post menopausal – Whole Real Food

…continued from September 1/2014

I notice that my appetite has diminished. I grew up a farm girl and I’ve always had the appetite of a hired hand, proudly able to keep up with my brother or my dad when it comes to putting away a piled up plate of food. I am also less prone to snacking in the evenings.

And the scale continues to show it. Five months into the “experiment” I am down 30 pounds.

I notice my knees no longer crackle when I climb stairs, something that I had heard off and on since my 20’s. It makes sense. Sugar causes inflammation, which leads to lots of debilitating diseases like arthritis, perhaps even crackling knees!

I also notice that I have no pain. I spend one weekend moving ten pickup truck loads of furniture with my daughter. The old me would have been unable to get out of bed the next day with stiffness and soreness from using muscles that are usually inert. But I have no pain.

I have not had a headache, backache or any other body-part-ache since stopping sugar. I no longer keep over the counter pain medication in my home. It is not relevant.

Before stopping sugar I had done a hormone profile in an effort to address post-menopausal symptoms like hot flashes and night sweats. Four of the five hormones they measure were so low they didn’t register. I didn’t know it because I forgot to get my results until June. When I went for the results I suggested that I should redo the profile given that I was feeling so different. We did another profile.

The results were astonishing. All my hormones were in the middle of the normal range. My health care professional was astounded that removing sugar could make such a profound difference.

I am very happy about my own results but also sad to know that so many women are on risky Hormone Replacement Therapy when one simple change in their diets could bring them relief. And so many other benefits.

Altogether I lost 35 pounds, stabilizing in the last six months at the ideal weight for my height, a goal I have only achieved a couple times in my life and with great effort. This has been virtually effortless. My goal was not weight loss but I am happy to experience that benefit.

I am amazed by my energy. My husband says, “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?” Right now, I have to say 30! That is almost half my age. I know I can outrun and outwork most 30-year-olds. I keep up with my granddaughters (grandtoys) biking and hiking.

People often comment that I don’t look like a grandmother. I’ve started to reply, “I eat right” and I am amazed by how people are taken aback at this simple mantra.

Many people say, “Oh, I could never give up sugar!” I used to think that too.

I didn’t do it overnight. For years I was oblivious to the need for eliminating sugar, believing cutting back was good enough. It was a good start and looking back, it prepared me for quitting. It simply wasn’t enough.

I learned that it doesn’t take much of this poison to cause crazy things to happen to your body. I never would have experienced all those benefits if I had not given up sugar entirely.

You might have great success simply by cutting down on sugar. I have to give it up because I can’t eat just one cookie; I need the whole bag. I can’t eat a two-inch piece of cake; it ends up being six inches! Remember my doughnut story? I am a sugar addict. One doesn’t need to drink alcohol to be an alcoholic. (Incidentally, I suspect alcoholism is a sugar addiction).

Currently, sugar has little appeal. In fact, I think it stinks. I never thought sugar smelled but since I’m off it I can smell a chemical/plastic odor when I’m in the presence of doughnuts, candy or cake.

I now find sweet fruits like pineapple, grapes and ripe bananas too sweet to eat. In the last few months, I’ve eaten less fruit. Mostly, it’s a snack or a treat once or twice a day. I usually gorge on in-season fruits like cherries. We’ll see if I have the same appetite for them this year.

Many people ask me about sugar substitutes. I avoid them (the sugar substitutes, not the people asking me!) as they all fall under the processed food category. There is evidence that the body doesn’t quite know what to do with fake sugars (and other fake foods). They are suspected of contributing to, not preventing, as they claim, obesity. Even more alarming, sugar substitutes are implicit in the diabetes epidemic.

“What about in your tea and coffee?” I am frequently asked. I never was a coffee fan and I drink herbal teas that have an implied sweetness like mint or some of the fruit blends, without honey or sugar. I most often drink hot water with lemon. Lemon helps the liver (which is affected by sugar and other chemicals in our food and water.) If you sweeten your beverages, gradually cut back then switch to a small amount of stevia, maple syrup or honey. Eventually you will do without.

“I’m okay. I drink Diet Coke,“ some folks assure me if the topic of sugar arises. I don’t always get into it but they think it’s a good thing to have sugar-free drinks. I do not. Aspartame is a known neurotoxin. Evidence points to its contribution to Gulf War Syndrome, Multiple Sclerosis, even some cases of Parkinson’s Disease.

Trading one toxin for another possibly more dangerous toxin does not make sense. Yet my friends send me recipes calling for Sucralose or Cool Whip (fake fat with fake sugar) and they drink Diet Coke! (If it’s not diet, it might be sweetened with high fructose corn syrup another unfood that the body doesn’t know how to process. All sodas contain phosphoric acid, which essentially leeches calcium from your bones).

