Cancer Concerns

Cancer is one of the more feared diseases that unfortunately strikes many more people now than in the past. There are many kinds of cancer, but they all share a common theme - human cells gone awry and proliferating out of control such that they eventually disrupt normal bodily functions and eventually cause death. There are several factors that appear to play significant roles in causing cancer: diet, exposure to carcinogens, exposure to ionizing radiation, and genetics.

Cells may become damaged by poor nutrition or exposure to harmful chemicals or by ionizing radiation such as cosmic rays or x-rays. Most damaged cells die and cause no problems. But with trillions of cells constantly reproducing to sustain our bodies, sooner or later there will be cells that are damaged in such a way that they survive, but function abnormally. When these abnormal cells lose their normal propensity to die (apoptosis) they can proliferate out of control and then you have cancer.

Cancer and the Immune System

Research indicates that our immune system normally attacks and destroys cells that are no longer functioning properly, as is the case with cancer cells. Cancer is only able to proliferate when it can manage to avoid the body's defenses, which may happen if the immune system is weak or if the cancer is able to deceive the immune system into accepting it as normal. Excess dietary sugar and polyunsaturated fat both weaken the immune system. Some toxins and poisons can also weaken the immune system. Ironically, conventional chemotherapy for cancer also weakens the immune system.



Cancer and Glucose

Another characteristic of cancer is that cancer cells are only able to burn glucose for energy, unlike normal cells, which can also burn fat for energy. They also consume much more glucose than normal cells. Because of this peculiarity, it is possible that high blood glucose levels may add fuel to the fire once it has started. A study in Korea showed that people with elevated fasting blood glucose levels had about a 20 to 30 percent higher risk of all types of cancer and about double the risk of pancreatic cancer. Another study found that people with elevated fasting insulin and glucose levels were about 50% more likely to have recurring colon polyps and about 2.4 times more likely to have advanced colon tumor recurrence. Low carbohydrate diets may help to slow down the run-away proliferation of cancer cells by helping to normalize blood insulin and glucose levels and to keep them from spiking after meals.



Cancer and Genetics

Studies of identical twins suggest that most cancers have a genetic component to susceptibility, some cancers more than others. Thyroid, testicular, and laryngeal cancers and lymphocytic leukemia and multiple myeloma appear to have a stronger genetic component. Also, cancers with early age diagnosis generally have a higher familial risk. However, the overall heritability has been estimated at only about 18% for all types of cancer on average, leaving environment as the major factor in causing cancer.

Dealing with Cancer

Once cancer begins to proliferate enough to cause symptoms, it is very often at an advanced stage and difficult to control. Billions of dollars have been spent over decades to find ways to cure cancer, but so far, no consistent cures have been found. Consequently, avoiding cancer is all the more important.

If cancer does strike, be sure to evaluate all of the options available before deciding on a strategy to try and overcome cancer. The Annie Appleseed Project is a good resource for finding information about complimentary and alternative methods of cancer treatment.

Also, watch the videos below to see an interesting first-hand experience on dealing with cancer by Jerry Brunetti. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 1999 by chance, after a car accident sent him to the hospital. Doctors told him he would not likely live more than six months to two years. He researched his options for treatment, both conventional and non-conventional, and chose to go the non-conventional route using alternative treatments as well as food and nutrition for treatment. He is still alive and well as of this writing, nine years later. Maybe he is very lucky, or maybe he managed to do something right.

The two videos below were filmed in 2005 and show Jerry's presentation to an audience in Australia. Each video runs for about an hour, but they can be paused to take a break at any time (click on the play/pause button). If you have to quit in the middle of a video, you can move the slider bar to start the video at the approximate position where you quit.

Jerry Brunetti Video Part 1


Jerry Brunetti Video Part 2


In reality, we all may be dealing with cancer. Our choices in life may affect whether cancer can take root and grow.

Make your choices carefully!

Causes of Death 2005 versus 1900

It's interesting to compare the causes of death in 1900 to those in more recent years. The causes of death have changed significantly since then. The U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) has statistics on life expectancy and cause of death for the United States going back to 1900. These statistics show that a lot more people died before the age of 40 back then than now. Life expectancy at birth has risen by 29 years from 49 in 1900 to 78 in 2005. But life expectancy at age 60 has increased by only about 8 years since 1900 as shown in the table below. Most of the large improvement in life expectancy at birth is because of much lower mortality in children in recent years.

CDC source:
Table 6. Expectation of life by age, race, and sex: United States, final 2004 and preliminary 2005

Based on CDC statistics in the two tables below, the death rate per 100,000 population has decreased almost in half from about 1,548 in 1900 to 799 in 2005. But in 1900, about a third of the deaths were from pneumonia, tuberculosis, and diarrhea, the top three causes. By comparison, in 2005, almost half of the deaths were from heart disease and cancer, the top two causes. In 1900, heart disease and cancer accounted for only 13 percent of the deaths. The rate of death from cancer has nearly tripled and the rate for heart disease has nearly doubled from 1900 to 2005. The rate of death from accidents was almost twice as high in 1900 as in 2005.

