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What does it mean to sleep well?

What’s up everybody? It’s been a while. Hope everyone’s enjoying the holidays.

I just read an incredible book indicting irregular sleep as a major cause of virtually every major degenerative disease–diabetes, cancer, obesity, cardiovascular disease, etc. So today I’m going to do something a little different. I’m basically going to use this book as my only source and explain what I got out of the thesis. The book is Lights Out, written by T. S. Wiley. This book turns all the traditional ideas on nutrition up-side-down and gives a really comprehensive take on why we have so many health problems.

This is complicated, but there is some golden information here. The basic idea is this: we’re living in the summer all year round and sleeping irregularly, with two consequences. Our bodies are preparing to the winter (by storing fat among other things), and our out-of-whack hormones are preventing our bodies from staying healthy.

Clearly, artificial lighting brought revolutionary changes in the habits of man. The ability to choose when light is available is unnatural, and so we have confused our bodies–which have spent thousands of years researching (evolutionarily speaking) how to regulate themselves in the light and dark.

I mentioned the year long summer.  Here’s the idea: because our eyes see light all day long, our bodies think it is summertime.  Let’s unwrap this.  The summer is the only time of the year when lots of fruit and vegetables are readily available.  Furthermore, given the impending winter, our body knows that famine may be on the horizon. Our body craves carbohydrates (fruit and vegetables) because there might not be any later on, and eating all of these carbs causes an insulin spike, leading to the storage of fat.

Evolutionarily speaking, fat storage is a great way to get ready for the winter, but of course there are some problems with this system in the modern era.  The barrage of insulin all year long leads to insulin resistance (type 2 diabetes), not to mention obesity.

This also impacts our cholesterol.  Our bodies “dump the extra sugar into cholesterol production, which will keep cell membranes from freezing at low temperatures” (p. 20).

So our constant summer leads to diabetes, heart problems, and obesity.  What else?

The ability to be awake and sleep whenever we damn well please (let’s call this sleep irregularity) leads to a number of other problems.

Let’s talk about the hormones cortisol and melatonin, which are basically opposites.  We produce cortisol when we are awake (and lots of it when we are stressed) and melatonin while we sleep.  Cortisol helps us survive when we are under attack by making us freak out and go crazy, while melatonin helps us chill out, rebuild, and get healthy.

Do you ever wake up in a complete fog?  That’s because your melatonin hasn’t been able to fully go through its cycle. Indeed, by sleeping irregularly and at the wrong hours, we never allow melatonin to fully do it’s job.  Melatonin aids white cell immune function, and it is the most powerful antioxidant (think cancer prevention) we have (90-91).

Cortisol, on the other hand, mobilizes blood sugars and leads to type 2 diabetes, is correlated with stress, and suppresses the immune system (94, 157).  Normally, high cortisol levels should be a rarity, but if you aren’t sleeping on time and in the dark, your cortisol levels probably aren’t going down enough or at all.

Having chronic high cortisol and low melatonin is terrible for your health.  It is connected with cancer and immune system problems.

Lack of sleep can even lead to depression and other psychological ailments.  Melatonin is involved with regulating seratonin levels; given the right amount of melatonin, seratonin should go down.  But when seratonin levels stay high because of low melatonin, dopamine levels stay low.  Light’s Out somewhat controversially argues that seratonin ends up making you inhibited while dopamine is what makes you happy (101, 104-105).  Good sleep is great for mental health.

Our bad sleeping habits cause psychological problems, cancer, chronic stress, fatigue, diabetes, heart problems, and obesity.  What’s the prescription?

We need to sleep in the dark, sleep regularly, sleep early and sleep for more hours. In the summer, sleeping for only a few hours isn’t terrible.  But in the winter, sleeping at least eight hours is a must.  You should sleep in the dark, as even very small amounts of lights can throw your body’s hormone regulation off.  It is also vital do be awake as much as possible when there is light out; being out in the sun is great for you.  There is a lot of research that shows sleeping from ten to six is optimal for proper hormone regulation.  Also, sleeping at the same time every night is more important than sleeping for more hours.

