Reasons to exercise

I  have 4 daughters, so this little article seems appropriate.

10 Things I Want My Daughter to Know About Working Out

by brynnharrington on November 19, 2013

Mid-way through a recent group exercise class, the teacher lost me.  She didn’t lose me because of some complicated step sequence or insanely long set of burpees; I mentally checked out because of a few words she kept saying over and over.  “Come on!  Get that body ready for your winter beach vacation!  Think about how you want to look at those holiday parties!  PICTURE HOW YOU’LL LOOK IN THAT DRESS!”

“THAT DRESS?”  My brain couldn’t focus on an image of some random dress hanging in my closet.  All I could think about was my three-year-old daughter hearing and trying to process those words.

My daughter’s little brain is making sense of the world every single second, taking in verbal and non-verbal cues about how things work and what things mean.  And when it comes to exercise, I want her to grow up seeing it as a joy, and not a utility…as a gift, and not a chore…as an opportunity, not an obligation.  I want her to do it for the love of it, not to fit into a dress.  I want her to grow up knowing that…

1. Strength equals self-sufficiency.  Being strong – particularly as a woman – is empowering.  It will feel good someday to be able to carry your own luggage down the stairs if the airport escalator is broken, and it will be important to have a solid shot at outrunning a stranger should you meet one a dark alley.
2. Fitness opens doors.  Being healthy and fit can help you see the world differently.  The planet looks different from a bike or a pair of skis than it does from a car or an airplane.  Out in the elements you have the time and space to notice details and meet people and remember smells and bugs and mud and rain and the feeling of warm sunshine on your face.  And those are the moments that make up your life.
3. The bike is the new golf course.  Being fit may help you get a seat at the table.  Networking is no longer restricted to the golf course, and the stronger you are – and the more people you can hang with on the road and trail – the more people you’ll meet.
4. Exercise is a lifestyle, not an event.  Being an active person isn’t about taking a class three times a week at the gym.  It’s about things like biking to the grocery store and parking your car in the back of the lot and walking instead of taking a cab and catching up with friends on a hiking trail instead of a bar stool.
5. Health begets health.  Healthy behavior inspires healthy behavior.  Exercise.  Healthy eating.  Solid sleep.  Positive relationships.  These things are all related.
6. Endorphins help you cope.  A good sweat session can clear the slate.  You will have days when nothing seems to go right…when you’re dizzy with frustration or crying in despair.  A workout can often turn things around.
7. Working out signals hard-working.  The discipline required to work out on a regular basis signals success.  Someone recently told me they are way more likely to hire marathon runners and mountain climbers because of the level of commitment that goes into those pursuits.
8. If you feel beautiful, you look beautiful.  Looking beautiful starts on the inside.  And being fit and strong feels beautiful.
9. Nature rules.  And if you’re able to hike/run/bike/swim/ski/snowshoe, you can see more of it.
10. Little eyes are always watching.  We learn from each other.  You may have a daughter—or a niece or a neighbor or a friend – one day.  And that little girl will be watching and listening to everything she you say and do.  What messages do you want her to hear?

I’ll never talk to my daughter about fitting into THAT DRESS.  But I will talk to her about what it sounds like to hear pine needles crunching under my feet and what it feels like to cross a finish line and how special it is to see the world on foot.  I will talk to her about hard work and self sufficiency.  I will teach her the joy of working out by showing her I love it.  And I’ll leave the rest up to her.

Yarrow

This is a link to a youtube video about Yarrow.  Yarrow is an herb that has many useful benefits to our body, and may be something we will need in the not too distant future.  I don't know much about how to prepare it, but it sounds like teas, and pastes for wounds are the primary methods.  It seems appropriate for this blog give it seems to be a sort of panacea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xh2O0BBm8AQ

Bread IS good for you.

Here is a nice little article about bread from beachbody.com.  I like this for a couple reasons.  One, I like bread.  Two it points back at the word of wisdom - you see God knows all, and he specifically said wheat is good for he consumption of man.  This just supports that.

Be honest. You love bread. Everybody loves bread.
However, for a number of reasons, many people are avoiding bread and other wheat products completely these days. While I’ll concede that many folks consume a bit too much starch, bread is actually a delicious and nutritious food that deserves a place in most of our diets.

