by Loraine Holden • December 31, 2009
A recent article on Netscape says 34% of Americans are now obese as compared to 15% in 2000. High blood pressure has increased slightly during the past 10 years from 28% to 29%. These increases are blamed on eating more fat and more salt.
There are no statistics in the article. Other sources say that eating fat has been decreasing while consumption of sugars, expecially high fructose corn syrup, keeps increaseing from the 150 pounds per person noted in 2005.
Eating fat doesn’t make you fat. It helps you feel satisfied so you don’t consume too many carbohydrates, especially sweet liquids. It keeps the cellular enzymes that burn fat, the most efficient dietary fuel. Without enough dietary fat the enzymes that make fat out of carbohydrates increase dramatically and you get fatter.
Dietary salt does not cause high blood pressure. Your healthy kidneys can excrete it if you get more than you need. Historically most high blood pressure has been caused by smoking since nicotine makes your heart beat faster but meanwhile causes your blood vessels to get clamp down and get narrower. High insulin and high stress hormones can also raise your blood pressure.
by Loraine Holden • September 16, 2009
My book mentions the separate research by Dr. Bantle, Minne.U. and Dr. Reiser of the USDA. They found that high-frucatose corn syrup produced a lot of LDL-cholesterol and blood fats in both diabetics and normals.
Dr. Dana Flavia in the October 2008 issue of Life Extension cites later research that shows many harmful effect of high-fructose corn syruup. Its use over the past thirty years parallels the increase in obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, insulin resistance, cardiovascular disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver, high uric acid and more aging of all cells.
AGE stands for advanced glycation end products. These are formed when excess sugars bind with proteins in cell walls. This makes them prone to injury, causing inflammation and deposts of cholesterol in blood vessels. These glycation end products can also damage cells in kidneys, nerves and the retina. This type of damage from high blood glucose has been seen for years in diabetics. However, fructose has ten times the cross-linkage rate with proteins as glucose so does much more damage.
Fructose is metabolized differently than glucose. It goes to the liver and is often changed into LDL-cholesterol and triglycerides (fats). Some gets into the blood stream to clog your arteries. Some fats stay in your liver cells, causing cirrhosis just like excess alcohol
High-fructose corn syrup can also raise uric acid, a cause of gout. This was shown in a study of 15,000 Americans and a 2008 Canadian study. A Harvard study showed an increase of kidney stones from this high uric acid.
If you’re told you have high blood pressure or high cholesterol or blood fats, don’t blindly take pills to get these values down. Think what might be causing them. Too many people think that fat or cholesterol in their blood vessels must be from animal foods, despite the fact that humans have eaten fat and cholesterol for eons of time. But in the last hundred years, food manufacturers have given you many artificial products. They want you to think that anything derived from a plant must be good and it it’s from an animal it must be bad. Recently doctors realized that trans-fats in Crisco and margarines are not used by the body as are natural saturated fats, lard and butter. How long will it take to get medical and public acceptance of the fact that high-fructose corn syrup causes more damage to your body?
Table sugar has one molecule of fructose to each molecule of glucose. It’s use has increased from 20 pounds a person per year in the 19th Century to 100 pounds by 1970 and now with the addition of high-fructose corn syrup, 150 pounds of sweeteners a year. Our bodies over the centuries have not been programmed to cope with so much sugar, especially the huge amounts of high-fructose corn syrup added to most manufactured foods and beverages. It is ruining our health and might be the main cause of the ever increasing cost of health care as obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other metabolic diseases keep going up.
Just say no to sweet soft drinks. Diet drinks with Aspartame cause other problems.
Read labels and use table sugar for your rare dessert or Stevia (from a tropical leaf) to sweeten your coffee or tea.
Take control of your health by using natural foods and beverages.
by Loraine Holden • August 4, 2009
by Loraine Holden • July 8, 2009
The average person has several misconceptions about how the body works.
They think that eating fat makes you fat, that you need carbohydrates for energy and that eating proteins always builds muscle.
The energy content of foods being digested and used within body cells is not necessarily the same as the values when a food is burned in a scientific calorimeter.
Too many people have gotten obese because they quit eating fat since it has over twice as many calories as a carbohydrate or protein. Better to believe the authors who say “Calories Don’t Count”. “Calories In minus Calories Used to produce energy equals Weight Loss or Gain” might be useful in calculating the calories used by a machine but it is too simplistic to apply to the thousands of chemical reactions in each cell in each organ. The Atkin’s Diet wouldn’t work if calorie content versus energy used was the only consideration.
Fat is more than a storage tissue in the human body, though It can be made from any food in excess.
Fat is the most efficient source of energy for moving muscles, especially the heart which is beating continuously. Burning carbohydrates for energy takes almost 20 reactions to get to the same active molecule in the mitochondria that can be made by removing two-carbon fragments from the fatty acids of a fat molecule. Marathon runners who rely on glycogen or glucose to keep going often get cramps from the accumulation of lactic acid, a by-product of partial burning of blood sugar. The Tarahumara Indians of Mexico who can run for days use body fat for energy. All birds that fly long distances burn fat for energy.