It might be tough to maintain a perfect sleep schedule, but there’s just so much going on here it’s hard to ignore the importance of good sleep.

Congratulations if you made it to the end!  That was intense.  Happy holidays everybody.

Processing is evil.

Salt as you know it isn’t really salt at all

Salt gets a bad rap for its links to health problems, and it is certainly dangerous if only because of its prevalence in our diet.  As my grandfather used to say, “salt is poison!”  But I’d like to argue that it’s not salt we ought to fear; its the processing.  Using a good unrefined sea salt should be a healthy option for most people.  The salt you see on most dinner tables hardly even deserve the name.

What health problems is high sodium consumption intake linked to?  Asthma, heartburn, osteoporosis, gastric cancer, hypertension (high blood pressure), cardiac problems, edema, and ulcers.

Still, I think salt can be a normal and even healthful part of our diets.  Processing is the real problem.  In fact, the table salt we are all accustomed to is more of a salt byproduct than salt itself.  Allow me to explain.

When found in nature, salt contains 84 different minerals, but refined salt has only one: sodium chloride.  According to Dr. Barbara Hendel, author of Water & Salt, “These mineral salts are identical to the elements of which our bodies have been built.”  Natural salt is not what causes weak bones and high blood pressure.

Anyway, here’s how the processing works. To dry the salt, it is heated as high as 1200 degrees; this “removes all the valuable magnesium salts as well as trace minerals naturally occurring in the sea.” What’s left is sodium chloride.  Then, chemicals–including aluminum compounds–are added to keep the salt dry.  Next, “to replace the natural iodine salts that are removed during processing, potassium iodide is added in amounts that can be toxic.  To stabilize the volatile iodide compound, processors add dextrose which turns the iodized salt a purplish color.”  Finally, a “bleaching agent” is use to make the salt white again.  (Source: Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions)

This is bad.  When faced with an excess of sodium and chloride, your body pulls tons of water from your cells to surround the sodium chloride and break it up.  It takes 23 times the amount of sodium chloride in water to accomplish this. This process dries you out, leading to arthritis, kidney and gall bladder stones, and other health problems.

In addition, the iodine added to the salt doesn’t stay in your system as long as it should (at least when compared to that in natural salt).  Iodine deficiencies are linked to thyroid problems (Nourishing Traditions).

What’s the solution? 75% of the salt intake of Americans comes from processed foods, so we need to stop eating processed junk food like canned soups and bags of pretzels.  Second, everyone should find a good unrefined sea salt. Not all sea salts are good for you, so look carefully, and if you really want to go the whole nine, check out the recommendations here.

There are even claims that natural salt might even be great for your health.  It might be good for joint pain, easing PMS, back pain, and bone strength. Salt intake has even been connected with longevity.  But there is one reservation: a small minority of people happen to be salt sensitive, and should not consume much of any kind of salt.

That oughta do it everybody.  Have a good one.

Killing you.

Warning: be prepared to clean out your cabinet.

Out of all the conversations I have related to healthy eating, one of the most common subjects is vegetable oil.  Like processed carbs, vegetable oil is an incredibly destructive part of our diet that seems to be completely innocuous.  So here’s the deal.

Today’s rant is a little technical, but it’s potent stuff. There are two main parts.  One involves the unstable chemical structure of vegetable oils, and the other involves omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids.

Let’s get down with the scientific properties of vegetable oil.  This could go for soy, canola, corn, and any number of others.  At room temperature, butter is solid.  Why is that?  Butter is mainly a saturated fat, meaning that it is “saturated” with hydrogen atoms.  In contrast, most vegetable oils are primarily monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fat.  For the purposes of our discussion, this simply means that they are not as solid; this is why they stay liquid.  More about fats here.

Vegetable oils are not as strong as saturated fats, so they can break down.  When you cook them, they come apart, forming all sorts of weird molecules you don’t want to be eating.  For example, olive oil is certainly healthy, but you don’t want to be cooking with it.  High quality olive oil always comes in a dark bottle; this is because sunlight alone can break down the molecules down over time.  The same goes for other vegetable oils.