One Important Caveat
There’s a lot of things labeled as bread at the market and unfortunately, as is often the case with food, all of these products are not created equally. The bread that I’m promoting up here on my soapbox, is handmade using traditional fermentation methods and is often composed of a variety of fresh-milled whole grains and seeds. Simply put—and I know this label can be nebulous as well, I’m standing up for artisan bread products baked with quality ingredients, not commercially-produced mass market products that are delivered to shelves without many of the benefits outlined below.

The Gluten Scare
We all know there is no “one-size-fits-all” diet out there and not every body digests gluten very well. In fact, some digestive tracts are quite sensitive to gluten, sounding the alarms with a number of autoimmune reactions upon its consumption. Celiac disease is a very real thing and I am by no means suggesting that those suffering from this begin to consume foods that contain gluten. However, true celiac disease is quite rare and because of some very clever marketing and “hype” many people have chosen to go “gluten free,” perhaps, unnecessarily. My sense is that going gluten free feels better mainly because oftentimes folks are transitioning away from a standard American diet that is packed full of high fat, starchy foods, thus replacing gluten containing products with more fruits, vegetables, legumes and quality proteins, which will of course vastly improve the way one feels. Whatever the case, for those that feel healthy and satisfied without artisan bread and other gluten containing foods, keep doing what you’re doing. You know your body best! However, those curious about the potential of integrating some crusty, chewy, delicious bread back into their diet may find this information useful.

A Fermented Food
Your average sliced bread found on the grocery shelves is a quick-yeasted bread that uses refined yeast that raises dough incredibly fast. This process is efficient, allowing for more bread production in a shorter amount of time. Unfortunately, the faster process leads to inferior nutrition.
Historically, bread is produced through a fermentation process known as souring. By inoculating dough with a culture, bacteria begin to digest the raw ingredients. The byproduct of this process is carbon dioxide and lactic acid. The former being the air bubbles that cause dough to rise and the latter contributing a somewhat sour flavor. Beyond its contributions to texture and flavor, souring breaks down bran and predigests many of the carbohydrates and proteins found in wheat, which has been shown to naturally reduce gluten levels present in the final product. Enzymes also develop during the fermentation process that often remain active even after baking. Artisans bake at high heat for short durations (like a properly prepared steak) to create a product with a crunchy crust and chewy interior, and that chewy interior does not get hot enough to deactivate enzymatic activity. Mark Sircus describes all of this in depth in his article “Sour Dough Bread and Health.” Simply put, the natural fermentation process that sours artisan bread creates a final product that is far easier to digest, thus the body can assimilate more nutrition without aggravating the intestinal tract.

Whole-Grain Nutrition
While many artisan bread products integrate a variety of grains into recipes, wheat flour is almost always the main ingredient in bread. Most understand the benefits of eating whole-grain wheat flour over standard white flour. White flour products are created by sifting out brand and germ from the processed wheat, which makes the flour easier to work with, but also robs most of its potential nutrition.However, as bakers rediscover traditional techniques along with wheat varieties that lend themselves to whole grain baking, some incredible whole grain breads are being created.
Those that can source fresh baked whole grain bread from a local bakery are in luck. Turns out they’re getting a lot of more than a “carb fix” from these products. Whole wheat actually contains quite a bit of nutrition, including a substantial amount of B vitamins, manganese, magnesium and phosphorus.  Of course, with the bran left in the flour, there is also a hefty dose of dietary fiber available in whole wheat.

The Middle Path
See? Bread ain’t so bad after all! The rub here is the same as it usually is though. Those that seek out a handmade product using high-quality ingredients will enjoy something equally delicious and nutritious. Additionally, remember that you can have too much of a good thing, so do enjoy bread as a part of a balanced diet. See how you feel. You may just rediscover an old friend

