You Become what you eat
The problem with healthy eating, apart from noticing it on your waist line, the benefits don’t show up until many years later. The reality is you’re far more likely to die from a chronic disease than an acute illness. The top 10 are’1’ (in order) Heart Disease, Stroke, Lung cancer, Hypertension, Alzheimer’s, Lung disease, Bowel Cancer, Diabetes, Influenza / Pneumonia and breast cancer.
Additionally, in recent decades there has been a massive increase in the number of people suffering from allergies, asthma, autism, osteoporosis, & neurological disorders including depression. It seems though that no one is making any connection between all the potential causative factors.
Although the diseases appear significantly different, researchers are identifying several similar background problems:
Lifestyle habits
Nutrition
Excessive inflammation
Digestive bacteria disorder
Yet the typical treatment is either to find the causative gene, prescribe medication, or head to the operation table. These treatments simply don’t fit the problems.
WHY ARE MORE PEOPLE SICK?
The illnesses are not necessarily new, and are not just a reflection of the fact that we live longer. Since in the last few decades the incidence of these diseases has risen dramatically. The question is what is different?
Consider what has changed recently:
Fewer home grown vegetables
Bought food is treated with many toxic chemicals / pesticides
Many meats are highly treated
Too much food is pre-prepared
Too many medications are taken’2’
The number of vaccines is high
Antibiotic usage is excessive’3’
Fewer people exercise as much
Stress levels are high
Too many Cesarean births’4’
Breast feeding rates are too low’4’
Here’s some new thoughts in research as to the problems:
90% of diseases are caused by inappropriate inflammation’5’
80% of cancers are caused by lifestyle and nutrition habits’6’
Dementia/Alzheimer’s is a form of diabetes’5’
Parkinson's may start in the stomach and travel via the Vagus nerve to the brain’7’
The mercury & Aluminium from vaccines is found in the brains of children with autism’8’
Medication like ASS’9’ and Statins’10’ (blood cholesterol) to supposedly protect your heart actually increases the risk of heart disease. The opposite of what we’ve been told for years.
DISCOVER YOUR BRAIN
Your brain is mostly fat, in fact 20% is cholesterol. Diseased brains are low in fat and cholesterol, and increased total cholesterol levels later in life are associated with longevity. This is the opposite of what have told you, and in many cases still are. Cholesterol is an essential part of nerve cells and how they transport signals. It is also an antioxidant in the brain. For years we have been told that the brain prefers carbohydrates for energy, this is not true. Fat is considered a ‘superfood’ for the brain. It should be becoming clear how wrong medicine has been in their recommendations for being healthy, and the detrimental effect this has on our brain health.
FOOD RESEARCH
Based on the issues raised here, the opinion’5’ is now shifting to a certainty that we generally are:
Eating too many carbohydrates
Using the wrong fats
Eating too little of good fats
Eating too few vegetables
Eating too much fruit
The old food pyramid had us eating 60% carbs, 30% protein, and 10% fats. This was a fabricated piece of research paid for by the sugar industry to shift thinking that fat is bad, sugar is good.
INFLAMMATION
Things like Gluten, carbohydrates, & heated vegetable oils cause inflammatory changes throughout your body’5’.
In your brain this can be the start of degenerative changes, and in your heart and blood vessels the necessary first step for fat deposits to build up. In your lungs it may aggravate asthma and breathing problems. In your digestive tract it can lead to various problems including poor digestion, diarrhoea or constipation, and imbalance of nutrient uptake to support your good health. The wrong foods also cause a dramatic shift in the digestive bacteria you need for good health.
GLUTEN ALLERGY / SENSITIVITY
The hot topic in nutrition is the role of gluten, the sticky part of wheat that makes bread what it is. A very small number of people are properly allergic, and suffer from what we then call Celiac Disease. The question is if many others are somewhat sensitive to one or more sub-types of gluten. The ability to test for this is perhaps only available in the USA for now, but you can also argue that if people get healthier when gluten is removed from the diet, then there is some real – life proof. This patient centred evidence is more than incidental’5’.
THE GUT - BRAIN CONNECTION
Medicine has worked for many decades on the principal that your body is a dis-connected arrangement of organs. That certain body functions are unrelated to other body functions. It’s quite laughable to think this way.
Some excellent research is finally appreciating that everything is related to everything, especially the state of your gut bacteria affecting your health and well being’5’.
The wrong diet can alter your gut bacteria in weeks, adding stress makes it worse. The connection between the gut and the brain is obvious since the vagus nerve, which supplies nearly every organ in your torso, is 80% sensory. Your vagus nerve tells your brain what your organs are up to.
THE GOOD FATS FROM BAD
Clearly resolved is that trans-fats are now considered bad. The range of typical vegetable oils is now also considered highly questionable, firstly because they contribute to inflammation, and secondly when heated create aldehydes, which are known cancer causing chemicals.
You Become What You Eat : The New Perspective
So the fats to use are olive oil (but not for high heat cooking), coconut oil, butter and lard for cooking. These are of course mostly saturated, and you will still read that they are to be limited. This is certainly the case if your diet is still full of carbohydrates and gluten.
