Understanding Obesity
I’m so sorry. For years, whenever I saw an obese person I perceived weakness. Today, infinitely more enlightened and empathetic, it’s clearly not a weakness. It’s Americans being held hostage by a disastrous food system of nutritionally inferior, highly caloric, low grade, but affordable-with-my-budget foods. The cheaper the food, the unhealthier it is. The U.S. Surgeon General reports obesity causes 300,000 (avoidable) US deaths annually. The National Center for Health estimates 63 percent of Americans are overweight. Obesity is an epidemic. While one of the initial concerns with obesity is about how you look and feel about yourself as a person, the longer the problem exists the more medical problems are going to arise, some of which can be ugly or fatal. It’s suddenly motivating to get back to your kitchen and control the quality of the ingredients. Here’s the skinny on obesity.
- Diabetes leads to obesity due to excess glucose from overeating.
- Cancer has many different forms and types. Many could be prevented with focus on exercise, eating nutrient-dense, low calorie foods and avoiding obesity.
- Overweight patients appear to have an increased risk of developing heart failure,
- Enlarged heart is another heart condition where the muscle of the heart become larger due to being overworked which naturally happens if you’re overheavy.
- A Pulmonary Embolism can fatally block an artery. Being overweight causes most people to reduce activity which can result in a blocked artery.
- Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome cysts can burst causing further problems.
- GERD, common in overweight people means stomach acid and juices flow from the stomach back up into the esophagus.
- Fatty Liver Disease is a reversible condition where large pockets of fat accumulate in liver cells. Fatty liver occurs in those with excessive alcohol intake the obese.
- Assault with a dead weapon? The inability to develop or maintain an erection can be caused by a medical problem due to obesity.
- Urinary Incontinence is associated with obesity, weak bladder and pelvic floor muscles. Chronic Renal Failure, meaning the kidneys fail to work, is a much greater risk to the overweight.
- Stroke is a lack of blood supply as the body has to work harder when you are obese.
- Sleep apnea due to obesity places excessive work on the pulmonary system. Depression can be greatly enhanced for someone that has a weight problem.
- Often time, obesity causes abnormal wearing of bone cartilage. Gout occurs when uric acid accumulates causing extreme pain made worse by carrying extra weight.
- Gallbladder Disease commonly affects overweight people as a result of high blood cholesterol levels and causes gall stones.
Give your overweight friends some compassionate, loving encouragement. It’s not their fault.
Spring Cleaning: Renew, recharge with Botanicals
Ever wonder if your blood needs cleaning just like your car requires a radiator flush? Chronic inflammation, the cause of many diseases, fevers, sore joints and muscles, and skin disorders are signs of funky blood impurities. Maybe it’s time to filter your ‘oil’?
Underneath your skin is a universe; a vast wilderness where thousands of functions intuitively occur, but your temple’s life force needs refreshing after years of inhaling and storing environmental pollution and heavy metals belched from industry, artificial food additives and animal hormones that permeate the insanely unwholesome American food supply, and delightful pharmaceutical drugs with horrifying side effects. It’s unquestionably time for a botanical Jiffy Lube flush.
Since ancient times, man’s used a heavenly cornucopia of herbs to cure his ills. Most of the world’s people still use our creator’s green medicinal gifts to steward their holy temples health. The reason: they’re historically proven, safe and extremely reliable, without side effects. An herbal remedy may be what you need if your internal, unseen universe needs cleaning. And it does.
Does your liver quiver? Milk thistle, silymarin, has been used for 2000 years for liver and gall bladder issues. Studies show silymarin extracts protect the liver from toxins, help repair damage and reduce inflammation. Sweet Red clover, yes the reviled evil weed you spray with ‘MonSatan’s” Round-Up, has traditionally been used to cleanse the blood and relieve skin and liver disorders for centuries. Round-up was recently implicated as the cause of a snarky menu of avoidable human disease. A plant pathologist for 35 years at Perdue, Don Huber asserts Monsanto’s Roundup triggers over 40 plant diseases and endangers human and animal health. Your pipes back up and belly bloating? Give the bums rush to stagnate fluids with, gasp, Dandelion Tea. Use the jagged leaves, but be sure they haven’t’ been chemically sprayed nor peed upon. Woof!