Workout resources

There are many ways to exercise.  The real key to being successful with exercise is to do it consistently.  To accomplish that, you must set reasonable, reachable goals that you can do forever, because remember, you are making a permanent change, not a temporary change.  To do something consistently you need several factors and influences, especially if you're trying to do something that you don't necessarily enjoy.  I love to exercise, but not everyone else does.  So usually you will need an intrinsic motivation, such as losing a specific amount of weight, or getting to a specific body composition.  You will likely need to have a goal such as an event like a 5K or a mud run, or marathon, or triathalon.  There are many options and types of "events" out there now, and most of them are fun.  Sign up with a partner for these events.  Learn to work out on your own, and at your house.  Don't waste money on a gym membership.  Instead buy your own equipment, and you are then enabled to do it yourself, at your convenience.  Rewards for reaching milemarkers also help to keep one going.  So in summary, you need goals, convenience, support, rewards, success, and consistency.  Keep your workouts varied so you don't get bored, plus varying exercise helps keep your body and mind guessing, which yields better results.  As such, I have added a new link in the linked portion of this blog - woddrive.com and it is a great site for providing thousands of routines at different levels of ability.  Enjoy.

Weight Loss - Keeping it off

Of all the arguments for weight loss and strength training, here is the best reason.  Strength training is what helps us maintain the weight loss.  Again, it doesn't significantly increase our BMR, but it helps.  Like I've said before, if you want to loose weight, you need to change.  Permanent change yields permanent results.  Temporary change (Fad diets) yield temporary results.  Which one do you want?  Change is usually challenging, but is also very gratifying when made permanent.


Losing weight is easy. Keeping it off is the real challenge. Most people do not successfully maintain their weight losses, and some individuals regain even more weight than they lost. Naturally, this is a discouraging scenario, and recent headlines which claim that being overweight or obese is primarily a genetic issue might make it seem like there’s nothing you can do about it. Why bother changing your current diet or exercise routine if any positive results are completely out of reach?
Before you succumb to the dubious doctrine of genetic pre-destination and give up on your weight loss goals, there are a couple of basic dieting principles that you should know about. These are not hard and fast rules, but if you’ve had trouble with weight loss in the past, then you may want to consider adopting a new approach.
Principle #1: Create a caloric deficit with your diet
Exercise is critically important for weight loss and maintenance but unless being an athlete is your job, exercise doesn’t burn as many calories as you think. It’s much easier to create a caloric deficit with your diet. To illustrate: a large McDonald’s french fries containing 500 calories can be ingested in about five effortless minutes. However, burning off those 500 calories will require about 5 miles of walking/jogging/running. This is why anyone who thinks they can just add 500 calories here and 300 calories there throughout their day, because they’re going to burn it off with exercise later, is basically guaranteed to fail their weight loss goals.
It would serve you better to think of exercise as a necessary component in support of your reduced calorie diet. Lose weight with your diet. Strength training provides the stimulus to maintain muscle mass so that the majority of your weight loss comes from stored body fat. Adding some cardio can help to mobilize some of that body fat, as long as cardio sessions aren’t too lengthy or intense. The more fat you have to lose, the more cardio you may be able to do, but that doesn’t mean you should adopt an approach like they use on the Biggest Loser show.

When you’re on a diet, working out to the point of exhaustion is unnecessary and counterproductive

Even if you have the available time and the extraordinary dedication required to create a large caloric deficit with exercise, that’s not necessarily the ideal approach for weight loss. Recovering from a high volume of physical activity is harder, maybe even impossible, when you’re at a caloric deficit because of the stress it places on your body. This is usually more of a concern with women who obsessively try to obtain their weight loss goals by combining a severely restricted diet with an excessive amount of exercise. Lyle McDonald explains Why Big Caloric Deficits and Lots of Activity Can Hurt Fat Loss:

Dieting in general is a stress.  And of course training is a stress.  And the more extreme you do of each, the more of a stress occurs.  And I suspect that a lot of what is going on when folks try to combine excessive caloric deficits with massive amounts of activity is that cortisol just goes through the roof.
Chronic elevations in cortisol can cause a lot of bad things to happen [such as] water retention [and] a drop in metabolic rate due to leptin resistance… For a lot of people… the combination of excessive caloric deficits and excessive amounts of activity seem to hurt rather than help fat loss… Some folks can get away with it but, for many, it tends to backfire more than anything else.

