Total Health Breakthroughs: Free Natural Health Newsletter and Alternative Health Articles

Consider these staggering statistics: according to the American Diabetes Association, about 24 million people suffer from diabetes and a whopping 5 million people are undiagnosed and don’t even know they have the disease!¹ Overall, 54 million Americans suffer from some degree of blood sugar imbalance and insulin resistance.¹ Most of these people have type II diabetes, which is largely preventable with a healthy diet low-carb, low-sugar diet.

As a practicing physician, I was never taught any primary preventative measures for my patients. At most, I was given some detective tools, such as screening blood sugar in “at risk” patients. It baffles me, as I look back, that I couldn’t see the huge gap in my medical school and residency training. We did nothing to prevent diabetes and did very little to address the underlying mechanisms that stimulate abnormal sugar metabolism!

The main focus of conventional medicine today is still all about using prescription drugs to lower blood sugar, which is too late if you want to reverse the disease itself. There is no question that people with diabetes experience an elevated risk for a variety of other illnesses including heart disease and stroke, blindness, peripheral nerve disease and pain, kidney damage and failure, impotency and skin disorders.

Most people today view soybeans as a health food extraordinaire.  But lately you may have seen conflicting opinions as to whether it is healthy or not.  As a common food allergen that is high in goitrogens1 (substances that interfere with thyroid hormones), there are some valid concerns.
So, should you eat tofu [...]

Many families in the United States find it difficult to get kids to eat healthy. We tend to think that it’s because healthier foods don’t taste as good as unhealthy foods. However, in looking at the eating patterns of children and adults in other countries and cultures, we see that taste is not a deterrent; children in other countries eat many foods that would probably be patently rejected by American children.

For example, Japanese parents feed their children fish broth at very young ages, and one of the first solid foods is a rice porridge to which small bits of dried fish, tofu and even mashed pumpkin are eventually added.

It pervades our lives, infiltrates our food supply, changes our behavior, interferes with our brain and body function, and can ultimately lead to aches, pains, and disease — with early death as a side effect. Yet this subtle deceiver is featured at every party and every holiday, given as gifts to loved ones, and paraded before our eyes in an enticing panorama of tempting tastes.

You guessed it — I’m talking about sugar.

If you want to jumpstart your energy, enhance your overall health, and strengthen your immune system, you’ll want to pay careful attention to how you can get off of sugar simply and painlessly.

Researchers recently reported at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology,¹ that sugar induced a reaction in the brain of rats similar to the reaction of morphine and other drugs. This may be the first scientific evidence of what we have suspected for years — sugar is addictive. When I reported this finding on my website, I was flooded with hundreds of pleas for help to get off sugar addiction.

Even knowing the harmful effects that sugar has on our bodies does not stop the cravings and the addictive behavior. One reader wrote, “Please hurry, I need to get off the sugar roller coaster… and get healthy again.”

By now, most people are aware that in our fight against chronic disease, the first order of business is to fight internal inflammation. While we think of this as being an adult problem, did you know it can actually start in childhood? As in adults, inflammation increases as weight increases, and since there are so many more overweight and obese children today, just like adults, they are experiencing Metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and even diseases like high blood pressure at alarmingly high rates. ^1,2,3

The first place to look for the cause of inflammation is the diet. Studies show that the nutritional intake of most children is high in calories, but sorely lacking in nutrients.⁴ Children’s intake of fruit juices, fruit drinks, and all types of desserts and sweets is high, but their intake of nutrient-dense vegetables is very low.⁵ And only 10 to 14% of toddlers by age 18 months are consuming any deep yellow or green vegetables. But by age 24 months, on any given day, about 25% of toddlers consume potato chips or French fries.

One of the biggest hoaxes of our time is that the sun is bad for you. They tell you to avoid it at all costs and to protect yourself with sunscreen lotion if you dare to venture outside.

Here’s the real truth…

Sunscreen lotions block the sun’s UV rays, but your skin needs exposure to these rays to make vitamin D. This is a huge problem because vitamin D is a critical nutrient for your body. It’s a powerful antioxidant and mood booster that your skin cells make with the help of sunlight.

Research shows that vitamin D is the most potent cancer fighter there is. In fact, a report from Nebraska University shows that vitamin D has the potential to lower the risk of all cancers in women over 50 by 77%.¹

Not only do sunscreens block your body’s ability to produce vitamin D, their ingredients are toxic and have never been safety tested or safety approved by the FDA.

A study in the April 2004 Journal of Chromatography found that the carcinogenic agents found in sunscreens penetrate the skin. This means that when you use most sunscreens, you absorb toxic chemicals. And with so-called experts telling you to generously apply it every few hours, you are likely absorbing a dangerous amount.

The Centers for Disease Control also reports that 97% of Americans are contaminated with a widely used sunscreen ingredient called oxybenzone. It’s linked to allergies, hormone disruption, low birth weights, cell damage, and more. It is also a chemical that helps other chemicals penetrate the skin.²

One of the biggest areas of dietary confusion today is whether saturated fat is bad for us or not. For the most part, conventional medical thought remains firmly in the “saturated fat is bad for you” corner, while a growing number of people feel that not only is the jury still out on saturated fat intake, it may even have health benefits.

Sugar’s about to show up on food labels, all dressed up as a new “natural ingredient” and a better alternative to the demon du jour, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

Never let it be said that there are no “second acts” in the marketing of junk food.

OK, in case you haven’t been paying attention, HFCS has gotten quite a whipping in the press. The Corn Refiners Association tried fighting back, most notably with a series of commercials showing a clueless mother unable to explain why the stuff was so “bad,” but even the best PR campaign wasn’t able to put out the fire. And the death blow was delivered recently by Michelle Obama who declared any product with high-fructose corn syrup to be off-limits at the White House.

So now sugar — plain old white table sugar, the poor little guy that got displaced by HFCS, is being reinvented… this time as the “natural” healthy alternative to HFCS.

Oh, brother.

Let’s recap for a moment. Sugar is one part glucose and one part fructose (50/50). HFCS is very close to the same formula, marginally higher in fructose — 55% fructose, 45% glucose — but probably not enough to make that much difference (or at least that’s what the proponents of HFCS claim).

While the Corn Refiners Association and the Sugar Association continue to sponsor studies and media campaigns to promote their “safe, natural sweeteners,” whether people know it or not, headlines are running concurrently that attest to the dangers of the over- consumption of sugars.

Sometimes the most important pieces of a puzzle are right in front of us, and we still don’t see them. As a practicing doctor in the natural healing arts, I am consistently amazed how making one or two simple changes can have a huge impact on one’s health and well-being.