It is likely that hygiene and medicine have helped to greatly reduce deaths from infectious diseases, more than offsetting the large rise in heart disease and cancer. It is also likely that diet and lifestyle changes account for much of the increase in heart disease and cancer. Since 1900, Americans have greatly increased the comsumption of sugar, vegetable oils, food additives, pesticides, soy, and highly processed foods and these dietary changes may very well be largely responsible for increasing the rates of heart disease and cancer.

The accuracy of these statistics is probably somewhat crude at best. Many people have multiple problems when they die and assigning a cause may be just a best guess. The same problem exists in classifying disease in the first place. But nonetheless, these statistics are the best estimates we have.

CDC source for 2005 data:
Table B. Deaths and death rates for 2005 and age-adjusted death rates and percent changes in age-adjusted rates from 2004 to 2005 for the 15 leading causes of death: United States, final 2004 and preliminary 2005

CDC source for 1900 data:
Leading Causes of Death, 1900-1998

Native Nutrition Photos

If you enjoy taking photos and/or looking at photos, there's a new Flickr photo group devoted to photos related to native nutrition, nourishing traditions, and paleo-diet. It includes photos of healthy traditional food, meals, food preparation and processing methods, cooking tools and techniques, as well as healthy people and animals, gardens, farms, and ways of growing your own food.


The idea behind this photo group is to share healthy ideas in the form of photos, along with helpful comments so that we can all help each other to learn and grow. The photos on this post are linked back to the original photos on Flickr. To see the group photo page click on this link: Native Nutrition. On the group photo page, click on the "More photos ..." link to see all of the group photos. Click on the individual photos to see a larger image, along with information about the photo and any comments.


If you've never heard of Flickr before, it may be the world's largest repository of photos. Typically, about 3,000 to 4,000 photos are uploaded to Flicker *every minute* from all over the world. Today it ranked number 39 among the world's most visited web sites.


If you'd like to join the group, it's easy. You can get a free account at Flickr for up to 200 photos. If you have SBC-Yahoo internet service, you get the "pro" account for free, which includes unlimited uploading of photos and otherwise costs about $25 a year. No April fooling :)


Hope to see you soon - your photos, that is :)

A Real Farm!

I recently went to the Sand Creek Farm and dairy for a tour. About 10 or 15 families came for the tour. It's a beautiful and ideal farm run by Ben and Alysha Godfrey, near Cameron, Texas. The tour was great fun for all. There was a visit to the dairy, a ride on a horse drawn trailer, a visit to the field for a romp in some haystacks and a hands-on demonstration of plowing with horses, a visit to a pasture with pigs, chickens, and cows, and an opportunity to collect eggs from the hen house.

Click here to see a set of photos from the tour.
The photos can be viewed individually, by clicking on the photo miniatures, or as a slideshow, by clicking on the "View as slideshow" link on the upper right side of the page. Click on the "Map" link to see a map showing the location (use the zoom bar on the upper right to zoom out or switch to the satellite view).

Sand Creek Farm is a real farm, where the animals are pastured, well treated, and fed their natural diet. The dairy produces clean fresh real milk, cream, and cheese that are not damaged by pasteurization and homogenization. The crops and feed are organic. No GMO here!

Ben and Alysha were raised in the city and graduated from Texas A&M University with backgrounds in agriculture leadership and scientific nutrition. They are home schooling four beautiful daughters. Ben led the family to a farm in 2003. They more recently moved to a larger farm, where they are working to achieve a sustainable farm based on holistic principles of proper soil and animal health.

We need more farms like this one. Instead, most farms have become factories where profit is maximized at the expense of nutrition and health benefit. Animals are caged, poorly treated, and fed grossly unnatural diets. Plants are genetically modified to withstand pests and herbicides - not to make them healthier to eat. They are sprayed with harmful chemicals that end up in the bodies of animals and humans that consume them.

Food produced using traditional methods is much healthier. It can also be more expensive, but what better investment can you make than your health and the health of your family?

We vote with our dollars. Buy sustainable, traditional, humane, organic foods!

Health Check List

The typical modern diet is missing important foods that kept our ancestors healthy and instead is loaded with highly processed fake foods that are low in nutrients and high in additives that are not good for health. Also, modern lifestyles are often stressful and sedentary. Together, poor diet and lifestyle choices are largely responsible for declining health and quality of life in the modern world.

What can we do to improve our health?