In light of this, an appealing solution may be to lose weight solely through diet, as is often promoted on TV. Can you lose weight without exercising? Sure, you can, but your chances at keeping it off are very slim. What the mass-media advertising and entertainment outlets won’t tell you is that in the absence of exercise, especially some form of resistance training, you are just about guaranteed to lose muscle mass, which sets you up for rapid weight gain once you come off the diet. They also won’t tell you that exercise becomes even more important after the diet…
Principle #2: Maintain your weight loss with exercise
You can’t stay on a diet forever, but you can’t just go back to your sedentary, overindulging lifestyle, either. If you don’t want to squander all your hard work, then you need to make some effort to maintain your weight loss. In reality, this is the hard part of any weight loss program, mainly because most programs don’t offer any guidance for life after the diet. For one thing, you still need to be mindful of what you eat. That doesn’t mean you have to obsessively calculate calories for every single meal you eat for the rest of your life, but you do have to exercise some self-control if you want to maintain your weight. Sorry, that’s just the way it works!
Even more importantly, however, you simply cannot reduce your levels of physical activity because of a phenomenon called adaptive thermogenesis. Your brain defends against weight loss, partly by lowering your resting metabolism, and to an even greater extent by reducing your daily level of spontaneous activity. This is a non-conscious process and even if you diligently take the time to exercise, you can still end up burning considerably less total calories if you’re completely sedentary throughout the remainder of your day.

Most people regain the weight they lost because they resume a sedentary lifestyle

An interesting study which sought to measure adaptive thermogenesis found that individuals who have lost 10% of their body weight expend over 400 calories less per day than individuals who weigh the same, but have not lost any weight. This is why it’s so hard to keep the weight off, and why most people who lose weight end up regaining it. James Krieger expands on these research findings in his article, Why Is It So Easy To Regain Weight? and highlights the solution:

The good news is that, since the reductions in energy expenditure are primarily due to decreases in activity, one can make conscious choices to increase physical activity… In one study, subjects who exercised enough to expend 1000 calories per week regained most of their weight, but subjects who expended 2500 calories per week maintained most of their weight loss. Similar results have been observed in other studies. Subjects in the National Weight Control Registry, a database of individuals who have maintained at least a 30 pound weight loss for over a year, expend an average of 2620 calories per week in physical activity.
Remember that physical activity doesn’t have to include formal exercise. NEAT [non-exercise activity thermogenesis] makes up the majority of your activity energy expenditure, and thus has the greatest ability to impact it… Thus, anything that you can do to accumulate physical activity throughout the day will dramatically improve your chances of maintaining weight loss over the long haul. Even small things, like parking a car further away from a destination, or taking stairs rather than an elevator, can add up if accumulated throughout the day. But because activity can decrease on an almost unconscious level, you need to make a deliberate conscious effort to get as much activity as possible in throughout your day, every day.

This will logically require an increase in activity once the diet is over, which is where the overwhelming majority of dieters veer off course. But, how do you determine your daily caloric expenditure without access to a lab? One option is to wear a Bodybugg armband which estimates your caloric expenditure for you, as long as you understand that it can only provide an estimate. I don’t have any experience with such a device, but I can point you to one review by Leigh Peele and another by Lyle McDonald, both of which offer some pros and cons worth considering.

Find ways to include more activity throughout your daily routine

Personally, I don’t see any pressing need to purchase a Bodybugg. Having a number to start from is indeed helpful, but a caloric recommendation can be calculated easily enough by hand without having to add another electronic gadget to your wardrobe. Either way, you will still have to determine whether you are maintaining your weight or not, and then adjust your activity accordingly. Again, you can’t ignore calories, but the most important step you can take to successfully maintain your weight loss is to increase your level of physical activity. If you slowly start to regain weight, then simply increase your overall daily activity a little more to stabilize your weight.
Sustainable weight loss is within your reach!
Without even going into the specifics of various exercise programs, caloric recommendations, healthy food choices, diet breaks, or the psychological and social challenges to changing behavior patterns (losing weight is simple on paper but that doesn’t mean it’s easy in real life), the two principles covered in this article should provide just about anyone with an effective outline for a weight loss and maintenance plan.
To summarize: Diet and exercise are both vitally important for weight loss, but you can place a greater emphasis on one over the other depending on where you are in your weight loss program. To lose weight, focus on creating a caloric deficit with your diet, and support that diet with moderate physical activity and exercise. Then, maintain your weight loss by increasing the volume of your total daily activity, and support those efforts by keeping your caloric intake within maintenance levels.
Hopefully, this sheds some light on a potentially frustrating endeavor and puts your weight loss efforts into proper perspective. Please feel free to share any comments, questions, or personal experiences below…

Sugar and It's Implications

Sugar makes things taste great, but is often not satisfying.  It provides lots of empty calories, leaving one wanting more, and more and more, to be satisfied.  Just like a drug, which in fact, sugar is.  And sugar is in everything.  This post is intended to give information, not be frightening.  As you'll see many of the claims are implications, not necessarily cause and effect, but a good eye opener none the less.

