk of the problem recurring. However, those with diets high in certain meats, like chicken, were less prone to the risk. Meanwhile, another study indicates that consumption of processed meat raises the risk of elevated blood pressure. The diets and blood pressures of 4,300 subjects were assessed over the course of 15 years. As plant food intake increased, the risk of elevated blood pressure fell. The opposite trend was seen with meat intake. For more information, check out Science Daily December 21, 2005 and/or American Journal of Clinical Nutrition December 1, 2005; 82(6): 1169-1177 |