Life and Health Aren't Separate Entities!

So, I watched two documentaries last night that were uplifting but also frustrating.  The first was "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead" (a Joe Cross film) the other was, finally, "Forks Over Knives".  The movie that frustrated me the most was "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead" (see the official movie website for a synopsis).  It frustrated me to see people that were quite obviously in need of a diet change to be healthier but instead of giving whole plant foods a chance to work their miracles, they went on the defense about how they "don't eat to live, but live to eat" and how everyone will die someday and why not die happy by eating what they want.  Uh-huh...okay, here's a scenario for those people - my grandfather had that same exact attitude, he also had type 2 diabetes. He refused to take medication and refused to change his eating habits...he lost BOTH his legs to foot gangrene and the end of his life was spent in a hospital bed!  Yeah, that's definitely the way to live, isn't it?

So, for giggles (that's sarcasm, by-the-way), let's say that you eat what you love to eat (or at least what you've been tricked into loving to eat, thanks to excitotoxins).  You take all the dozen or so meds that you will eventually need to keep up with your lifestyle.  Your energy levels keep dropping while your weight keeps increasing so that when those grandkids come over you have no energy to do much more than sit in your recliner and watch T.V. with them.  Then one day, you wake up in the morning and you have a funny pain across your chest, down your left arm and up into your jaw - it hurts so much that you feel like you can't breath.  You call 911 and off you go to the hospital where they tell you that you've just had a heart attack then the news that you need bypass surgery.  Fast forward a few weeks and now you're home, back to eating what you want because no one is going to tell you what you can or can't eat, right?  A month later, you're at the breakfast table and, yep, another heart attack! You reach for the aspirin and call 911 - again.  This time the doctor tells you that you need a triple bypass and if you don't change your diet you might not survive the next one.  You still dig your heels in and keep eating.  A few months later, you get a funny tingly feeling on the left side of your head and your left arm, then when you stand up your left leg gives out and you fall.  Now, you've had a stroke, according to the ER doctor. You can understand him but when you try to speak, nothing comes out.  You're whole left side is numb and your brain feels foggy and slow.  So now your life is spent trying to get over the stroke.  Wonder how you would rate your quality of life at this point??

I'm not saying that these things are 100% avoidable with a better diet but why would you step in the path of a cannonball (unless you work for the circus)?  The studies have said so much about how things are more preventable than what people think...why do people prefer to continue to suffer?  Oh and another good one is the excuse that "if this is what God has planned for me, so be it".  Hello?!? Did God come down and force you to eat those greasy hamburgers??  No, but have you ever heard of free will?? Also, if you're going to use the God argument, my response to it is "God only helps those that help themselves"!

So, live to eat?  Is being confined to a hospital bed for the last 5-10 years of your life considered really living, especially if there had been a chance to avoid it?  I don't think so.  I want to be like Fauja Singh and running a marathon at the age of 100! Go veg!

Created by MyFitnessPal - Free Weight Loss Tools

*Steps on Soap Box*

Drugs. Drugs. Drugs. Drugs.  You take them. I take them (though I keep them to a minimum, hence my vegan lifestyle). Everyone's taking them, right?  The FDA says they're okay or they wouldn't be on the market, right? Doctors prescribe them left and right so that must mean they're safe, right?  W.R.O.N.G.!!  Safe is such a tricky word.  Most medical schools do not require pharmacology as a graduation requirement so if you want real, knowledgeable answers about the drugs prescribed by your friendly doctor or the evil Dr. Oh-you-mean-if-I-write-100-prescriptions-for-your-drug-you'll-send-me-to-Jamaica-for-a-drug-conference-wink-wink you should talk to your pharmacist or a bio-chemist.  Sigh.