146 REASONS WHY SUGAR IS RUINING YOUR HEALTH

By: Nancy Appleton, Ph.D.

In addition to throwing off the body’s homeostasis (state of balance), excess sugar may result in a number of other significant consequences.  The following is a list of some of sugar’s metabolic consequences from a variety of medical journals and other scientific publications.

1.  Sugar can suppress the immune system.

2.  Sugar upsets the mineral relationships in the body.

3.  Sugar can cause hyperactivity, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, and crankiness in children.

4.  Sugar can produce a significant rise in triglycerides.

5.  Sugar contributes to the reduction in defense against bacterial infection (infectious diseases)

6.  Sugar causes a loss of tissue elasticity and function

7.  Sugar reduces high-density lipoproteins.

8.  Sugar leads to chromium deficiency.

9.  Sugar leads to cancer of the ovaries.

10. Sugar can increase fasting levels of glucose.

11. Sugar causes copper deficiency.

12. Sugar interferes with absorption of calcium and magnesium.

13. Sugar may make eyes more vulnerable to age-related macular degeneration.

14. Sugar raises the level of a neurotransmitters: dopamine, serotonin, and n norepinephrine.

15. Sugar can cause hypoglycemia.

16. Sugar can produce an acidic digestive tract.

17. Sugar can cause a rapid rise of adrenaline levels in children.

18. Sugar malabsorption is frequent in patients with functional bowel disease.

19. Sugar can cause premature aging.

20. Sugar can lead to alcoholism.

21. Sugar can cause tooth decay.

22. Sugar contributes to obesity

23. High intake of sugar increases the risk of Crohn’s disease, and ulcerative colitis.

24. Sugar can cause changes frequently found in person with gastric or duodenal ulcers.

25. Sugar can cause arthritis.

26. Sugar can cause asthma.

27. Sugar greatly assists the uncontrolled growth of Candida Albicans (yeast infections).

28. Sugar can cause gallstones.

29. Sugar can cause heart disease.

30. Sugar can cause appendicitis.

31. Sugar can cause hemorrhoids.

32. Sugar can cause varicose veins.

33. Sugar can elevate glucose and insulin responses in oral contraceptive users.

34. Sugar can lead to periodontal disease.

35. Sugar can contribute to osteoporosis.

36. Sugar contributes to saliva acidity.

37. Sugar can cause a decrease in insulin sensitivity.

38. Sugar can lower the amount of Vitamin E (alpha-Tocopherol) in the blood.

39. Sugar can decrease growth hormone.

40. Sugar can increase cholesterol.

41. Sugar can increase the systolic blood pressure.

42. High sugar intake increases advanced glycation end products (AGEs)(Sugar bound non-enzymatically to protein)

43. Sugar can interfere with the absorption of protein.

44. Sugar causes food allergies.

45. Sugar can contribute to diabetes.

46. Sugar can cause toxemia during pregnancy.

47. Sugar can contribute to eczema in children.

48. Sugar can cause cardiovascular disease.

49. Sugar can impair the structure of DNA

50. Sugar can change the structure of protein.

51. Sugar can make our skin age by changing the structure of collagen.

52. Sugar can cause cataracts.

53. Sugar can cause emphysema.

54. Sugar can cause atherosclerosis.

55. Sugar can promote an elevation of low-density lipoproteins (LDL).

56. High sugar intake can impair the physiological homeostasis of many systems in the body.

57. Sugar lowers the enzymes ability to function.

58. Sugar intake is higher in people with Parkinson’s disease.

59. Sugar can increase the size of the liver by making the liver cells divide.

60. Sugar can increase the amount of liver fat.

61. Sugar can increase kidney size and produce pathological changes in the kidney.

62. Sugar can damage the pancreas.

63. Sugar can increase the body’s fluid retention.

64. Sugar is enemy #1 of the bowel movement.

65. Sugar can cause myopia (nearsightedness).

66. Sugar can compromise the lining of the capillaries.

67. Sugar can make the tendons more brittle.

68. Sugar can cause headaches, including migraine.

69. Sugar plays a role in pancreatic cancer in women.

70. Sugar can adversely affect school children’s grades and cause learning disorders.

71. Sugar can cause depression.

72. Sugar increases the risk of gastric cancer.

73. Sugar and cause dyspepsia (indigestion).

74. Sugar can increase your risk of getting gout.

75. Sugar can increase the levels of glucose in an oral glucose tolerance test over the ingestion of complex carbohydrates.