1) Include animal seafoods and/or organ meats and/or dairy
(from Weston A Price study of most healthful native diets)

2) Eliminate refined sugar and minimize sweets
(keep total sugars to less than 5-10% of calories)
and if overweight, minimize starchy foods as well
(keep total carbohydrates to less than 10-20% of calories)

3) Eliminate artificial trans-fats (hydrogenated oils and fats)

4) Restrict polyunsaturated fats to less than 4% of total calories
and minimize omega-6 polyunsaturated fats

5) Get at least 30 minutes of active exercise daily
(appropriate for your level of conditioning)

6) Learn to avoid and properly handle stress
(relaxation, meditation, EFT, diet, exercise)

7) Get plenty of sleep (ideally 7 to 8 hours)

8) Get plenty of sun if possible
(avoid sunscreen but be careful not to get sunburned)

9) Include cultured and fermented foods and beverages
(if tolerated)

10) Avoid exposure to harmful chemicals
(artificial food additives, pesticides, natural food toxins,
unfermented soy, drugs, poisons, health care products)

11) Avoid foods that cause noticeable adverse effects
(identify possible food intolerances)

12) Take good quality high vitamin cod liver oil daily
(if you don't get adequate sun, seafood, and liver)

13) Choose fully pastured or wild animal foods
(from a clean environment and include bone broth)

14) Use coconut oil, tallow, and/or butter for cooking

15) Include a variety of plant foods to taste and tolerance
(prepared to optimize nutrient availability,
preferably high brix organic and locally grown)

16) If dairy is consumed, use raw and cultured dairy

17) If grains and nuts are consumed, soak or sprout them

18) Eat at least half of your food uncooked

19) Minimize or eliminate factory processed/packaged fake foods
(supports 2, 3, 4, 10)

20) When eating out, avoid fried foods, dressings, and sweet foods
(supports 2, 3, 4, 10)

Happiness

I saw some video segments from 60 Minutes on Yahoo News this morning that are very informative about happiness. They are interviews of Tal Ben-Shahar, a Harvard psychology professor and lecturer. The link below will bring up the Yahoo News video player and should play the videos (and a few commercials :) automatically in succession:

Yahoo News Videos
We Can't Have It All
Happiness Defined
Why Americans Are Unhappy
He Practices What He Preaches
Five Easy Steps

According to Tal, in our materialistic society there is a lot of pressure from high expectations. However, wealth does not create happiness. We need to have realistic expectations. We can't have it all but we can have a lot.

He also says it is difficult to define happiness. It is an experience of meaning (importance) and pleasure. Meaning can be achievement, contributing to community, or enjoyment of friendship or a relationship. What is pleasure and meaning will vary over time and by culture and from one person to another. Below are Tal's suggestions for happiness:

* Simplify - more is not always better

* Exercise is important - improves mood

* It's OK to experience painful emotions - give yourself permission to be human

* Appreciate what we have - give thanks and grow and learn both in regard to our relationships and our surroundings

I would add that maintaining good health by eating a good diet is also very important for happiness. It's more difficult to be happy if you're not healthy and many drugs and medications can cause depression. Too much sugar in your diet may also lead to depression, as well as lack of general good nutrition.

Also, below is a YouTube video of a funny interview of Tal Ben-Shahar by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show:



Tal Ben-Shahar has written a book called "Happier", which I have not read but looks interesting and is highly rated on Amazon Books.

I'm happy because I have the day off for President's Day today :)

Health Food

You know the old saying - one person's food is another person's poison - really is true. We are all different, and because of these differences, there is no ideal healthy diet that is optimal for everyone. On the other hand there are definitely some aspects to diet that we all need and some aspects that can be less than optimal for everyone's health.

Many people eat simply to stop the hunger pangs and to enjoy the pleasure of eating, with little thought about what the body needs to stay healthy. Convenience and cost also play a large role in what people eat. In our fast-paced society many people are in a hurry and want their food quick, convenient, and cheap. Hence the rise in popularity of "fast food" including fast food restaurants and fast microwave convenience foods. Most people have a vague notion of what might be healthy, primarily based on the constant barrage of advertising, mainly for fast cheap convenient foods. But much of this advertising is intentionally misleading to sell products. Consequently, many people have become brainwashed into believing that some fast foods are actually "healthy choices". Most of these foods are not so bad that they will quickly make you sick - or they wouldn't sell and would soon drop out of the market. But most of these factory processed-packaged foods are loaded with flavor enhancers and even addicting chemicals to entice and capture customers, often at the expense of their long-term health. They also have lost many of their nutrients during processing and are loaded with chemicals or ingredients that make them less expensive - but are not good for optimal health.

So what are the additives that are likely to be harmful to everyone's long-term health? They include flavor enhancers like monosodium glutamate (MSG) and addicting refined sugar, cheap oils full of rancid polyunsaturated omega-6 fats and/or trans-fats, food colorings, processing additives and conditioners that make foods cheaper to mass-produce, and preservatives to extend shelf-life. These are the ingredients that make fake convenience foods cheap and make them look and taste more like real food so they sell, but at the expense of our long-term health. So, the moral to this story is simple: it's time to get back to eating real food.

What nutrients do we need from our food? We all know about vitamins and minerals. So, why not just take a multi-vitamin and mineral supplement and be done with it? One good reason is that most multi-vitamin and mineral supplements are made from refined chemicals that often may not be properly absorbed or utilized to fill our nutrient needs. Our bodies have evolved to absorb and utilize complex matrices of nutrients from foods, not refined or artificial nutrient analogues from pills. It is also likely that science has not yet discovered all of the healthful nutrients in foods nor all of the synergistic effects of natural nutrients working together. So, what is packaged for convenience in a pill is not likely to fully meet our nutritional needs.