So oils break down.  What’s the big deal?  Consider this: during the processing of vegetable oils, they are often subjected to enough heat to make them turn rancid.  So one of the final steps of vegetable oil processing is deodorization; without this, they would smell awful.

The bottom line here is that you should cook with saturated fats like butter, coconut oil, lard, and palm oil.  Olive oil is great if you are not cooking, such as with salads.  Other than that, most vegetable oils should be completely avoided for health reasons.  More about the good oils here.

Now we know why cooking with vegetables is dangerous.  Let’s consider the next problem.  You may know that omega 3 fatty acids, such as in fish oil, are great for your health.  This is certainly true.  But there’s a bigger story here.  Instead of looking at omega 3′s alone, we should be considering the omega 3 to omega 6 ratio.

Omega 6′s and omega 3′s are just two types of fat molecules, and there are different subdivisions within these types, but let’s not get too deep into the science here.  What’s important for us to consider is the fact that humans have historically eaten the same amount of omega 3′s as omega 6′s.  But with today’s processed foods, instead of this one to one omega 3 to omega 6 ratio, people consume too many omega 6′s.  A ratio of four to one is acceptable, but, for most people in the Western world, the ratio is often more like twenty to one.

What are the culprits of this omega 6 heavy diet?  Bread, cereal, non-organic eggs, non-organic meat, and nuts often contain omega 6′s.  But the primary source of omega 6′s in the Western diet is vegetable oil.

The consumption of vegetable oils has increased exponentially since the 1970s, as have any number of relevant health problems.   Omega 6 heavy diets have been linked to “heart attacks, thrombotic stroke, arrhythmia, arthritis, osteoporosis, inflammation, mood disorders and cancer.”  One study found that there is a link with Parkinson’s disease, and another study made a connection with depression.  Greenland Eskimos, who achieve a one to one fat ratio, have extremely low heart disease rates, diets low in omega 6′s also lower the risk of memory problems.  In general, omega 6′s can be linked to chronic inflammation (leading to arthritis or other problems), free radical damage, and poor heart health.  Further discussion here.

The kicker is that having too many omega 6′s in your diet may prevent any of the benefits of omega 3′s from coming to fruition.  Taking omega 3 supplements like cod liver oil is great, but not if you are consuming wild amounts of omega 6′s.

So there you have it.  Vegetable oils break down under fire, and they contain many of the destructive omega 6′s we should be trying to avoid.

Thanks for reading, take it easy everybody.

You're eating what he's pouring.

Organic produce really does aid long term well being.

There’s a lot of skepticism about organic foods, and for good reason.  Why should you shell out extra cash for foods that are supposed to be healthy in the first place, especially when you’re not sure what organic means?  Let’s clear that up today.

For today’s discussion I’ll put aside relevant issues like global warming (organic farming is much more efficient), pollution (chemicals and waste runoff from industrial farming often pollute water supplies), genetic modification (and how we are using fewer and fewer crop varieties), as well as the question of whether organic farming can feed us all (it certainly can).

What is the meaning of organic? In general, “organic” means that there are no pesticides or artificial fertilizers, no industrial waste contamination, no genetic modification, and no processing with ionizing radiation or food additives.  In other words, organic means all natural. Organic food has been found to contain more nutrients, minerals, vitamins, and anti oxidants than conventionally farmed produce.

On the other hand, industrially farmed produce is bad for you primarily for two reasons: pesticides and poor nutritional content.  These two reasons are connected; allow me to explain.

Pesticides were born in the post-WWII era, wherein all sorts of new chemicals were heralded as saviors that would bring cheap food to a growing population.  These were the days when children were sprayed with DDT to kill head lice.  The use of pesticides has increased rapidly over the last fifty years.