76. Sugar can increase the insulin responses in humans consuming high-sugar diets compared to low-sugar diets.

77. A diet high in refined sugar reduces learning capacity.

78. Sugar can cause less effective functioning of two blood proteins, albumin, and lipoproteins, which may reduce the body’s ability to handle fat and cholesterol.

79.  Sugar can contribute to Alzheimer’s disease.

80. Sugar can cause platelet adhesiveness.

81. Sugar can cause hormonal imbalance; some hormones become under active and others become overactive.

82. Sugar can lead to the formation of kidney stones.

83. Diets high in sugar can cause free radicals and oxidative stress.

84. High sugar diet can lead to biliary tract cancer.

85. High sugar consumption of pregnant adolescents is associated with a twofold-increased risk for delivering a small-for-gestational-age (SGA) infant.

86. High sugar consumption can lead to substantial decrease in gestation duration among adolescents.

87. Sugar slows food’s travel time through the gastrointestinal tract.

88. Sugar increases the concentration of bile acids in stools and bacterial enzymes in the colon. This can modify bile to produce cancer-causing compounds and colon cancer.

89.  Sugar increases estradiol (the most potent form of naturally occurring estrogen) in men.

90.  Sugar combines with and destroys phosphatase, an enzyme, which makes the process of digestion more difficult.

91.  Sugar can be a risk factor of gallbladder cancer.

92. Sugar is an addictive substance.

93. Sugar can be intoxicating, similar to alcohol.

94. Sugar can exacerbate PMS.

95. Sugar given to premature babies can affect the amount of carbon dioxide they produce.

96. Decrease in sugar intake can increase emotional stability.

97. The rapid absorption of sugar promotes excessive food intake in obese subjects.

98. Sugar can worsen the symptoms of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

99. Sugar adversely affects urinary electrolyte composition.

100. Sugar can slow down the ability of the adrenal glands to function.

101. I.V’s (intravenous feedings) of sugar water can cut off oxygen to the brain.

102. High sucrose intake could be an important risk factor in lung cancer.

103. Sugar increases the risk of polio.

104. High sugar intake can cause epileptic seizures.

105. Sugar causes high blood pressure in obese people.

106. In Intensive Care Units, limiting sugar saves lives.

107. Sugar may induce cell death.

108. Sugar can increase the amount of food that you eat.

109. In juvenile rehabilitation camps, when children were put on a low sugar diet, there was a 44% drop in antisocial behavior.

110. Sugar can lead to prostrate cancer.

111. Sugar dehydrates newborns.

112.  Sugar can cause low birth weight babies.

113. Greater consumption of refined sugar is associated with a worse outcome of schizophrenia

114. Sugar can raise homocysteine levels in the blood stream.

115. Sweet food items increase the risk of breast cancer.

116. Sugar is a risk factor in cancer of the small intestine.

117. Sugar may cause laryngeal cancer.

118. Sugar induces salt and water retention.

119. Sugar may contribute to mild memory loss.

120. The more sodas a 10 year old child consumes, the less milk.

121. Sugar can increase the total amount of food consumed.

122. Exposing a newborn to sugar results in a heightened preference for sucrose relative to water at 6 months and 2 years of age.