A better approach is to look at diets of healthy people around the world to look for foods that favor health. We can also look for dietary factors that are detrimental to health. The classical work of Weston Price is a good start. He searched around the world to find people eating their native diets and compared their health to that of their contemporaries who had switched to canned and processed commercial foods loaded with refined flour and sugar that were becoming popular in the early 1900's. He consistently found that the people who continued to eat their native diets were healthier than those who switched to more modern commercial diets. He found that the healthiest groups included animal seafoods, and/or organ meats, and/or dairy in their diet. He also found that these people ate a wide variety of plant foods and prepared them in ways that optimized their health benefit. These are the foods that should be the foundation of a healthy modern diet. The challenge today is to find these foods uncontaminated by modern pollution.

Ideal Foods

Buy local foods to help preserve our environment and keep it clean. Buy organic foods to help keep our environment and foods free of pesticides. Buy wild animal foods from clean environments or foods from pastured animals that are humanely raised without antibiotics or hormones and fed natural organic diets. Avoid large fish, which accumulate methyl-mercury from the food chain, and minimize or eliminate factory-farmed animal foods. Include fatty fish and shellfish or organ meats or dairy depending on which of these foods are most appealing and well tolerated. Avoid all processed dairy and choose raw, cultured, and fermented dairy if tolerated. Make bone broth to use in soups, stews, and gravies. Choose a variety of organic vegetables and fruits to suit your taste and appetite. Include some lacto-fermented vegetables if they are tolerated. Grow your own foods if possible. Include whole-grain foods and small amounts of nuts if they are appealing. Soak or sprout grains, nuts, and seeds for optimal nutrient availability. If you are overweight, avoid starchy/sugary vegetables, grains, and fruits.

Use your senses to judge the quality of real foods. If a food is not appealing, don't eat it. Also notice how you feel after eating foods and avoid those foods that do not leave you feeling well. But don't trust your senses to judge the quality of deceptive fake foods - avoid them as much as possible.

To make sure that you are getting a balanced diet, you can use online nutrition calculators or if you have Excel you can try my Dietary Nutrition Calculator to estimate your dietary nutrient intake. These estimates are crude at best, because of the sometimes large variability of some nutrients in foods and because of the variability in how well these nutrients are absorbed and utilized from one individual to another. But at least you can get a rough idea if your diet is providing adequate nutrients for good long-term health.

Taking the time and effort to find and prepare good quality food is a worthy investment for health. What better investment can you make?

We Are All On Drugs

On a lighter note - Weezer video (high speed):

Real Player
Windows Media
QuickTime
You Tube

Maybe this song should be the new U.S. national anthem? With so many people taking prescription drugs, over-the-counter drugs, recreational drugs, and illegal drugs, it might as well be. And if you count caffeine and refined sugar as drugs like I do - even more so.

We are all on drugs, yeah
Never getting enough
We are all on drugs, yeah
Give me some of that stuff

And the best of your days
Will all vanish in the haze
When you're on drugs

And you wish you could quit
Cause you're really sick of it
But you're on drugs

Give it to me!
Just say no to drugs, yeah
Let food be your medicine
Just say no to drugs, yeah
Let food be your medicine ... woooo!

Will this be your fate?

(credit to Close to Home)

OK, back to reality now :)

Antibiotics - Probiotics

Modern medicine has conjured a deep fear of microbes that has led to gross over-use of antibiotics, most commonly for sinus and ear infections. Antibiotic literally means "against life", but is largely used to refer to medications that kill bacteria. Many of these medications are derived from mycotoxins produced by fungi for the purpose of killing competing bacteria. What most doctor's don't tell you is that many of the antibiotics they prescribe kill not only harmful bacteria, but also health promoting bacteria. Not only that, but when bacteria are suppressed, fungi can go into a feeding frenzy and multiply like crazy. And most fungi are not beneficial. What's worse, antibiotics also depress our immune system, allowing unaffected microbes to flourish. And furthermore, over-use of antibiotics creates antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria that can take advantage of any depressed immune system. Consequently, antibiotics should be reserved for only the most severe bacterial infections.

Most people don't realize there are many more microbes in our bodies than human cells, by at least a factor of two or three. We are really symbiotic cultures of human cells and microbes. Most of these microbes are in our digestive system and can weigh as much as three or four pounds. When we are healthy, most of the microbes are beneficial bacteria that help us digest our food and even add nutrients to our system and help support our immune health. This is "symbiosis". Taking powerful antibiotics greatly damages this symbiotic system by killing the beneficial bacteria and allowing harmful microbes, mainly fungi and resistant bacteria, to multiply, causing "dysbiosis". These unfriendly microbes can damage the mucosal lining of the intestines allowing undigested harmful proteins and chemicals to enter the body and the bad microbes can also generate toxins that are absorbed into our body. Dysbiosis often leads to food allergies and may trigger auto-immune diseases, which are malfunctions of our immune system. Dysbiosis may also cause or contribute to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

