Nutrition
Ok.. Let's keep it simple and real when it comes to diets.
Research now clearly demonstrates that our dietary habits can promote a state of chronic low-grade inflammation that leads to aches & pains and leads to many chronic diseases.
Some of the more common diseases affected by our diet are:
First of all ... all diets will work if you stick with it, at least in the short-term. Sadly... studies reveal that after
one year of dieting only about 5% of the people dieting will weigh less one year later. Only 5%.
So in that regard.. diets really don't work in the long-term.
The key is not dieting, but a lifestyle change. Instead of picking a diet that you can only handle for a few months,
why not make a lifestyle change that you can do for the rest of your life?
A good place to start is first get more healthy by reducing the inflammation in your joints and body tissues.
This inflammation is the root cause of most of our chronic illnesses. So... at first don't focus on losing weight.
Rather focus on getting more healthy and feeling better! Once you make this change it will be easier to do the
things required to lose even more weight.
Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, arthritis, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, sinusitis, allergies, acne, asthma, digestive conditions, osteoporosis, hypertension, depression, insulin resistance syndrome, flu symptoms, dysmenorrhea, endometriosis, multiple sclerosis, etc.
A common denominator found in all of the above chronic conditions is tissue inflammation.
How?
Inflammation chokes off proper blood flow to body organs and tissues, resulting in damaged cells and tissues which thens leads to the various diseases.
Therefore, it is important to reduce this inflammation.
How do you reduce tissue inflammation?
Most of the doctors you see on TV are promoting an anti-inflammatory diet. By avoiding or reducing as much as possible wheat, sugar and most processed foods, you will notice good health slowly returning. The following foods cause inflammation; that is, they are pro-inflammatory and therefore, should be avoided or greatly reduced in your daily diet.
Foods That Cause Inflammation
Wheat & Grain Products
All wheat and wheat products, including white bread, whole wheat bread, pizza, pasta, cereal, pretzels, crackers, cookies, cakes and any other product made with wheat.
After you reduce wheat then later you may want to try avoiding other grains such as rye, oats, millet, barley, etc.
Why?
According to Dr. Joseph Mercola - "In the United States, we're told that grains (especially whole grains) are an important part of a balanced diet, necessary for obtaining our daily requirement of healthy nutrients and fiber.
However, according to a growing number of experts, including Dr. Loren Cordain, a professor at Colorado State University and an expert on Paleolithic lifestyles, humans are NOT designed to eat grains, and doing so may actually be damaging to your gut."
Dr. Cordain explains:
"There's no human requirement for grains. That's the problem with the USDA recommendations. They think we're hardwired as a species to eat grains. You can get by just fine and meet every single nutrient requirement that humans have without eating grains. And grains are absolutely poor sources of vitamins and minerals compared to fruits and vegetables and meat and fish."
Ironically, since we're often told that whole grains are the best for our health, the high-fiber bran portion of grain – a key part that makes it a whole grain -- actually contains many of the anti-nutrients. But the problem isn't only that there are superior sources of nutrients; grains actually contain anti-nutrients that may damage your health.
Dr. Cordain states:
"Grains are the seeds of a plant. They're its reproductive material, and plants don't make their reproductive material to give away for free to other animals. If they did they'd become extinct, and so the evolutionary strategy that many plants, particularly cereal grains have taken to prevent predation is to evolve toxic compounds so that the predator of the seeds can't eat them, so that they can put their seeds in the soil where they're meant to be to grow a new plant and not in the gut of an animal to feed it."
Sugar
Accoding to Dr.J. Mercola -
"The main problem with sugar, and processed fructose/HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) in particular, is the fact that your liver has a very limited capacity to metabolize it.
According to Dr. Lustig, you can safely metabolize about six teaspoons of added sugar per day. As mentioned, the average American consumes 20 teaspoons of added sugar a day. All that excess sugar is metabolized into body fat, and leads to all of the chronic metabolic diseases we struggle with, including but not limited to:
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Type 2 diabetes
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Cardiovascular disease
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Hypertension (high blood pressure)
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Dementia
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Cancer
Processed Packaged Foods
One problem with processed food is that when you look at the label, you have no way of knowing how much of the sugar is natural to the food itself, versus the sugar that was added. According to Dr. Lustig, it’s important to distinguish between natural food-based sugars versus added sugar, because clinical trials have shown that consuming HFCS can increase your risk factors for cardiovascular disease within as little as two weeks.
Processed foods are often high in trans fats and processed vegetable oils. Synthetic trans fats are common in foods that contain partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, such as crackers, chips, most store-bought baked goods, and any fried foods, just to name a few examples. Synthetic trans fats are known to promote inflammation, which is a hallmark of most chronic and/or serious diseases.
Most also contain high amounts of omega-6 fats in the form of processed vegetable oils. These polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs) tend to stimulate inflammatory processes in your body, and they are very chemically unstable and prone to oxidation. Consuming these oxidized fats in excess has been linked to all sorts of health problems, such as atherosclerosis and heart disease.
To speed up the healing process eat more fresh vegetables and fresh juices.