Another easy-peasy way to sustain your gastrointestinal track and remove accumulated internal toxins a healthy is our old friend licorice; the supplement, not the sugary candy. Licorice root improves circulation in the digestive tract lining and keeps intestinal cells vibrant. It can, however, make blood pressure rise, so don’t overdo it.
With any effort to cleanse your temple of pesky toxins, always drink plenty of good, clean water to flush the pipes and kidneys and then cut back on the booze. Booze is a toxin and stresses out your liver and other innards. That’s why you feel like dog-doo the next day. Your body is dealing with the toxins and your brain has shrunk do to dehydration.
You’ll be beautiful on the outside when you clean out your inside. Love yourself.
I will honor my ‘insides’
After dusting off the dreary grayness of winter and savoring spring’s first tender greens, consider the infinite universe below your skin. Often overlooked, your inner ecosystem brims with trillions of needy inhabitants and instinctive chemical reactions dependent upon a green, pure, fresh diet, harmonious with our design. Our body intelligence is fed by our creator’s gifts of nutrient-rich plant foods.
Americans have departed from the path of nutritional righteousness. Humans must learn about eating; to sustain their Temple’s properly by cultivate positive eating habits and allow creation’s food to nourish rather than punish us. That’s the way God planned it; a strong, healthy and beautiful temple.
It’s stirring to see how swiftly the seed of holy temple ecology is being reborn within man’s budding ‘green’ awareness. To restore, give health and prop up your inner ecology, your temple needs to function with efficiency to eliminate the ill health robbing you the joy of living. Enter Hippocrates, the father of medicine who waxed poetic in 400 BC, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
The green movement focuses on the external world of objects and resources; however while ‘greening’ what lies beneath your 1.5 mm of flesh, you need a methodology for compassionately understanding the mechanisms and innate intelligence by which it operates. By foraging from Earth’s universal apothecary, we simultaneously nurture and heal our inner and outer environment. Consuming a rainbow of sustainable local foods crammed with vital cosmic energy cultivate, refresh and strengthen your Earth Suit’s mind / body ecosystem like a fresh spring breeze. After considering both and making informed choices, you’ll discover local foods are eternally more flavorful, provide more energy, contain vastly more nutrients and make the cooking process a joyful celebration.
There are many alarming environmental factors affecting gut ecology. Our body intelligence does not recognize alien contrived manmade junk food not fit for human consumption. These fake ‘foods’ and the air you breathe worm their way into digestion. Mono-crop faming and not allowing fields to go fallow, cause’s deficiencies in trace minerals, such as zinc and selenium which aid elimination of toxic elements in food and prop up healthy biological processes. Depletion of nutrients by means of mono-crop agribusiness compromises below-the-skin ecology and the ability to synthesization essential vitamins; ergo; many are undernourished, susceptible to disease in the greatest country on earth. From reading this column, you’ve learned this intimately.
Eating unconsciously without thinking, leaves you vulnerable to select foods less healthy for your family and Mother Earth. Savor the true flavor; ponder its source, flavor and texture, what it’s doing for your insides and then express gratitude. You’re worth it.
Cooling inflammation problems
From Alzheimer’s’ to vaginitis, inflammation causes 80-90% of all disease. Continuous, uninhibited chronic inflammation is not normal; a disease condition; the root of cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, painful arthritis and much more.
Inflammation, your temple’s normal response to irritating internal damage, is your defense system. Authorities encourage ‘cooling’ inflammation with real, fresh heavenly sun blessed foods, not GMO, or blazing conflagration of industrial strength research laboratory ‘foods’. You can only toss garbage into your temple so long until it freaks out. If you drink booze, eat doughnuts, fast food, deli, fried foods, gravy, sugar, AP flour, lots of meat, and inhale environmental toxins and ‘Chem Trail’ residue, but loathe glorious produce, you’re innards are on fire. Inflammation naturally destroys toxic material in damaged tissues before it spreads. Autoimmune disease is a group of disorders in which your immune system attacks healthy cells in your temple by mistake.