There’s a difference between the ease of digestion of a food and how it’s later used inside body cells. Fat is slow to digest. In fact it sends a signal to the brain to slow down the emptying time of the stomach. So after a fat meal you aren’t hungry for hours. Once in the small intestine fat goes up tiny tubules, called lacteals that by-pass the liver and into a large vein directly to the heart. Meanwhile, the sugars or starches in the diet enter the blood vessels and signal the pancreas to make insulin to allow all cells to absorb blood sugar. In a sedentary person this sugar becomes fat. Most body fat is made from sweet liquids, even orange juice. Sugars are easily absorbed and are the usual source of abdominal fat. The liver often changes blood sugars into blood fats and cholesterol. The use of anti-cholesterol drugs roughly parallels the introduction and use of high-fructose corn syrup in more and more foods. At the same time manufactured foods have less fat. The rise of obesity and diabetes in the past thirty years can be correlated with the rise of sugar from the high 100 pounds per person in 1970 to the excessive 150 pounds of sugar and high fructose corn syrup per person today.
Fat from animals raised in factory farms has given fat a bad name. Cancer and other maladies blamed on animal fat are from insecticides and other toxins in the fat. The Amish and persons in other countries that grow their animals organically don’t suffer from these diseases of civilization.
The fat on the body of an obese person can’t be easily burned for energy. A person who doesn’t get enough dietary fat has many fewer enzymes in body cells that burn fat, but too many enzymes that turn carbohydrates into fats. Not eating fat can make you fatter. In fact animal experiments show that the livers of rats who got no fat in their diet had a 2000 fold increase in enzymes that make fat from sugars compared to rats on a balanced diet.
Don’t be afraid of eating fat as long as it’s organic but beware of high fructose corn syrup, trans-fats and other chemicals in manufactured foods.
Your body is not a machine. You are a mammal whose genes have developed over eons to use natural foods along with enough exercise.
by Loraine Holden • April 24, 2009
Aspartame has harmed many people. This is the major sweetener in most diet soft drinks and low calorie foods. Just because it has been around a long time doesn’t mean you can use it.
Saccharine had been used since the 1920s but was finally phased out when large doses caused cancer in laboratory animals.
In the 1960s cyclamates were widely used in diet soft drinks. When I heard of a study in Japan that small doses of cyclamates caused the death of fetuses in laboratory animals, I warned a friend. She didn’t want to gain weight during pregnancy as she had before the birth of two normal children, so she substituted diet colas instead of the real thing. However the fetus died at about the fifth month in two subsequent pregnancies. Use of cyclamates was discontinued when this side effect was reported by many doctors.
Aspartame seemed to be the ideal sugar substitute since it contained two amino acids used by mammals. However, that’s not all. Aspartame is made from aspartic acid and methylated phenyl alanine. Methanol is released when it’s digested. The head of the FDA refused to give it approval. When he was replaced 8 years later in 1981, Aspartame was declared harmless and manufacturers started using it in diet drinks and low calorie foods and as packets of sugar substitute to add to coffee.or tea.
By 1995, according to Dr. Bill Douglass, 75% of all complaints to the FDA have been about Aspartame. Headaches were the most common symptom. Dizziness and poor equilibrium were next in a list of 92. These and changes in vision might make driving dangerous, but I’ve never seen that warning. The occasional use of Aspartame doesn’t seem to harm the average person so it stays on the market. Methanol, as wood alcohol , is what caused blindness when mixed with corn liquor during prohibition. Even in small amounts I wouldn’t want that poison in my body. According to the Dorway website, the EPA limit for methanol is 7.8 mg. per day. One quart of a diet beverage has about 55 mg. Heavy users can consume 250 mg. No wonder they have vision problems or other symptoms.
Dr. Janet Hall Starr in her book “Sweet Poison” gives a detailed account of her life-threatening experience with Aspartame. For the last 10 years she has counseled thousands of people to avoid it. She has a mission to help others kick the habit of wanting sweet drinks and foods. It takes 60 days without Aspartame products to stop the cravings, get rid of adverse symptoms and regain health.
This reminds me of a person I describe in the chapter about alternative therapies in my book. Louise had numerous neurological symptoms which her doctor said might be multiple sclerosis. After two months she no longer had pains in her feet, weakness or any disability, so she walked a lot. Who could explain this remission of serious symptoms? Recently I talked to the friend who had save Louise from kidney dialysis. She found out that her friend had several diet drinks a day while on a low calorie diet. Her multiple symptoms must have been caused by Aspartame poisoning from the diet drinks. How many others are suffering because of artificial sweeteners? A friend said she got dizzy spells ten years ago when she used diet colas to help her through menopause.
Your body chemistry evolved over eons of time to use natural foods. It can often heal itself with exercise and a natural diet without chemicals. Take the 60 day challenge. Detoxify yourself and feel healthy again.