We are born without beneficial microbes in our digestive system, but mother's milk provides a host of beneficial microbes that quickly colonize our infant digestive systems. The microbes change in composition over time, influenced largely by the foods we eat. These beneficial microbes serve as our first line of defense in combating harmful microbes. When they are healthy, they can out-compete undesirable microbes and may even kill them directly. So, it is imperative to eat foods that promote the beneficial microbes. These can be foods that feed the microbes or foods that actually have live beneficial microbes to re-enforce the supply in our system. Foods with live beneficial microbes are called probiotic, which literally means "for life". Some of the best probiotic foods are raw dairy, fermented dairy such as kefir and yogurt, fermented beverages such as kombucha and beet kvass, and lacto-fermented vegetables such as traditional sauerkraut and pickles (unpasteurized). Foods that benefit the good microbes are called "prebiotic" and include vegetable foods with oligosaccharides. Foods high in refined sugar and refined carbohydrates may in quantity promote microbes that are not beneficial. Maintaining proper digestion is critical to our health.

So what can we do to avoid antibiotics? Ideally keep our immune system as healthy as possible to avoid infections in the first place. That means eating plenty of nutrient dense foods and minimizing dietary sugar, refined carbohydrates, and omega-6 fats that can hamper immune function. Also, eating foods with good saturated fats, such as pastured animal and dairy fats and coconut oil, helps to boost immune function. And consuming probiotic foods helps to maintain beneficial bacteria in the digestive system, which in turn helps to boost immune function. Choosing fresh organic foods and staying away from factory processed/packaged foods loaded with harmful food additives, preservatives, and pesticides also helps to reduce the burden on our immune system.

When infections do manage to bring illness, we need to boost the functioning of our immune system - preferably by diet as much as possible. Taking additional probiotic foods and/or supplements may help against many infections, especially gastro-intestinal infections. Herbal medicines may also provide help against many infections. Consult a naturopathic physician or herbal medicine practitioner for diagnosis and prescription. Bone broth is a traditional remedy that can also help our immune system fight many infections, Broth is Beautiful.

For an in depth and well-referenced discussion of dysbiosis read:
"The causes of intestinal dysbiosis: a review"

Sugar - a Toxin?

YES! And it's also a very addicting DRUG!

OK, now you think I'm really crazy :)

But let's take a look at the definitions. A toxin is a chemical produced by living organisms that causes harmful effects on the body at high enough concentration. Sugar easily meets that definition. It is plant derived and there are numerous studies that show a variety of harmful health effects from excess dietary sugar. Below are the definitions from Wikipedia.

Toxin:
A poisonous substance produced by living cells or organisms.

Poison:
In the context of biology, poisons are substances that can cause damage, illness, or death to organisms, usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale, when a sufficient quantity is absorbed by an organism.

Drug:
A drug, broadly speaking, is any substance that alters normal bodily function. Recreational drugs are chemical substances that affect the central nervous system, such as narcotics or hallucinogens. They may be used for perceived beneficial effects on perception, consciousness, personality, and behavior. Some recreational drugs can cause addiction and habituation.

OK, is sugar a drug? If you've ever had a feel-good high immediately after eating sweet "comfort" foods, it's a psycho-active drug. If you've ever had a "craving" for something sweet, it's an addicting psycho-active drug.

So, my point is that we need to start thinking of refined sugar as a toxin and drug. That makes sugar by far the most common and abundant toxin and drug in the modern food world!

The body needs small amounts of sugar to function properly. But the body can make all the sugar it needs. There is no minimum daily intake requirement for sugar or even for carbohydrates. There are many nutrients that in small amounts are necessary for good health, but in excess are detrimental. Zinc,copper, iron, iodine, and vitamins A and D are examples. Likewise, sugar in small amounts is necessary for health, but in excess causes problems.

When natural sugars are ingested unrefined, as in fruits or dairy, the amounts are generally low enough not to cause problems. However, when the sugar is refined and concentrated as a food additive, it is easy to get too much. Because of it's addicting and feel-good qualities, sugar is often added in large quantities to processed/manufactured foods to make them sell better. So, if you eat a lot of processed/manufactured or restaurant foods, it is very easy to get too much sugar. People eating a lot of these foods commonly get as much as 20 to 30 percent or more of their calories from sugars. What's worse is that most of that sugar is now in the form of high fructose corn syrup, which is even more harmful than table sugar. Most healthy primitive diets had only small amounts of sugar, mainly from raw dairy or from fruit when in season.

Too much dietary sugar certainly won't kill you right away, but it does have short-term harmful effects, like suppression of the immune system, even with relatively small doses. That leaves you more vulnerable to infectious diseases and cancer. One study showed that ingestion of 100 grams of sugar caused about a 40% reduction in white blood cell activity against pathogens and found that it took about five hours for immune function to return to normal.

Over many years, too much sugar can lead to metabolic syndrome diseases, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. These are the diseases of aging and that's exactly what too much sugar does - speeds up the aging process.