123.  Sugar causes constipation.

124.  Sugar causes varicose veins.

125.  Sugar can cause brain decay in prediabetic and diabetic women.

126.  Sugar can increase the risk of stomach cancer.

127.  Sugar can cause metabolic syndrome.

128.  Sugar ingestion by pregnant women increases neural tube defects in embryos.

129.  Sugar can be a factor in asthma.

130.  The higher the sugar consumption the more chances of getting irritable bowel syndrome.

131.  Sugar can affect the brain’s ability to deal with rewards and consequences.

132.  Sugar can cause cancer of the rectum.

133.  Sugar can cause endometrial cancer.

134.  Sugar can cause renal (kidney) cell carcinoma.

135.  Sugar can cause liver tumors.

136.  Sugar can increase inflammatory markers in the blood stream of overweight people.

137.  Sugar can lower Vitamin E levels in the blood stream.

138.  Sugar can increase your appetite for all food.

139.  Sugar plays a role in the etiology and the continuation of acne.

140.  Too much sugar can kill your sex life.

141.  Sugar saps school performance in children.

142.  Sugar can cause fatigue, moodiness, nervousness and depression.

143.   Sugar is common choice of obese individuals.

144.   A linear decrease in the intake of many essential nutrients is associated with increasing total sugar intake.

145.   High fructose consumption has been linked to liver disease.

146.   Sugar adds to the risk of bladder cancer.

Fructose and weight loss

This is one of likely several posts about sugar and weight loss.  Sugar is the great evil of weight gain and loss.  Sugar is what makes us fat.  Sugar also causes and contributes to many other conditions, which I will discuss later.  When one is trying to lose weight though, it is easy in principle, but difficult in practice.  If you want to lose weight, and keep it off, you must make a permanent change.  Temporary changes lead to temporary results, permanent changes yield permanent results.  This is a lengthy ready, but well worth it.

Is sugar a sweet old friend that is secretly plotting your demise?

There is a vast sea of research suggesting that it is. Science has now shown us, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that sugar in your food, in all its myriad of forms, is taking a devastating toll on your health.

The single largest source of calories for Americans comes from sugar—specifically high fructose corn syrup. Just take a look at the sugar consumption trends of the past 300 years:1

• In 1700, the average person consumed about 4 pounds of sugar per year.
• In 1800, the average person consumed about 18 pounds of sugar per year.
• In 1900, individual consumption had risen to 90 pounds of sugar per year.
• In 2009, more than 50 percent of all Americans consume one-half pound of sugar PER DAY—translating to a whopping 180 pounds of sugar per year!

Sugar is loaded into your soft drinks, fruit juices, sports drinks, and hidden in almost all processed foods—from bologna to pretzels to Worcestershire sauce to cheese spread. And now most infant formula has the sugar equivalent of one can of Coca-Cola, so babies are being metabolically poisoned from day one of taking formula.

No wonder there is an obesity epidemic in this country.

Today, 32 percent of Americans are obese and an additional one-third is overweight. Compare that to 1890, when a survey of white males in their fifties revealed an obesity rate of just 3.4 percent. In 1975, the obesity rate in America had reached 15 percent, and since then it has doubled.

Carrying excess weight increases your risk for deadly conditions such as heart disease, kidney disease, and diabetes.

In 1893, there were fewer than three cases of diabetes per 100,000 people in the United States. Today, diabetes strikes almost 8,000 out of every 100,000 people.1

You don't have to be a physician or a scientist to notice America's expanding waistline. All you have to do is stroll through a shopping mall or a schoolyard, or perhaps glance in the mirror.

Sugars 101 -- Basics of How to Avoid Confusion on This Important Topic

It is easy to become confused by the various sugars and sweeteners. So here is a basic overview:

• Dextrose, fructose, and glucose are all monosaccharides, known as simple sugars. The primary difference between them is how your body metabolizes them. Glucose and dextrose are essentially the same sugar. However, food manufacturers usually use the term "dextrose" in their ingredient list.
• The simple sugars can combine to form more complex sugars, like thedisaccharide sucrose (table sugar), which is half glucose and half fructose.
• High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose.
• Ethanol (drinking alcohol) is not a sugar, although beer and wine contain residual sugars and starches, in addition to alcohol.
• Sugar alcohols like xylitol, glycerol, sorbitol, maltitol, mannitol, and erythritol are neither sugars nor alcohols but are becoming increasingly popular as sweeteners. They are incompletely absorbed from your small intestine, for the most part, so they provide fewer calories than sugar but often cause problems with bloating, diarrhea, and flatulence.
• Sucralose (Splenda) is NOT a sugar, despite its sugar-like name and deceptive marketing slogan, "made from sugar." It's a chlorinated artificial sweetener in line with aspartame and saccharin, with detrimental health effects to match.
• Agave syrup, falsely advertised as "natural," is typically HIGHLY processed and is usually 80 percent fructose. The end product does not even remotely resemble the original agave plant.
• Honey is about 53 percent fructose2, but is completely natural in its raw form and has many health benefits when used in moderation, including as many antioxidants as spinach.
• Stevia is a highly sweet herb derived from the leaf of the South American stevia plant, which is completely safe (in its natural form). Lo han (or luohanguo) is another natural sweetener, but derived from a fruit.