Obesity can cause internal inflammation which leads to cardiovascular and metabolic disease, according to the National Council on Strength & Fitness. Weight loss, though, is related to reduction of inflammation, and the correct anti-inflammatory foods are the tasty answer. Invite spinach, kale, broccoli, and turnip greens to your diet. They brim with magnesium that relaxes heart muscles and improve heart function. Try about ½ cup a day, but if you’re on Coumadin / Warfarin talk with your phlebotomist. Green tea is a potent anti-inflammatory shown to reduce heart disease and cancer risk.
Virgin olive oil’s polyphenols protect the heart and blood vessels from inflammation. The monounsaturated fats in olive oil are converted into anti-inflammatory agents by the temple and can lower occurrences of auto-immune asthma psoriasis and RA.
Broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts contain anti-inflammatory nutrients which help your temple rid itself of potentially carcinogenic compounds. Sweet potatoes are groovy sources of complex carbohydrates, golden beta-carotene, manganese, vitamin B6 and C and dietary fiber. Working in concert, these powerful antioxidants help heal inflammation in your temple. And, wild-caught salmon contains soothing omega-3. Cacao, not cocoa, can lower blood pressure, reduce inflammation, reduce platelet formation, increase HDL and reduce oxidation of LDL cholesterol. Cacao vs. cocoa is an uber rich source of flavonoids; even more than tea and red wine. Dark chocolate contains more polyphenols and flavonoids than milk chocolate. Sorry, M & M’s don’t count.
Turmeric helps turn off certain genes that cause heart scarring and enlargement. Curcumin or turmeric helps to reduce the heart muscle and also prevents it from enlarging. Regular intake of anti-inflammatory turmeric may help reduce bad cholesterol and high blood pressure, increase blood circulation and prevent blood clotting thereby preventing a heart attack.
So cool it by eating fresh.
“Meat” your health and global warming
It’s a hard-sell in, central Indiana and honestly, a meatless diet is not everyone’s cup ‘o green tea. Occasion I’m verbally tarred and feathered for questioning one’s alleged God-given right to eat meat all day.
The Cleveland Clinic discovered it’s not saturated fats or cholesterol from a fatty steak that’s triggering heart problems, but a chemical process involving gut bacteria found in meat called carnitine. CBS News reported eating a diet heavy in red meat is a risk for cancer, diabetes and heart disease. The new study found eating red meat every day increases a person’s chances of dying from a chronic disease by 12 percent. Life is too beautiful; a sacred, treasured gift.
On the other hand, plant-based nutrition prevents human disease and degradation of our earth from the constellation of poisons and animal husbandry chemicals besmirching Earths air, water, soil and your food. University of Chicago researchers estimated switching to a plant-based diet has a bigger impact on the environment than trading in a gas guzzler for a Prius. Carnegie Melon University suggests switching to a Locavore, plant-based diet or go semi- vegetarian. A locavore eats food grown or produced 50 or 100 miles, usually for the higher nutrition levels, freshness, and to reducing its carbon foot print. Say hello to community Farmer’s markets.
When cows fire off air biscuits, the fragrant gas emitted accounts for one-third of all the world’s methane emissions, thus guilty of felonious environmental assault causing acid rain, desertification and the destruction of coral reefs. In addition, it takes 5000 gallons of water to produce one pound of meat protein; 12 gallons to produce one pound of plant protein. By moderating beef consumption, you’d save over 200,000 precious gallons a year. Notable considering the geopolitical concern “Is the West Running out of Water.” I’m just saying’….
A weekly vegetarian family meal keeps Mother Earth green and leaves you feeling on top of the world. Plant crops have less fat and carbohydrates than meat and dairy products and infinitely more groovy vitamins, enzymes and minerals that repair, rebuild and restore our mutual milieu. Celebrate the universes’ generous gift of health and habitat by encouraging your family and friends to embrace an earth-saving approach to eating and living. It’s time to return to the joyous act of cooking from scratch. Combating global warming can be as simple as the act of preparing a PBJ for lunch.