Why is this bad? It’s true that pesticide content is regulated so that any one product won’t have too much pesticide in it.  However, if you eat numerous servings of different products, adding up the pesticide content of each one, you’ll find that that most people are consuming far more pesticides than the FDA considers to be safe.

Do we really have pesticides residues in our bodies? A survey of school children in New Zealand (a country with far better regulations than the US) found that 100% of school children had unsafe levels of every single one of the eleven pesticides they tested for.  A different study looking at 400 American school children found that 100% of these children had unsafe levels of all thirteen of the pesticides they tested for.  This is very, very disturbing.

These chemicals are carcinogenic toxins that are not easily removed from your system.  Pesticide residues have been linked to leukemia and numerous cancers, but certainly contribute to myriad health problems.  Think about DDT; after decades of use we finally stopped using it because of its tragic impacts on health.  Unfortunately, we’ve yet to learn the same lessons about the other pesticides we’re using.

I’m worried about the pesticides.  But let’s take this a step further.  Pesticides impact nutrition.  How?  When you spray all these pesticides all over the soil, it kills not only the bad parasites and bacteria but the good as well.

Ideally, soil should contain wild amounts of earthworms, microorganisms, and other creatures, which help out by eating the decomposing plants and leaving behind nutrients in the soil.  Pesticides kill all this, ruining the soil.  Yet good soil is necessary for the production of health-providing produce.

The result is that you get vegetables that look healthy, but the nutritional content just isn’t there.  So they’re not all that good for you, and because of the pesticides, they may be extremely harmful.

You gotta start eating organic.  It’s worth it.  You’ll feel healthier now and stay healthier longer. I’ll get more into this later; but food is medicine.  If you’re not getting enough nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and enzymes from your food, you will inevitably end up with some health problem you could have prevented.  Check out one of my all time favorite videos from Underground Wellness called how to stay out of the doctor’s office.

One caveat: not all vegetables are made equal.  The Modern Forager posted a great article on the most and least contaminated produce.  The less contaminated produce might not provide optimum nutrition, but there will be less pesticides.  Steer clear of non-organic strawberries, bell peppers, spinach, peaches, apples, cucumbers, cantalope, celery, apples, apricots, green beans, cherries, and grapes.  You should be okay if you stick with onions, avocados, frozen sweet corn, pineapple, mango, asparagus, frozen sweet peas, kiwis, bananas, cabbage, broccoli, and papaya.

All right, I’ll stop there.  I’ve got big plans for the next couple months.  Stick around, spread the word, give me some feedback, make comments, eat some salads, and take care.  I’m out.

Anyway, I’ve been busy getting everything ready to go so I haven’t had time to get any articles up.  I’m working on it; there’s a whole bunch of great stuff coming up.   Hang tight.  I’m ditching the Weekly Sharefest because there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of interest, but I’m gonna try to hook you up with some short posts about some of the wild articles and videos I’ve been into.  There’s tons of great research going on, and there are so many people getting into the real deal with nutrition.  I’m no expert, but I’m gonna continue to throw up the best of what I’m reading about.

In the mean time, check out my updated about section.

Take care everybody, thanks for reading.

Sharing is caring

I will be uploading a bunch of interesting links related (sometimes loosely) to food and the food industry.  Send me YOUR links at foodkills@gmail.com.

Best video from the 90s What’s in a flu shot? You don’t want to know.  It ain’t great folks.

Most alarming trends in children
More and more children are on drugs for ADD, type 2 diabetes, asthma, and high cholesterol.  STATINS!  This is horrible

Best Alzheimer’s information
Prevent Alzheimer’s by limiting processed carb intake?  Apparently insulin is a factor, as well as omega 3′s and omega 6′s–so get your fish oils.

Best overview of what you should know about insulin
From the always educational Heart Scan Blog.

Most worrying video on election fraud
If purging voter rolls is your idea of a good time, you’ll love this: part one, part two.

That’s all folks, thanks for reading

The tastiest source for brain leisions.

Artificial sweeteners lead to real death.

You might have gathered by now that I’m not a fan of the added sugar in our processed foods, whether in fruit juice or whole wheat bread or sphaghetti sauce or whatever else.