Because of the high quantity of the wrong oils, we also consume the wrong balance of Omega oils’11’. The ratio should be around 1:1 of Omega 6 & 3, however this sits for many of us now around 17:1. The Omega 6 oils are associated with high levels of inflammation.
CHOLESTEROL: THE LDL MYTH
For decades the recommendation has been to limit your dietary cholesterol & saturated fats, and if too high then to take statins to reduce your blood levels. This is all unfortunately based on a complete lack of good research’5’.
Low Density Lipoproteins have long been considered the bad cousin to HDL (High DL), and have long been called cholesterol although they are actually lipoproteins. LDLs have been blamed for the build-up of fat on blood vessel walls, which we diagnose as heart disease, or arteriosclerosis. LDLs are however a vital means of supplying your brain with cholesterol. This means the long term consumption of Statins effectively starves your brain and contributes to its deterioration.
The new reality is that the LDL only becomes a problem when it is oxidised’5’, a process that can occur in the presence of too much sugar in the blood. Eating too many carbohydrates consistently puts us in a state when this can occur.
If your diet is low in carbohydrates, then cholesterol is likely no issue, BUT if you eat a lot of carbohydrates, they can and do contribute to arterial fat deposits.
THE NEW APPROACH
This will tip everything on its head for you; the new recommendation is to limit your carbohydrates from ALL sources to around 10% of your calorie intake per day. This means for a male, exercising a little, we’re looking at about 60g per day. This would be achieved by eating 2 average bananas and no other sugars at all in one day. It’s also to be found in about 160g of boiled pasta, or 10 slices of white bread for example’12’.
For protein the recommendation stays around the 30%, and fat takes a big new role at 60%.
To have an idea what this might look like, I’ve taken a day’s suggestion directly from Grain Brain’5’, and it’s not as difficult as it sounds.
EXAMPLE DAY DIET
Breakfast:
2 scrambled eggs, with 30g cheese and unlimited stir fry vegetables (try them cooked into the eggs)
Lunch:
Chicken with Mustard Vinaigrette, with a side leafy green salad with Balsamic & Olive Oil
Dinner:
100g grass-fed Sirloin steak / organic roasted chicken or wild fish, with a side of greens and vegetables sautéed in butter and garlic
Dessert:
Half a cup of berries topped with a drizzle of fresh unsweetened cream
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
As previously mentioned, if you’ve been eating all wrong for a while there are some therapeutic things you could do to assist your body getting into a more healthy state;
1. Take a regular high quality Omega Fish Oils supplement. Ideally sourced from wild fish. Check the Omega 6:3 ratio, it should be around 1:1
2. Take a daily supplement of Turmeric (Curcuma), preferably in a form with Pepper as this seems to dramatically increase the potentcy’13’
3. Vitamin D supplementation should be considered, especially in winter, or if you are highly sunshine averse. Vitamin D is essential for many vital functions of your body, and common opinion is that perhaps 80-90% of the population are deficient’14’.
4. The use of antibiotics should be kept to an absolute minimum, and when used, to be countered for by a good quality probiotic at the same time. It is said that it can take up to 2 years’15’ to restore normal gut bacteria after a course of antibiotics if no probiotics are taken
OVERVIEW
This ChiroNews is not intended to be a personal recommendation for how you should eat. Many people have specific requirements based on existing health conditions. This was written to convey the changes in nutritional knowledge that has appeared over the last few years. We encourage you to read further yourself, and speak directly with a nutritional expert should you have detailed questions.
REFERENCES
1. www.worldlifeexpectancy.com
2. Arzneimittelreport der Barmer GEK, 2013
3. Antimicrobial resistance: risk associated with antibiotic overuse and initiatives to reduce the problem. Llor, C., & Bjerrum, L. Ther Adv Drug Saf. 2014 Dec; 5(6): 229–241.
4. www.faktencheck-gesundheit.de
5. Grain Brain, Dr Perlmutter
6. National Cancer Institute, USA
7. Vagotomy and subsequent risk of Parkinson's disease. Annals of Neurology. Volume 78, Issue 4, 522–529, Oct. 2015
8. Evidence of parallels between mercury intoxication and the brain pathology in autism. Kern, J.K. et.al. Acta Neurobiol Exp (Wars). 2012;72(2):113-53
9. http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/ucm390574.htm
10. Statins stimulate atherosclerosis and heart failure: pharmacological mechanisms. Okuyama H, et.al. Expert Rev Clin Pharmacol. 2015 Mar;8(2):189-99
11. The importance of the ratio of omega-6/omega-3 essential fatty acids. Biomed Pharmacother. 2002 Oct ;56(8):365-79.
13. http://www.healwithfood.org/articles/black-pepper-boosts-turmeric-effects.php
14. www.gesundheitsamt.bremen.de
15. Long-term impacts of antibiotic exposure on the human intestinal microbiota. Jernberg, C. et.al. Microbiology, 2010; 156: 3216-3223