Practice Meatless Monday. Your temple uses lots of energy to digest meat, so cutting back can speed-bump aging and wrinkling. Once a week cut out the meat; you won’t perish, I promise. Think of the money you’d save.
Honey
Honey: Rethink the Bee
Despite escalating colony collapse allegedly due to agricultural chemicals, bees remain a most organized group. As you stir an amber teaspoon of nectar into your Chamomile, sip on this: The average honeybee makes one-twelfth teaspoon in a lifetime. Two million plant flowers need to be tapped, and 55,000 miles must be logged to produce a pound. Bees visit 50 to one 100 plant flowers during one trip. Your tea just became a celebration of Earth’s natural, abundant bounty and glory in delicate symbiosis.
Responsible for pollinating three quarters of the world’s food crops, honeybees provide an essential service to agriculture, nevertheless honeybees have been dying in large numbers for years, and it’s getting worse.Without bees, there will be no food. And yet while bee bodies pile up, no one has a solution.
Over 150 million years ago, bees were busy producing mankind’s oldest sweetener. Solitary bees appeared 25 million years ago and they became social insects about 10 to 20 million years ago. Honey production is a willing proposition between the queen, drone, worker bees and horny, pollen-laden flowers; a lot of work to perpetuate the species.
Ancient Egyptians used it to treat cataracts, cuts and burns. Ancient Chinese covered small pox sufferers with honey to speed healing and prevent scaring. In Greek and Roman mythology, honey was “ambrosia’, food of the gods. Palatable honey was discovered in the tombs of ancient Egyptians Pharos; prehistoric man painted man-harvesting honey. Honey never goes bad since it’s acidic and therefore not conductive for bacterial growth. The Bible mentions Honey or Honeycomb over 40 times. In the book of St. Luke 24:42, after Christ rose risen from the dead, the first food he eats is ‘broiled fish and honeycomb.’
An intense carbohydrate honey is a source of energy. Not only does honey contain minerals calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorous, potassium sodium and zinc but is chocked full of niacin, B6, thiamin, riboflavin and pantothenic acid.
Unfiltered, ‘RAW’ local Farmer’s Market honey Farmer’s Market is supreme. Honey may be included in a controlled, diabetic diet. Diabetics must comply with medical instructions.
In ancient Babylon, for a month after the wedding, the bride’s father would supply his son-in-law with all the Mead honey beer he could drink. Because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the “honey month” or the “honeymoon.” Traditionally, the bride and groom would consume the traditional, “Honeymoon Salad’; Lettuce alone with no dressing.
Respect what earth offers; wind rustling through the trees, gilded edged clouds bursting with silver rays of sun, birds floating motionless then descending with ease to snatch a tasty grasshopper, and busy bees flourishing in a miraculous, wondrous world we take for granted.
Journey to the middle of your colon
Our friends love when Sandi and I cook dinner for them. More than once, we’ve received next-day thank you calls with the comment, “Wow, dinner was great, but I’m sure things came out of me this morning I ate when I was 6.” Their diet was so deficient in fiber that when roughage was consumed, their colon stimulated what comes naturally; the urge to purge.
Every spring, humans intuitively return temporarily to the road of nutritional righteousness, preparing for warm weather and to flush winter from their intestines. Your inner universe is a labyrinth of pipes. Keeping the pathway moving between point ‘A’ and point ‘B’ requires a plumbers snake if you eat a fireless meat and potato diet. To stay healthy and feel good, everyone needs to keep their colon flowing like White River in the spring. The holy temple is truly remarkable, but has limits. Growing up, we were taught our innards could handle whatever we fed it. I’ve learned, however, our temple simply can’t handle the types and large amounts of the meats and processed plastic foods without traumatizing the colon; the largest organ housing 80% of the immune system.
Due to the lack of fibrous plant foods, meals take forever to exit, generating a stagnant 98.6 ° environment. Most fiber-less folks carry about 10 undigested meals backed up; fermenting, rumbling and releasing methane while brewing toxins deep inside their heavenly temple universe. You are now beginning to visualize the unwholesome consequences of a fiber-less diet and subsequent internal pollution.