So, how much sugar should we allow in our diet? Probably no more than about 5% to 10% of total daily calories and the less, the better. That means if your normal dietary intake is 2,000 calories per day, you should not get more than 200 calories from sugar. Since sugar has 4 calories per gram, that means no more than about 50 grams (2 ounces) of sugar per day on a 2,000 calorie diet. And that's total sugar from all sources. Here's the amount of sugar you get from single servings of some common "comfort" foods, listed in grams, to the left of the food name (from NutritionData).

Grams of sugar:
96 cake (1/8 slice 9 inch white with coconut icing)
57 candy (4 oz Snickers)
56 milk shake (11 oz vanilla)
39 soft drink (12 oz cola)
39 yogurt (8 oz low fat strawberry Breyers)
37 coffee (12 oz caramel mocha Starbucks)
34 apple juice (12 oz Starbucks)
32 pie (1/8 slice 8 inch pecan)
30 ice cream (1 cup chocolate)
29 orange juice (12 oz McDonald's)
28 muffin (101 g blueberry Starbucks)
24 donut (5 inch)
21 brownie (56 g large chocolate)
18 granola (2/3 cup low fat fruit Nature Valley)
15 cereal (1 cup frosted flakes Kellogg)
07 hamburger (105 g McDonald's)

For comparison - grams of sugar:
19 apple (3 inch with skin)
15 peach (2 3/4 inch)
12 orange (2 7/8 inch navel)
12 grapes (15 red or green seedless)
07 strawberries (1 cup whole)

Breaking the Sugar Addiction
To break your sugar addiction, eliminate foods with added refined sugar and reduce intake of other refined carbohydrates. Increase intake of foods with good quality animal or dairy fat, preferably from pastured animals, and add probiotic foods. Also, try coconut oil. And be sure to eat a variety of foods to get good nutrition. If you have Excel, try out my dietary nutrition calculator. Dropping sugar may seem difficult the first few days, but after a week of abstinence from refined sugar and with intake of more good fat, probiotics, and nutrients, you should lose any cravings for sweets. If you still have difficulty, another tool to try is the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), a type of accupressure that employs tapping instead of the needles used in accupuncture. Once you have broken your addiction, you can still allow occasional sugary foods, but not very often or you run the risk of becoming addicted once again. You may also find that sugary foods that used to be "treats" no longer taste as good - they're too sweet!

If a food does not taste good without adding sugar to it, then either learn to like it without the sugar, or find other foods that you like that don't have added sugar. You may find as you lose your sugar addiction that many foods that formerly did not taste sweet enough now taste good. Sour and tart foods may become more appealing. You may even develop a new appreciation for all of the wonderful flavors in nature!

Big Fat Lies

Here's a great new video clip that will be part of a new movie called "Fat Head" by Tom Naughton. The movie is a parody of Morgan Spurlock’s popular movie "Super Size Me". Tom is a comedian and health writer and does a good job of pointing out some of the insane logic that is used to promote sadly mistaken conventional health advice about dietary fat. Tom has several clips from this movie on his Fat Head Movie web page. Enjoy!

Avoiding Harmful Chemicals in Food and Environment

We are constantly exposed to a bewildering horde of artificial and natural poisons and toxins in our food and environment. The human body can properly handle small amounts of most natural poisons and toxins, but there are many new artificial chemicals for which the human body has not had time to evolve effective means of detoxification. All of these harmful chemicals can cause a wide variety of unpleasant symptoms and if exposure levels are high enough, serious complications like cancer or even death can result. The harm level of these chemicals can vary widely among individuals, influenced by health status, genes, and cumulative exposure effects. Most of these chemicals will cause serious harm in everyone at high enough concentrations. Some of these chemicals are actually nutrients that the body needs at low concentrations but become harmful if the intake is too high. The biggest problem, however, is the pervasiveness of these chemicals, such that individually they might not be a problem, but collectively, they can be overwhelming to our body.

So what can we do? It's nearly impossible to eliminate exposure to all potentially harmful chemicals. The best we can do is to learn where significant sources lie in our food and environment and try to avoid them. Also, if you can detect cause and effect relationships between symptoms and sources, you can avoid things that bother you.

There are a variety of actions you can take to lessen the toxic burden. Eat organic vegetables and fruits and fully pastured or wild animal foods for starters. Minimize sweets and foods high in omega-6 fats. Minimize highly processed commercial foods that are often full of artificial additives such as artificial preservatives, artificial colors, artificial flavors, artificial sweeteners, and artificial trans-fats. Don't eat spoiled food or any food that does not taste good. Minimize consumption of large fish, like albacore tuna or swordfish, which often have high levels of mercury. Avoid processed meats preserved with nitrites (including those with added "celery juice" that have hidden nitrites). If your water supply has added chlorine or fluoride, get water filters that remove these and other contaminants. Use only plastics with recycle numbers 2 HDPE, 4 LDPE, or 5 PP. Don't use teflon or aluminum cookware. Be very careful in choosing skin, hair, and mouth care products (EWG has excellent helpful information). Don't get "silver" amalgam dental fillings and properly remove any that you may already have. Avoid vaccines and long-term use of medications. Don't use commercial pesticides or herbicides.

