Personal Choice and Prevention

I am a fan of the new TV show "Know The Cause" Host Doug Kauffman, and he educates us everyday on the effects of our health due to the poor choices, or the smart choices, depending how you want to live your life. We can be making smart choices and living a productive life, and enjoying good health or we can make poor choices and be living a life with disease, which only causes us to be counterproductive.

When I saw this post, I thought it is something that would interest the viewers. It is something I get very passionate about, because I am a firm believer we are in complete control of our bodies, and we determine whether or not we will get the common diseases that plague our society. I get very upset when I run across people who believe there is no cause and effect to disease. When people say we have no control over disease that it is a heritary condition, or we were dealt a bad hand. Nonsense to say the least.

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I got into an argument the other day with a man on another blog about healthcare reform and the role of personal choice in prevention. Our argument centered around the obesity epidemic, his being that people largely have little control over their weight and it is the result of their socio-economic status and the neighborhood they live in with it's accompanying lifestyle.


My reflex response was "WHAT?!?!?!" However, I knew what he was referencing. There have been a number of social studies conducted that draw a correlation between lower incomes and the greater incidence of obesity. There are also studies showing that people in areas such as New York City that are more likely to walk than drive anywhere are more prone to leanness than those who must drive everywhere.


I agreed with him that some policies were to blame for the ease of acquiring junk food (i.e. the ridiculous subsidies to Big Corn...) and that exercise as a choice was more difficult than exercise as a necessity. But in the end,


"There is no iron fist forcing a twinky wielding hand into a complacent mouth. There is no infinite weight chaining someone to a recliner next to a six pack of Bud heavies and a TV dinner. There is no mandate forcing someone to order pizza rather than bake some chicken and steam some broccoli. Our society has made it increasingly easy to eat garbage on a regular basis (which is where I fault our broken policies); but in the end, only you have the final say about what goes into your mouth."


I hate studies like the ones I mentioned above because they give people the green light to surrender their health to the state, to chance, to genetics, to their neighborhood, or whatever. There are a million reasons to neglect your health; none of those take away your choice to be healthy. Our society loves to play the blame game, but I'm here to remind you that the responsibility is yours.


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Give your body what it needs in terms of nutrition and see the wonderful things that can happen to our bodies, and our lives.

Fight the Flu – The Missing Link Nobody Talks About

Here is another health blog brought to you by the Queen of Nutrition Ann Louise Gittleman. This is by far the most important piece and everyone should take this into account when trying to fight the flu.

Sleep Is Critical to Healthy Immunity.

People exposed to a respiratory virus are three times more likely to get sick if they get less than seven hours of sleep at night, a recent study finds. Trouble is most Americans only sleep about six and a half hours—one hour less a night than we slept in the ’50s.

News from scientists at the University of Chicago and at NIH in Washington DC is even more sobering. We actually need nine and a half hours of sleep at night for at least seven months out of the year—preferably between October and June—for healthy immunity.

“Maintaining the immune system may be the reason sleep has evolved,” explains Brian Preston, PhD, a researcher at Germany’s Max Planck Institute. Mammals that sleep the longest have six times the immune cells as those that sleep less.

Besides fighting the flu, nature’s “missing link”—sleep—helps your immune system ward off diabetes, heart disease, cancer, obesity, and severe depression. Lack of sleep even disturbs normal brain activity and vision, causing over 100,000 car accidents a year.

Now that we’re plugged in 24/7 with our iPhones and iPods, who wants to sleep when you can check your emails, chat with friends, and text the world—anytime of night? Talk about unremitting stress!

When we turn our clocks back next week to end daylight savings, we also disturb the body’s internal clock. This throws off our natural sleep-wake cycle and impacts hormones like cortisol and melatonin that influence this critical “missing link.”

Dr. Ann Louise’s Take:

The most dramatic event humans have experienced happened less than 80 years ago. Electricity and bright lights at night have changed us forever.

When it’s dark, the body naturally produces the hormone melatonin to ready your system for sleep and help you snooze through the night. Five times stronger than vitamin C, melatonin is a potent antioxidant that controls immunity.

What to Do?

Exercise outdoors in the sun to boost melatonin. Start dimming lights when the sun goes down to ready your body for sleep. I even wear special amber glasses to knock out the melatonin-blocking rays from blue light.

When I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I use special nightlights that block blue rays. Don’t flick on those strong overhead lights because they’ll zap your melatonin and you won’t be able to get back to sleep. Taking 3 to 15 mg of melatonin a night can also be helpful.

Balance Hormones

Other hormones also impact how well women sleep. Starting in puberty, fluctuating hormone levels make females two and a half times more likely than males to suffer insomnia.

During perimenopause and menopause hot flashes disrupt women’s sleep. (We all sleep more soundly when we’re slightly cool.) Progesterone is the hormone that helps women sleep well in the first and second trimesters of pregnancy—before heartburn, leg cramps, and frequent urination disturb sleep.

Chill Out

Unfortunately, the female hormone estrogen raises levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Women have higher levels of this stress hormone when estrogen rises during their menstrual cycle—but progesterone helps even cortisol out and improves sleep.

It’s important to relax at night for sound sleep—so turn off those scary news stories about swine flu. I also recommend Adrenal Formula to combat stress in today’s 24/7 lifestyle.

The Bottom Line

Stack those Zzz’s to stay healthy—especially in cold and flu season when your immune system needs all the help it can get. Take 400 mg of Magnesium before you go to bed. I rotate between melatonin, tryptophan—the precursor for relaxing serotonin—and magnesium.

Sources:

http://www.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=632118
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19840243
http://discovermagazine.com/2009/apr/22-new-theory-about-why-sleep-maintain-immune-system

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Are You Addicted To Sugar?

We are facing an obesity epidemic in this country, which can result in Type II
diabetes among many other diseases. It is due to the fact that this nation
is addicted to sugar.



Eliminating sugar from your diet entirely, is not only critical to maintaining good
health, but also contributes to a youthful physical appearance.
Along with sugar, grains also poses a challenge to our health and often has
unidentified risks.



If you are addicted to sugar, the best way to overcome the addiction is to
completely abstain from all sugar and grains. Sugar addiction is similar to
a drug addiction. You have a biochemical need for it and unless you rid
your body of this poison, you will keep craving it.
Would an alcoholic have just one dring and walk away
without having another one?



Here is a partial list of what sugar can do to a healthy body.



Contributed by Nancy Appleton, PHD.

Author of the book: Lick The Sugar Habit



In addition to throwing off the body's homeostasis, excess sugar may result
in a number of other significant consequences. The following is a listing of
some of sugar's metabolic consequences from a variety of medical journals
and other scientific publications.



1. Sugar can suppress your immune system and impair your defenses against infectious disease.

2. Sugar can cause a rapid rise of adrenaline, hyperactivity, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, and crankiness in children.

3. Sugar can produce a significant rise in total cholesterol, triglycerides and bad and cholesterol and a decrease in good cholesterol.

4. Sugar feeds cancer cells and has been connected with the development of cancer of the breast, ovaries, prostate, rectum, and pancrease, biliary tract, lung, and gallbladder, and stomach.

5. Sugar can weaken your eyesight.

6. Sugar can cause premature aging.

7. Sugar can cause autoimmune diseases such as arthritis, asthma, and multiple sclerosis.



When eliminating sugars from your diet it is imperative that you eat every two to eat every three to four hours to eliminate symptoms of hypoglycemia.

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