Drug pushers or as they're really known, pharmaceutical sales associates...did you know that my physician assistant that I see had applied for a job with one of the big pharma companies as a sales associate when she was in school but they turned her down because they were looking for people who had NO medical background??  Hmmm, wonder why they'd want that...doesn't it make you just a bit uncomfortable to know that they're looking for people to "sell" their product who won't really know any better than what they're told to say?  Yeah, not making my insides all warm and cozy, in fact, it makes me feel like there's a snake slithering up my back every time I see one of those go into my doctor's office.  So why do people not even QUESTION the health validity of these prescriptions?

Here's a pill for your blood pressure, one for your cholesterol, one for your acid reflux, one for your blood sugar, one for your kidneys, one for your gall bladder, one for your thyroid, one to make you happy, one to give you energy, one to help you sleep, one to calm you down (after the energy one of course), one to make you less hungry... REALLY? This is where we're headed as humans if we don't learn to put a stop to it all! FOOD - the first drug we ever put into our bodies - regulate that, and the rest may well fall into place!
As my husband said to me this week after I went off about two people looking for the quick fixes for two different problems: "humans are inherently lazy".  Period.  He's right too. But, aren't we better than that?  Isn't that one of the things that sets us apart from the other animals, the ability to make choices and overcome our instinctive natures?  It just seems that more and more people around me keep looking for the easy way or the quick-fix and it angers me and saddens me to see these people go down that rabbit hole.  Once you start giving in to the quick-fix, then, like the druggie on the corner, you're constantly looking for the next quick-fix, probably to fix the side effects of the first quick-fix...and so on... and so on... and so on...

Let's take ADHD for example.  ADHD is the new tonsil fad and it just seems to keep going.  When I was a kid growing up, everyone seemed to be getting their tonsils removed - "oh, Joey has a sore throat - off with his tonsils!".  Later, the medical community realized that they'd made a boo-boo in getting all happy hacksaw... one that lowered the immunity functions of a lot of my peers (because that's part of the tonsils' job).  I say my peers because, luckily, I had a brilliant doctor who said "her tonsils are fine and she doesn't need to go through that bullshit surgery", or something like that.  He was German so I'm sure it's a very close quote :-D  Anyway, enter the 1990's and a bright new beginning of diagnosing ADHD for every child that was/is a little more rambunctious than the "normal" kids, the child that gets bored too easily...oh, and let's allow teachers who are overworked, underpaid and just plain tired to advise parents to get their children tested for ADHD.  Then, let's have a regular pediatrician or general practitioner diagnose them and hand out pretty little pills, that may or may not work and that may have the child going from one zombie stage to another in search of the right "prescription".  Let's not even talk about the mess that this child's kidneys, liver, stomach, and intestines are going to be in in about 20 years of taking their ADHD medications plus anything else they decide to prescribe to him/her in that time, right?  The parents get told their kid has ADHD and BAM, the doctor must be right because they have that nice, shiny degree that says they finished medical school and their residency - they must have my child's health and well-being as a priority... Uh-huh.  Let's face it.  There's so much on top of these doctors as it is, we can't truly expect them to know everything or to even consider all the alternatives.  That's why I think that people should take the time to learn all there is to know first and foremost before saying "yep, sign me up with the drugs...let's speed up those side effects"!  Here's a few ideas: Change the kid's diet to more fruit and vegetables (nix the McDonald's and Doritos), focusing on feeding them foods that DON'T have excitotoxins (see book Excitotoxins: The Taste that Kills by Russell Blaylock).  Get them to exercise but something almost meditative, such as martial arts.  There are alternatives - you just have to try them out...and they are far less dangerous than any pill that child could take!

Unless it's a live or die situation, I tend to wait and try alternative methods for everything before I decide to take the meds and even then, I research the meds to learn about what minerals they'll deplete from my body, what interactions they'll have with the foods I eat and other meds, etc.  That's what I do.  Yes, it would've been easy to have accepted the statin prescription for my cholesterol earlier this year but I chose to change my lifestyle instead and in doing so, dropped my cholesterol levels (to all my doctors' amazement).  I feel better for it too!