Does that mean you should grab a bowl of splenda and a spoon?

Sucralose, aspartame, and saccharin are all cancer causing chemicals that should be avoided. The situation is like this: the corporate funded studies generally find no problems, while the privately funded studies generally find significant problems.  Who should you trust?  And who do you think the FDA sides with?

Sucralose (splenda) was approved by the FDA when there was virtually no research on it available.  Get this: there had only been two human trials with sucralose before FDA approval.  Moreover, there were only 36 patients and the trials lasted only 4 days.  And they were only looking for DENTAL PROBLEMS.  This is totally crazy.  They approved it without having ANY idea what the long term health effects might be.

So what is splenda? Sucralose was created by accident in a pesticide laboratory and its chemical structure has more in common with mustard gas or DDT than with sugar.  Seriously.

Aspartame (diet sodas, nutrasweet, equal) includes excitotoxins, which you should know about.  It’s explained below by Dr. Mercola, but if you want to skip the science, head for the next paragraph.  Excitotoxins are the main reason you should avoid aspartame as well as MSG.

Aspartate and glutamate act as neurotransmitters in the brain by facilitating the transmission of information from neuron to neuron. Too much aspartate or glutamate in the brain kills certain neurons by allowing the influx of too much calcium into the cells. This influx triggers excessive amounts of free radicals, which kill the cells. The neural cell damage that can be caused by excessive aspartate and glutamate is why they are referred to as “excitotoxins.” They “excite” or stimulate the neural cells to death.

So what happens if you eat aspartame? Aspartame has been linked to  headaches, brain tumors, brain leisures, lymphoma, memory loss, hormonal problems, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, nausea, abdominal pains, fatigue, sleep problems, vision problems, anxiety attacks, depression and DEMENTIA.  Check it out here and here.  This is NOT OKAY.

And what does the FDA have to say about this?  Before Reagan came to power, the head of the FDA refused to approve aspartame because of research showing that it caused cancer in rats.  He was kicked out on his first day in office, and aspartame was given the green light.

Saccharin, the cause of Monsanto’s success, was justly banned in Canada and nearly banned in the United States thirty years ago after numerous studies showed correlation with saccharin consumption and cancer.  Another example of the FDA not doing its job.  Saccharin definitely causes cancer in rats; the FDA argues that this doesn’t necessarily mean it will effect humans negatively.  BULL.  It is a toxic chemical you should not have in your body.

Sugar is better than all three of these artificial sweeteners.  Still, as I wrote in my first article, sugar is terrible for your health.  It causes long term health problems, it messes with your immune system, gives you fatigue, etc.

So what can you eat?  Let’s take a look at stevia, which is becoming very popular.  It’s from a South American plant whose leaf is naturally sweet and has been used as a sweetener for centuries.  You can get plain or flavors like chocolate, cola, and vanilla.  It is sweet like a sugar but it does not effect your blood sugar level or suppress your immune system.  Xylitol is another good alternative.

I know this is tough information to hear for a lot of people.  Diet sodas are so prevalent.  But our bodies should not be exposed to these chemicals.  Diabetics and nondiabetics alike should try to avoid both added sugar and these artificial sweeteners.  Instead, consider sticking with natural sugars (fruit), eating less sweets in the first place, or using the natural alternative, stevia.

I’m out, hope you had a sweet time reading this article.

Sharing is caring.

I will be uploading a bunch of interesting links for the weekend related (sometimes loosely) to food and the food industry.  Send me YOUR links at foodkills@gmail.com.

Best video
From TED: a short lecture by Dr. Dean Ornish on fighting and preventing disease with diet and prevention, especially in regard to cardiovascular disease.

Most worrying health article
Food allergies in children are on the rise, reports the New York Times.

Best inane health recommendation
Walking barefoot is good for you, from Conditioning Research.

Strangest list of useful tips
18 ways to solve random problems from Cultivate Greatness.  If your throat tickles, scratch your ear.  If your hand or leg falls asleep, rock your head back and forth from left to right.