Elvis ‘left the building’ due to a heart attack and drug overdose whilst sitting upon his throne. His fiber-less diet include mashed taters’ and gravy, white bread, unctuous meats, gobs of bacon, sausage gravy, fried anything and sweet potato cream cheese pie. His autopsy revealed The King’s large and obstructed colon weighed nearly 60 pounds; the average human colon weighs around 4 pounds. Can you say severe constipation?
I hesitate berating your tastes in food, but the average 50 year old meat-eater has up to 8 pounds of indigestible food decomposing in their bowels. This loitering food is the common cause of what many people mistakenly think of as the “price of good living”; soaring rates of colon and pancreatic cancers by the age of 50-60.
Humans wouldn’t require Roto-Rooter if they’d include fresh produce, nuts, beans, ground flax seed, quinoa, Steele cut oats, wheat germ, rice bran or oat bran in their dally edibles. If you’re fraught with constipated and in desperately resort to toxic Ex-Lax, be sure it’s not the same night you take a sleeping pill. Fiber-up my dear friends.
Feelin’ groovy every day
There are functions your temple must perform to remain vertical rather than horizontal: sleep, breathe and eat.
Many of you have no problem sleeping and have successfully mastered the joy of napping. Everyone breathes spontaneously and automatically flee funky air. When it comes to eating, we’ve been erroneously conditioned to consume today’s artificial food expecting our sacred temple to grapple with it. Well, health statistics indicate this catastrophic mindset has failed with panache’. You can only eat processed food so long till it extracts its pound of flesh. You cannot fully connect with the great creator, grow your soul or achieve your career potential unless you first feed the temple nourishment it was consigned: 40 basic vitamins minerals, enzymes, protein, unrefined carbs and fats that heal. Currently, Krap, er Kraft Foods, Nestle, Coke, Nabisco and PepsiCo are nations’ deeply biased nutritionists. In a New York Times article, the President of General Mills was quoted, “Don’t talk to me about nutrition. Talk to me about taste.” Book ‘em Danno!
A good night’s rest improves your day. Taking in deep, refreshing breaths energize and feeds your brain. However, your loosey-goosey food choices bring you down. Your diet should provide everything necessary for daily physical and mental activity. What’s eaten profoundly affects your weight and odds of acquiring a disease. Eating real, fresh foods keeps your weight down. Research has recently proven if your diet is poor, full of fast, convenient food, you’ll become obese. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services say overweight folks are at risk for high-blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, osteoarthritis, arthritis, respiratory problems and cancer.
If you were raised on processed foods, the idea of eating heavenly vegetables, salads and fish in place of pizza, chips, ‘Poop Tarts, and candy may gag you. The more habitual your junk food consumption, the more difficult it may be to change. It’s human to become disconnected to your hunger center and to eat with your eyes, wanting to eat something because it looks yummy. Earthlings are easily seduced by taste, smell and appearance. Inexpensive as they may be, avoid all-you-can-eat buffet restaurants. While children are starving in Africa, you’ll be sampling “just a bite” of every ‘carbo-licious’ dish, consuming excessive inferior calories, when a humble soup and green salad would have sufficed. The greater the variety, the more you tend to eat. Add more choices, and consumption increases by an average of 25%. In contrast, a fresh, whole foods diet doesn’t usually lead to overeating. Eating healthy involves self-discipline but doesn’t prohibit an occasional indulgence for a job well done. Discover how good you were designed to feel.
Psssst! Want a free cookie?
Psssst! Want a free cookie?
About one-quarter of what you eat keeps you alive; three quarters of what you eat keeps your food ‘dealers’ alive.
Could you stop eating addictive fast foods, or do you need reality TV Food Rehab? Diets don’t work. Education doesn’t work and Big Food rejoices. As populaces eat slime oozing from the Western food cartels they’ve gotten fatter and sicker. Processed zombie foods, the greedy corporate predators that produce it, and indifferent government leaders are responsible. Around 85% of food you eat is processed, and the nutrient profiles of those products are determined by the Keebler Elves and detached manufacturers. Remember, if you don’t recognize an ingredient, your exquisitely designed temple won’t either.