For those of you who may do all these things and still have sensitivity issues, an elimination diet may be helpful for determining problematic foods. Some seemingly healthful foods can have salicylates, amines, or other natural food chemicals that cause unpleasant symptoms in sensitive individuals.

Below is a partial list of some of the more common poisons and toxins with links to more information.

Medicines
Antibiotics - a double edged sword
Pesticides - in produce
Herbicides

Food Additives
Artificial Colors
. annatto - yellow food color
Artificial flavors
. MSG (free glutamate) - flavor enhancer
. ribonucleotides - flavor enhancers
Artificial Trans-Fats
Dough Conditioners (mono and diglycerides)
High Omega-6 Vegetable Oils
Sugar-free sweeteners
. aspartame (nutrasweet)
. sucralose (splenda)
. saccharin
. cyclamate
Sugar alcohols
. mannitol
. sorbitol
Sugars - how sugars can ruin your health
. sucrose (table sugar)
. dextrose
. HFCS - health hazard
Preservatives
. BHA/BHT
. EDTA
. proprionates
. nitrites
. sulfites

Toxins
. botulinum
Mycotoxins
. aflatoxin
. alcohol

Natural Plant Chemicals
alkaloids
cyanides
flavonoids
goitrogens
lectins
polyphenols
phytoestrogens
salicylate

Biogenic Amines

Venoms

Metals
aluminum - vaccines, anti-clumping agents
arsenic - pesticides, antibiotics
copper - also a nutrient
lead - glazed pottery, old paint
mercury - hazards, dental fillings, vaccines, large fish
nickel - some stainless steel cookware
selenium - also a nutrient
zinc - also a nutrient

Halogens
bromine - flour, antacids
chlorine - water
fluorine - water, toothpaste, pesticides, tea
iodine - kelp, also a nutrient

Petrochemicals
benzene
butadiene
parabens
propylene glycol
toluene
Plastics
. bisphenol A (BPA)
. polycarbonate (#7 PC)
. polystyrene (#6 PS)
. polyvinyl chloride (#3 PVC)
. pthalates

Other Chemicals
acrylamide - baked and fried starchy/sugary foods
asbestos - insulation and flooring in some older homes
carageenan - thickening agent in foods and skin care products
dioxins - a case for vegetarianism?
formaldehyde - vaccines, plywood, carpets
perchlorates - rocket fuel, fireworks, chlorinated water
polybrominated biphenyls (PBB) - fire retardant
polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE) - fire retardant
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB)
polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) - combustion product
teflon - cookware

Comprehensive Harmful Chemical Listing from EWG

Enduring Health Wisdom from a Remarkable Dentist

In the early 1900's this dentist noticed progressively worse dental problems in his patients over a couple of decades - not just dental caries, but also crowded teeth. He also noticed that these dental problems often mirrored the health of his patients. Poor dental health usually meant poor health in general. He theorized that the cause of this dental and health decline might be from the rapid dietary changes taking place at the time, as people began eating more and more of the "foods of commerce" - white flour, sugar, polished rice, and canned goods - and less of the whole foods that our ancestors ate.

In the 1920's he decided to risk life and limb to find and study remote peoples still eating their native diets to determine which foods provided the best dental and thus overall health. He made arduous trips to far reaching locations across the globe, including North and South America, Europe, Africa, Australia, and Pacific Islands. He documented the dental health of thousands of people, including thousands of photographs.

He found many remote "primitive" groups eating their native diet who had little evidence of dental problems. He also found that when peoples of these same groups abandoned their native diets in favor of the modern foods of commerce they very quickly developed dental problems and these problems were worse in succeeding generations. He was unable to find any healthy native groups eating an exclusively vegetarian diet. The healthiest groups included animal seafoods or organ meats or dairy or a combination of these foods in their diets, along with a wide variety of plant foods. He brought food samples back to his laboratory for analyses and found that the foods eaten by the healthiest groups were much higher in many key nutrients than typical foods from the civilized world.

His friends encouraged him to write a book about his findings. The book was first published in 1939 and can be read online: "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration". The book is also available in hard copy from the Price-Pottenger Foundation. Oh ... and the dentist's name was Weston A. Price. He was a renowned dentist of his time, but unfortunately he has been largely forgotten.

Today, Price's "foods of commerce" have turned into modern foods of convenience - highly processed, chemical laced, nutrient poor fake foods that are cheap and fill the stomach but leave the body with insufficient nutrition and added toxic loads that lead to declining health over time. Add to this dubious vaccines, over-used antibiotics, and grossly over-rated medicines that all have serious side effects and you have a recipe for major health problems. We need to return to the traditional foods that nurtured our ancestors and kept them healthy.