One of the most dangerous things about sugar is that it is everywhere, in almost every processed food. When we embraced low-fat diets, manufacturers substituted sugar for the fat. To avoid sugar successfully, one must avoid processed foods. They may not seem to have much sugar but manufacturers trick us by using several different sugars. That way, they appear lower down on the ingredients list, leading the consumer to believe that sugar is not the main ingredient, when in fact, it is.

How much sugar is too much? Recently the World Health Organization slashed their recommended limit of sugar calories to 5% from 10% of the diet. The new levels equate to three teaspoons for women and five for men per day. For perspective, a bowl of cereal or a half-cup serving of yogurt typically contain six teaspoons of sugar. A can of Coke has ten teaspoons of sugar, two days’ allotment for men, three days’ for women!

The average North American consumes 22 teaspoons of sugar each day; the average child, 32 teaspoons each day! Then we wonder about the scary cancer statistics threatening that one in two of us will develop cancer in our lives.

Why don’t these stats come partnered with the message that sugar feeds cancer and that when sugar is removed from the diet, tumors shrink? Why? Because food manufacturers and lobbyists don’t want consumers to know that their products are killing them.

We never hear that cutting sugar decreases our risk of heart disease because inflammation, (not cholesterol) is the cause of heart disease. Sugar causes inflammation. And statin drugs (anti-cholesterol) are some of the most profitable pharmaceuticals invented, so nobody wants to step forward to say “stop eating sugar and you won’t need this medication”.

Astoundingly, the sickness care business is oblivious to sugar’s role in the mushrooming diabetes rates, affecting younger and younger children. Type II diabetes was once called “adult-onset diabetes” but so many kids have it, that name no longer accurately describes the condition. Sadly, much money is made on diabetes treatments and monitoring, and the health companies aren’t about to start telling us the truth about why we have diabetes.

I believe most cases of diabetes could be prevented if we eliminated processed food and sugar from the diet. A few years ago an experiment was conducted at the London Zoo. A number of volunteers were confined to the zoo and fed what a gorilla would eat: up to ten kilograms of raw fruits, vegetables, seeds and nuts each day. After one month the results were incredible. All participants lost weight. Many had to get off their medications for diabetes and heart disease. They enjoyed many other surprising health benefits.

Some online searching will reveal many success stories of people going back to eating the way nature intended: whole real food. People have cured themselves of cancer, diabetes and heart disease, the big killers, and a host of other ailments by adjusting their diet. We don’t hear about these miracles because there is no money to be made treating disease with food.

Not every eating plan works for every person. You can’t go wrong with eating simple foods, mostly raw, mostly plants and not too much of anything.

I strongly recommend you weed out the processed sugar (and even the fruit sugar if you’re overdoing it). I suspect you will be surprised and delighted with the changes you’ll see in your body and how you feel in general.

I am personally astounded by the magnitude of the changes in my body and overall feeling of good health and energy simply because I consciously eliminated processed sugar from my diet.

Good health is a journey. We are all on different places on the path. I feel like I am many steps closer to my goal of optimum health because I gave up sugar. Knowing what I know now, I am convinced I will never go back to consuming copious amounts of sugar like I once did.

I have discovered that sugar isn’t so sweet after all.

Many people think “healthy fats” is an oxymoron largely because fat was demonized in the eighties by many health professionals. Food manufacturers were quick to recognize opportunities to make huge profits and “low-fat” foods were created. The vilification of dietary fat is now suspected of contributing to the obesity epidemic partially because food manufacturers replaced fat with sugar, which comes with its own issues.

Furthermore, saturated fats were once believed to cause heart disease, thanks to a faulty study by Dr. Ancel Keyes, which was adopted by most health professionals as the word of dietary law. This motivated health conscious people to switch to vegetable oils. Now there is evidence that switching from saturated fats to polyunsaturated fats, common in processed vegetable oils, has contributed to higher rates of cancer.

One reason is that polyunsaturated oils are highly unstable and vulnerable to oxidation and turning rancid. Oxidation causes cancer. Oils that are rancid are highly toxic to humans (and pets. Sadly, most pet food is made using rancid fats).

To add to the danger, conventionally produced vegetable oils are processed using toxic chemicals like hexane, heptane, caustic soda, and other chemicals, the safety of which is unproven, to mask the rancid smell of processed oils.

In addition to the dangers of oxidation and rancidity, there are also concerns about the omega-6 content of polyunsaturated oils. A recent San Francisco study demonstrated that under laboratory conditions, omega-6 fatty acids could accelerate the growth of prostate tumor cells. They are also suspected of contributing to breast cancer in post-menopausal women.