Retired FDA Director, Dr. David Kessler discloses Big Food combines fat, sugar and salt to stimulate reward centers in the brain; opiates causing addiction like tobacco and heroin. You crave these foods and can’t stop eating them. Sound familiar? You’re not alone. How long will they repeatedly fail before begrudgingly doing something virtuous: after they’ve emptied America’s pocket? A speaker at the symposium on ‘Sugar, Fat, and the Public Health Crisis’ said the options available to policy makers and governments are severely restricted, but there’s hope that working with industry in an ethical approach could lead to success dealing with a nation’s disintegrating health.
Can we get all the addictive ingredients causing untold suffering out of processed foods and replace them with heavenly-sourced ones which will not harm, but benefit mankind? Eventually, but we can’t change millions of decision maker’s dark hearts overnight. All we can do is make better, more educated choices today. That’s what this column’s about; information leading to life-enhancing shopping and lifestyle choices.
The only sane solution to transcending the preventable invasion of obesity and diabetes is for food manufacturers and un-lobbied policy makers to look into their hearts and souls, and agree to reformulate addictive processed foods with proper nourishment to advance our species. Yes, there have been slight improvements in the nutritional content of processed foods in recent years leading some folks to assume what we eat now is much better. However, that argument is a big fat pants-on-fire, seat in Hell for Big Food pushers!
Most folks don’t have any idea how good their temple is designed to feel. Use natural substitutes for addictive sugar, grease and salt and put in wholesome ingredients like omega-3 fatty acids, a food-based multi-vitamins, and vitamin D. The American food system has gone horribly wrong. But it can also go joyfully right. You can do it; start from where you are now, not where you would like to be and ‘just say no!’ to grocery store ‘Drug’ Dealers.
We sure love our salt
For the first time in America history, more people will die from overeating processed foods than from starvation. The Canadian Medical Association Journal compared salt content of 2,124 items from Burger King, Domino’s Pizza, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and Subway. The amount of salt in today’s diet is causing our immune systems to rebel against us, causing MS, asthma, psoriasis and Crohn’s. Sodium causes fluid retention in congestive heart failure patients, high BP, cirrhosis and kidney disease.
One packet of KFC’s Marzetti Light Italian Dressing only has 15 calories and 0.5 grams fat, but 510 mg sodium. Bread is the No. 1 source of refined salt consumption in the American diet, according to the CDC. Just one 6-inch Roasted Garlic loaf from Subway; just the bread, no meat, no cheeses, no nothing, has 1,260 mg sodium, as much as 14 strips of greasy bacon.
Yale scientists say salty junk food diets could be partly to blame for Auto-Immune disease, heart disease and cancer. Yale University says your temple’s T cells help other cells fight dangerous pathogens. Scientists discovered exposing these cells in a lab to a table salt solution made them more aggressive. Our Creator had clearly not intended for the immune system to attack its host body. It develops when the immune system mistakes nerve fibers in the brain and spinal cord for a foreign invader. It strips nerve fibers, disrupting messages passed between the brain and body causing problems with speech, vision and balance.
Refined, processed and bleached salts are the problem. Salt is critical to our health and the most readily available nonmetallic mineral on earth. Our temples are not designed to process refined sodium chloride since it has no nutrition. However, when salt is rose-colored crystals of Himalayan rock salt or the grey texture of Celtic salt, our temples benefit enormously. “These mineral salts are identical to the elements of which our bodies have been built and were originally found in the primal ocean from where life originated. We have salty tears and salty perspiration. The chemical and mineral composition of our blood and body fluids are similar to sea water. From the beginning of life, as unborn babies, we are encased in a sack of salty fluid.”
Too few minerals, starvation, rather than too much salt, may be to blame. Salt’s always been part of the human diet, but what has changed is the mineral content of our food. Instead of eating food high in minerals, such as nuts, fruit and vegetables, people pig out on “mineral empty” processed food and fizzy drinks. If you think you’re having too much of a good thing, you probably are.