Here is Price's recommendation for dental and overall health:
"A first requisite for the control of tooth decay is to have provided an adequate intake of the body-building and repairing factors by the time the hunger appeal for energy has been satisfied. A sufficient variety of foods must be used to supply the body's demand for those elements which it needs in large quantities, that is, calcium and phosphorus, and the other elements which it needs in smaller quantities, though just as imperatively. One of the serious human deficiencies is the inability to synthesize certain of the activators which include the known vitamins. This makes necessary the reinforcement of the nutrition with definite amounts of special foods to supply these organic catalysts, especially the fat-soluble activators, including the known vitamins, which are particularly difficult to provide in adequate quantities. I have shown that the primitive races studied were dependent upon one of three sources for some of these fat-soluble factors, namely, sea foods, organs of animals or dairy products. These are all of animal origin. I have indicated in Chapter 16 the nutritional programs that have proved in clinical testing adequate for providing the body with nutrition that will not only prevent tooth decay, but check it when it is active. The stress periods of life, namely, active growth in children and motherhood, do not constitute overloads among most of the primitive races because the factor of safety provided by them in the selection of foods is sufficiently high to protect them against all stresses. I have indicated the type of nutrition that is especially needed for these stress periods in our modern civilization. Also, that it is not necessary to adopt the foods of any particular racial stock, but only to make our nutrition adequate in all its nutritive factors to the primitive nutritions. Tooth decay is not only unnecessary, but an indication of our divergence from Nature's fundamental laws of life and health."

As a final footnote on the work of Weston Price, be sure to read Interpreting the Work of Weston Price which discusses his findings and what they mean for health.

Selecting Fats and Oils for Health

One very important influence on our health is our choice of fats and oils in our diet. In general, we should look for oils and fat that are close to what is found in our bodies - mostly saturated and monounsaturated, with only a small amount of polyunsaturated fat. Below is a table showing the percentage of these types of fat in various fats and oils that we eat. The omega-6 and omega-3 fats are also included in the polyunsaturated total in this table. We need small amounts of omega-6 fat, but most people eating a Standard American Diet (SAD) get way too much of this type of fat and that depresses your immune system and increases your chances of getting cancer and heart disease. It's best to avoid fats/oils that have more than about 20 percent as omega-6 and use sparingly fats/oils that are more than about 10 percent omega-6. Oils high in omega-6 are commonly used in processed/packaged foods and in restaurants because they are inexpensive and because of misguided advice to avoid saturated fats. Because of the polyunsaturated bonds, the high omega-6 oils easily go rancid and are easily damaged in processing and cooking. Also be sure to read "Some Typical Questions and Misconceptions on Fats and Oils" by Mary Enig, PhD nutritionist and "The Great Con-ola".

Percentage of Classified Fats for Different Fats and Oils

Fat/oil	Omg-6	Omg-3	Poly	Mono	Sat
Cod liver oil	1.0	20.5	24.5	50.9	24.6
Palm kernel oil	1.7	0.0	1.7	12.1	86.2
Macadamia oil	1.8	0.3	2.1	81.5	16.4
Coconut oil	1.9	0.0	1.9	6.2	91.9
Butter	2.9	0.4	4.0	27.9	68.1
Beef fat (tallow)	3.2	0.6	4.2	43.7	52.1
Sunflower high oleic oil	3.7	0.2	3.9	86.1	10.0
Mutton fat (tallow)	5.7	2.4	8.2	42.4	49.4
Palm oil	9.5	0.2	9.7	38.7	51.6
Olive oil	10.0	0.8	10.8	75.0	14.2
Goose fat	10.3	0.5	11.5	59.4	29.0
Pork fat (lard)	10.7	1.0	11.7	47.2	41.0
Duck fat	12.6	1.0	13.5	51.7	34.8
Avocado oil	13.1	1.0	14.1	73.8	12.1
Flax oil	13.3	55.8	69.0	21.1	9.8
Safflower high oleic oil	15.1	0.0	15.1	78.4	6.5
Almond oil	18.2	0.0	18.2	73.2	8.6
Canola (rape seed) oil	19.2	9.2	28.5	64.1	7.5
Chicken fat	20.4	1.0	21.9	46.9	31.2
Peanut oil	33.6	0.0	33.6	48.6	17.8
Rice bran oil	35.5	1.7	37.2	41.8	21.0
Sesame oil	43.2	0.3	43.6	41.5	14.9
Soybean oil	53.0	7.1	60.0	23.7	16.3
Cottonseed oil	53.9	0.2	54.3	18.6	27.1
Corn oil	56.2	1.2	57.4	29.0	13.6
Sunflower oil	68.8	0.0	68.8	20.4	10.8
Grapeseed oil	72.8	0.1	73.1	16.8	10.0
Safflower oil	78.4	0.0	78.4	15.1	6.5

Compiled from USDA Nutrient Database
Note: about 4 to 6 percent of total fats were unclassified

Table Abbreviations
Omg-6: Omega-6
Omg-3: Omega-3
Poly: Polyunsaturated (including both omega-6 and omega-3)
Mono: Monounsaturated
Sat: Saturated