Other studies show that improving the omega-3 to omega-6 ratio can lower the risk of certain cancers. Specific recommendations vary, but most experts suggest a ratio of between 1:1 and 1:4 at most. The average modern diet has an omega-3 to omega-6 ratio of 1:20 or more!

The rapid increase of vegetable oils in our diets during the past century is largely responsible for this imbalance. While some vegetable oils do contain small amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, for the most part, they consist of omega-6. Some experts recommend increasing omega-3 consumption, but it is more effective to reduce omega-6 intake, by eliminating or drastically decreasing polyunsaturated oil consumption, including canola, soy, corn, and sunflower oils.

Further compounding the unhealthy fat issue is the hydrogenation of vegetable oils. Hydrogenated oils and any foods made with them are the leading cause of heart disease and a major contributor to neurological disorders. Simply put, hydrogenated oils (or trans fats) are poison in the human body. They accelerate the buildup of plaque in the arteries and are suspected of causing cancer.

Food producers create hydrogenated oils for the convenience of food producers, primarily so that those foods taste good and can sit on the shelf for months without going bad. Therefore they significantly contribute to profits.

High-fat, low-fat, saturated fat, hydrogenated fats, polyunsaturated fats, omega 3, omega 6; it’s all very confusing. So what are we supposed to do?

First we need to recognize that healthy fats are an integral part of a complete diet. Avoiding fats actually causes chronic disease. Your brain is made of fat and it needs saturated fat. Even brain-friendly omega-3 fatty acids can’t be utilized without ample saturated fat. In addition, saturated fat facilitates nerve signals and hormone production. All of these systems rely on saturated fat to function, and to keep you healthy and ultimately, alive.

A diet rich in saturated fats protects your heart. Saturated fat reduces Lp(a), which is associated with increased risk for heart disease, and contributes to higher levels of HDL (good) cholesterol, which keep your heart healthy. In traditional cultures saturated fat was revered and even coveted as a source of vital energy.

Many nutrients are fat-soluble and failure to include healthy fats in meals results in many of the nutrients consumed not being absorbed by the body. Beta carotene, Vitamin D, and Vitamin E are three nutrients that require fat in order to be absorbed and used by the human body. We need saturated fat to transport calcium to our bones, which is why dairy products naturally contain both calcium and saturated fat. Calcium supplements don’t do much good if saturated fat is lacking in our diet. By consuming fats with nutritional supplements, the effectiveness of the phytonutrients in supplements multiplies.

It doesn’t take much fat to aid the absorption of important vitamins and nutrients. Eating just five or ten nuts, or one-fourth of an avocado, provides plenty of dietary fat for transporting nutrients and aiding their absorption.

Saturated fats also boost our immune systems because they contain specialized fatty acids, which are naturally antifungal, antimicrobial and antiviral. These important fatty acids include lauric acid, myristic acid and caprylic acid. A diet rich in these beneficial fats provides the body with essential building blocks to fight pathogenic substances.

It is vitally important to choose the right kind of fats for your diet and the right amount because fats are high in calories. Healthy fats include real butter, (ideally from grass-fed cows), virgin (meaning cold-pressed) coconut oil, extra-virgin olive oil, flax seed oil, hemp-seed oil and other fats from plant sources such as nuts, seeds, and avocados. These healthy fats should be consumed with every meal. Oils from fatty fish like wild salmon are also beneficial. Even the fat in beef can be called healthy if eaten in moderation and if those animals were grass-fed, not grain-fed.

It is advisable to give up cheap fats such as low-cost vegetable oils. To do so requires the abandonment of most processed foods as they are almost always made with cheap, usually hydrogenated, vegetable oils. Say good-bye to crackers, deep-fried foods, baked goods, indeed, the entire snack aisle of your local grocery store.

Healthy fats are more expensive than unhealthy fats but this is one case where spending extra money significantly protects your health.

Finally, use oils appropriately. For example, extra-virgin olive oil is ideal for salad dressings and dishes that will simmer because it has a low flash point (or temperature at which it begins to burn). Flax oil should never be heated. Butter, coconut oil and peanut oil can stand higher temperatures and are more appropriate for cooking at high temperatures. Ideally, it is best to give up fried foods, because all fried fats contain trans fatty acids.

Sadly most people are more careful about the condition of the oil in the engines of their cars than about the oils they consume to fuel their bodies. Changing your oil is an integral part of maintaining good health.

Sources for this article include: www.NaturalNews.com, www.Wikipedia.com, www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com, www.alive.com

Tag: post menopausal

Change Your Oil Revised July 2013

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