Must read for diabetics using insulin
Some of the preservers, stabilizers, and other chemicals in Apidra, NovoLog, and Humalog are carcinogenic and cause other health problems.  Check out this old but important article.

Best list of foods you shouldn’t eat
Top 10 Foods to Beware includes a detailed lists of everything with trans fat, and other foods you should avoid.

Most disturbing political trend
States around the country are being caught improperly purging voter roles, possibly destroying the fabric of democracy.  This is disturbing, check out the NY Times editorial on it.

Have a great weekend, thanks for reading.

Saturated fat won't give you heart disease

Eating margarine instead of butter is stupid.

Saturated fat has been railed again and again, mainly for being linked to heart disease.  This fear of saturated fat–found in animal fats, butter and other dairy products, and coconut oil–has no solid research to back it up.  Let’s look at the history of saturated fat use, the garbage research that caused this myth, and the real fat facts.

All this commotion about saturated fat has successfully scared the crap out of consumers. People are consuming less and less saturated fat.  We’re trading steak for chicken and, more importantly, butter and lard for margarine amd vegetable oil, just like our doctors and nutritionists recommend.  But despite this decrease in saturated fat consumption, cardiovascular disease is still the number one cause of death in the Western world, and there are few signs that this is getting better.

There are many culprits of cardiovascular disease, which I’ll discuss later, but whatever the case, the saturated fat hypothesis doesn’t make a lot of sense.

The problem is that much of the research about saturated fat is bologna.  Many years ago, a man named Ancel Keyes definitively proved the connection between saturated fats and cardiovascular disease.  The problem?  The old studies didn’t differentiate between saturated fat and trans fat.  This is RIDICULOUS.  As you probably know, trans fats are the plastic-like bastard children of unsaturated fats, which sacrifice your health for shelf life.

So the myth was born; saturated fat raises your cholesterol, which is linked with cardiovascular disease. People, this is a crock. The studies against saturated fat continue to fail to differentiate between saturated fats and trans fats.

What role do saturated fats really play in cardiovascular disease?  Out of all the plaque that builds up in our coronary arteries (see image here), only 26% is saturated fat.  74% is unsaturated, mostly from polyunsaturated fats–the fats that come from the very vegetable oils that you’re supposed to use to replace butter and lard.

Recently, lots of research is coming out against this saturated fat myth.  Many non-Western diets high in saturated fat make people extremely healthy.  The Fulani of Nigeria, for example, have great health despite their high saturated fat diet.  A different study found that high carbohydrate diets caused significantly more cardiovascular problems than saturated fat consumption.

The Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation also makes a number of claims regarding the health benefits of saturated fat. They say it raises HDL (the good cholesterol), conserves omega 3 fatty acids, supports the immune system by being used to fight viruses and bacteria, is necessary for “proper modeling of calcium in the bones,” and often contains fat-soluble vitamins.  More on the benefits here.

The real causes of cardiovascular disease are numerous.  Clearly, lack of exercise and too much stress are tantamount.  But we need to control our intake of some vegetable oils, trans fats, and, you guessed it, sugar and carbohydrates.  You can look forward to full discussions on cholesterol and vegetable oils in the future.  If you want to listen to a great interview about progressive approaches to heart disease treatment and prevention, check out this link.

A couple points to wrap up.  First, how do you avoid trans fats?  Look for partially hydrogenated or hydrogenated oils on your food labels, and DON’T EAT THEM.  Foods to avoid including fried foods like french fries and fried chicken, potato chips, pancake batters, fast food, donuts, margarine, cake mixes, soups, ramen noodles, frozen foods, and baked goods like cookies and cakes.

And if you’re trying to lose weight, cutting out saturated fat is on the list of the top ten things NOT to do.  Head back to my insulin discussion to see how weight gain really works.

Remember, fats are a vital part of a balanced diet.  In moderation, saturated fats are a great thing.  The bottom line: fear the processing, not the fat.

Thanks for reading, I’m out.