So, don't give in to your instincts people...don't be lazy about your health! Research and talk with experts.  Find out what's going to work for you.  No pill can cure diabetes or high cholesterol or heart disease, but you can send those diseases packing with changing your lifestyle!

*Steps off Soapbox*


NOTE: These are all just my opinions and should not be considered medical advice.

Created by MyFitnessPal - Free Weight Loss Tools

Flavor Enhancers

I've been on my vegan three week challenge for two weeks now and I'm still enjoying it a lot. But I wanted to take a little detour for my entry today and talk about flavor enhancers in our food. The one that most people can identify is MSG (monosodium glutamate) but did you know that there are others hidden in our prepared food under other names? Some people might know this but I'm willing to bet that most people don't know. These flavor enhancers fall into a group that neuroscientists call excitotoxins.

The reason they decided to use the name excitotoxins is because the neurons in the brain get super excited when these particular chemicals reach them, causing those neurons to fire rapidly (imagine how fast an auctioneer can be and then fast forward them). They quickly reach exhaustion then die a few hours later. Pleasant, isn't it? To top it off, these excitotoxins have been shown to not only affect brain tissue but our retinas/optic nerves too (see research at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2930628/ ).

So what else does the neuroscience community think these excitotoxins do to our bodies besides ruin our eyesight and kill neurons? How about make us fatter (leading to obesity & obesity linked death), hormonal imbalances, give us migraines/headaches, heart palpitations, numb/tingling feelings in our extremities, facial pressure/tightness, chest pain, drowsiness, weakness -- hello? These chemicals mess up our nervous system that is, basically, in charge of EVERYTHING going on in our bodies! What don't they mess with?

There are a lot of people out there (FDA, people in denial, etc.) that say these chemicals are non-toxic and that they are perfectly safe because there haven't been any studies to prove them unsafe. To them I ask, "Really? So why is it that I was able to find plenty of research out there showing the type of cell damage these neurotoxins can wreak?" Why are there SO many neuroscientists saying that these additives are dangerous -- they certainly aren't the ones making money off of speaking up against these chemicals, if you know what I mean. Want to take a look at a few research cases? Here are some but you can do your own search on Google Scholar too:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ana.410190202/abstract
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/164/3880/719.short
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006899309027528
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969996111001938
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0006344
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1601-183X.2008.00395.x/full#b2

So why is it that these horrible additives are still being used today from baby food to just about everything else that comes prepared? Big business? Big prepackaged food companies make money off of making their foods taste so good that they become an addiction (for some people -- perfect example: fast food). I just went onto Gerber's website and randomly checked some of their foods for the signature markings of these excitotoxins and I have to say that most of their products seem all right. Unfortunately, some of their products are not. For example, their GRADUATES® FRUIT SPLASHERS® Beverage – Grape...look in the nutritional information and you will find the words "natural flavor" in seventh place. "Natural flavor"? If they're already adding white grape juice and apple juice concentrates, what's this "natural flavor" they've decided to toss into the mix? I'll assume it's a flavor enhancer, aka excitotoxin. But worse yet? Check out their GERBER® GOOD START® Soy Formula – Concentrated Liquid...listed as ingredient #4 position is ENZYMATICALLY HYDROLYZED SOY PROTEIN ISOLATE. Wait a minute...but isn't soy good? Yes but hydrolyzed soy protein is not-so-good. Check this site out http://www.soyinfo.com/soydefs.shtml#hsp. Not only is this a "flavor enhancer" but it's also derived from a genetically-manipulated soy! This is being given to babies for goodness sakes! No wonder there is such a rise in neural-type diseases in the past couple of generations!

