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

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.

Is obesity genetic, or is lifestyle is a bigger factor? Over thousands of years, human genetics haven’t changed much; yet over the past couple of decades there’s been an exponential increase in obesity and its related problems like metabolic syndrome, a group of risk factors that leads to heart disease and diabetes.¹ So, even though it may seem that some people are hard wired to be overweight, the sudden increase in obesity indicates that something more than genetics is playing out.

As it turns out, our genetics can be steered toward obesity, but it is guided by something called our epigenetics, certain behavioral or environmental influences that tell our genes what to do. And guess what? Our epigenetics are heavily influenced by our nutritional intake, including what we eat too much of and what we don’t get enough of.

Let me explain. Everybody is born with a unique set of genes, your hardwired DNA. (That’s called our genome.) Your genes lie there and wait to see if they will be turned on or not as directed by tagging systems that sit on top of genes, called the epigenome. Our genes and epigenetics have been compared to a computer and its software.² Our genes are the hard drive; the epigenetics are the software telling the hard drive what to do.

Raise your champagne flute, and clink, Cheers! It is the time of year to celebrate, and most likely your holiday festivities will include alcohol. The holidays are the time for gaiety and celebration. So enjoy!

However, once the holidays are over and we are all settling back into our routine, it’s important to remember — when it comes to alcohol, moderation is the key.

Just because you are not obese, doesn’t mean you’re off the hook when it comes to increased risk for heart disease and diabetes — known as cardiometabolic disease. If you’re just a little pudgy around the middle, you may pat your belly and chuckle about those few extra beers you had last night, but it is no laughing matter.

Two studies recently looked at the cardiometabolic health of three categories of white adults: normal weight, overweight, and obese. Researchers measured blood pressure, triglycerides, fasting plasma glucose, C-reactive protein (CRP), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), and assessed whether the study subjects were insulin resistant.

What they found was eye opening — 23.5% of “normal weight” adults were metabolically abnormal — and surprisingly, the research done by Wildman’s group found that approximately 30% of the “obese” group was actually metabolically pretty healthy.¹ In the “overweight” group, it was split about 50-50 between those who were metabolically healthy and those who were at increased risk according to these measures.

Myth #2: Cholesterol is the Cause of Heart Disease and Statins are the Answer
Part 2 of a five-part series.

It’s hard to even start writing about this topic — there is so much misinformation out there. Let’s start with the basics. Cholesterol is a necessary part of almost all metabolic processes in the body. Without it we could not survive.

In the early 80s there were some landmark studies linking cholesterol levels to atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). Since then, all kinds of conclusions have been made as to what this means, what numbers are “normal”, and how those numbers change depending on your medical history.

Sometimes you have to take a step back before you can move forward. Lets review the relationship of saturated fats (fats from animal products and palm and coconut oils) to heart disease. Back in the 1950s we were told to eat corn and sunflower oils as healthy alternatives to saturated fat. As our consumption of these polyunsaturated fats rose, so did the rate of heart disease.

Food companies developed new “non-fat” versions of foods that replaced saturated fats (and other fats) with carbohydrates — and heart disease flourished. The net result was a population scared of saturated fat, yet driving themselves to diabetes and heart disease in record numbers by eating an abundance of high glycemic carbohydrates and processed food.

For the average person, the changes we’ve seen as to how diet contributes to heart disease have been interesting, but for many people they have also been exhausting and confusing.

For two decades we were taught that diets high in fat and cholesterol contribute to heart disease; this teaching has been dubbed the “diet-heart hypothesis.” Low fat diets were recommended by every large health organization, and people adopted the low fat way of life. There was only one problem — heart disease rates did not drop. They continued to climb.

Headlines have confirmed what I have been preaching for a long time — when it comes to carbohydrates, the kind you eat really does matter.  You can eat calorie-controlled high sugar or refined flour foods all you want (you know those popular little 100 calorie packs?), but more and more studies have found it won’t [...]

You may not have heard of homocysteine, but you should. In this case, what you don’t know might kill you.

What does the medical community offer as a potential solution for low serotonin as a contributor to heart disease? A category of antidepressant drugs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI’s.)