Let's not just pick on Gerber, how about that soup can in your pantry made by Campbell's? Remember mom (or grandma) fixing you a bowl of old-fashioned Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup? Well, guess what's in it? Another flavor enhancer called DISODIUM GUANYLATE on top of containing HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) -- good job on the double whammy Campbell's! And this was their "Healthy Request" product too! I mentioned fast food a second ago, right? Take a look at Jack-in-the-Box's nutritional ingredient document here. Specifically, look at their "Beef Regular Taco" - do you see how many flavor enhancers are in that thing?!? It's making my head hurt just reading through it all: Hydrolyzed (Corn, Soy, Wheat) Proteins, Monosodium Glutamate (they don't even bother hiding it), Natural Flavors, and Disodium Guanylate! And, by-the-way, let's just throw in some Succinic Acid that is something chiefly used in the manufacturing of lacquers and dyes! Really, Jack?? Looked at Carls Jr. too - they don't seem to be flavor enhancer crazy, not like their counterparts but they do still use them intermittently. You can check their ingredients list here. Also, McDonald's isn't safe from my scrutiny this evening either. They have probably the most interesting hidden flavor enhancer yet - autolyzed yeast extract. Check their ingredients list here but make sure to scroll down because in the beginning of the document, there isn't much to the list.

It just seems so like we are all going to need a chemistry degree in order to just keep up with what's being put into our food, doesn't it? Well, I say moderation is the key. If we try to cook most of our meals from scratch, there wouldn't as big an issue with the added flavor enhancers. But the problem is, we are constantly on the run and the quicker you can get food on the table, the better. There is a limit at where these chemicals are safe (well, as safe as feeding yourself small amounts of arsenic every so often) but we, as a society, are over-eating them with all the prepared, pre-packaged foods then let's thrown in how many times we eat out...we are exceeding the so-called "safe amounts". Moderation is indeed the key or a complete over-haul of the prepackaged food industry and I'm pretty sure we won't really see the industry change any time soon. Consumers need to become more aware of how to really read ingredient labels (without going cross-eyed) and use their common sense. General rule of thumb for me? If there are more than 5 ingredients that sound like a chemist lab project, I try not to buy eat and/or eat it. But, in case you want a summarized, short list of what to look for to avoid flavor enhancers, here's my list:
-monosodium glutamate (basically, anything ending with "ate" you should be skeptical of)
-autolyzed yeast extract
-aspartame
-glutamic acid
-natural flavor
-anything with "glutamate" at the end
-anything with "guanylate"
-anything with "inosinate"
-anything "hydrolized"

If you want to learn more, there's a lot out there but here's what I recommend:
- Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills by retired neurosurgeon, Russell L. Blaylock
- Food Additives: A Shopper's Guide to What's Safe and What's Not by Dr. Christine Farlow, DC
- The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry is Destroy Our Brains and Harming Our Children by Carol Simontacchi
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavor_enhancer
- Online article: Sudden Cardiac Death and Food Excitotoxin Additives
- Truth in Labeling Organization
- http://www.ehow.com/about_5162033_autolyzed-yeast-extract-gluten.html
- http://www.soyinfo.com/soydefs.shtml#hsp


Well, hopefully I've given someone something to think about. I personally get major migraines from MSG but other flavor enhancers give me the numb, tingly feeling in my hands and feet - not a pleasant sensation. They are working on linking these chemicals to a lot of neural diseases including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Autism, etc. - let's hope that one day people will realize that if their food tastes like crap, they should leave the food industry to take up something else instead of putting our health in danger with their flavor enhancers.

If you cook with flavor enhancers, then you obviously don't know how to cook or your taste buds are shot! Sorry if that insults anyone but I get the "Well, I cook with Accent all the time and I'm fine" spiel but the music changes when they're asked if they suffer from migraines repeatedly. When it comes to food, people are very closed-minded and loyal - don't know why that is, exactly but it's almost as taboo as discussing politics or religion. It seems, sometimes, that eating healthier is like saying "I'm going to break the law" to some people and they try to go to extremes to "convince" you to get back on the right track...you know, the one they follow. I say do what makes you feel good, makes you healthy, and makes you run circles around those who choose to stay in their sluggish ruts!