All Sugars Are Not Equal

Glucose is the form of energy you were designed to run on. Every cell in your body, every bacterium—and in fact, every living thing on the Earth—uses glucose for energy.  But in this country, sucrose is no longer the sugar of choice. It's now fructose.

If your diet was like that of people a century ago, you'd consume about 15 grams per day—a far cry from the 73 grams per day the typical person gets from sweetened drinks. In vegetables and fruits, it's mixed in with vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and beneficial phytonutrients, all which moderate the negative metabolic effects. Amazingly, 25 percent of people actually consume more than 130 grams of fructose per day.

Making matters worse, all of the fiber has been removed from processed foods, so there is essentially no nutritive value at all. And the very products most people rely on to lose weight—the low-fat diet foods—are often the ones highest in fructose.

It isn't that fructose itself is bad—it is the MASSIVE DOSES you're exposed to that make it dangerous.

There are two overall reasons fructose is so damaging:

1. Your body metabolizes fructose in a much different way from glucose. The entire burden of metabolizing fructose falls on your liver.
2. People are consuming fructose in enormous quantities, which has made the negative effects much more profound.

The explosion of soda consumption is the major cause of this.

Today, 55 percent of sweeteners used in food and beverage manufacturing are made from corn, and the number one source of calories in America is soda, in the form of high fructose corn syrup.

Food and beverage manufacturers began switching their sweeteners from sucrose to corn syrup in the 1970s when they discovered that HFCS was not only far cheaper to make, but is also about 20 percent sweeter than conventional table sugar that has sucrose.

HFCS contains the same two sugars as sucrose but is more metabolically risky to you, due to its chemical form.

The fructose and the glucose are not bound together in HFCS, as they are in table sugar, so your body doesn't have to break it down. Therefore, the fructose is absorbed immediately, going straight to your liver.

Too Much Fructose Creates a Metabolic Disaster in Your Body

Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, has been a pioneer in decoding sugar metabolism. His work has highlighted some major differences in how different sugars are broken down and used by the human body.  

I highly recommend watching Lustig's lecture in its entirety if you want to learn how fructose is ruining your health biochemically.

As I mentioned earlier, after eating fructose, most of the metabolic burden rests on your liver. This is NOT the case with glucose, of which your liver breaks down only 20 percent. Nearly every cell in your body utilizes glucose, so it's normally "burned up" immediately after consumption.

So where does all of this fructose go, once you consume it?

Onto your thighs. It is turned into FAT (VLDL and triglycerides), which means more fat deposits throughout your body.

Eating Fructose Is Far Worse Than Eating Fat

However, the physiological problems of fructose metabolism extend well beyond a couple of pant sizes:

• Fructose elevates uric acid, which decreases nitric oxide, raises angiotensin, and causes your smooth muscle cells to contract, thereby raising your blood pressure and potentially damaging your kidneys.1
  
  Increased uric acid also leads to chronic, low-level inflammation, which has far-reaching consequences for your health. For example, chronically inflamed blood vessels lead to heart attacks and strokes; also, a good deal of evidence exists that some cancers are caused by chronic inflammation. (See the next section for more about uric acid.)
• Fructose tricks your body into gaining weight by fooling your metabolism—it turns off your body's appetite-control system. Fructose does not appropriately stimulate insulin, which in turn does not suppress ghrelin (the "hunger hormone") and doesn't stimulate leptin (the "satiety hormone"), which together result in you eating more and developing insulin resistance.2
• Fructose rapidly leads to weight gain and abdominal obesity ("beer belly"), decreased HDL, increased LDL, elevated triglycerides, elevated blood sugar, and high blood pressure—i.e., classic metabolic syndrome.
• Fructose metabolism is very similar to ethanol metabolism, which has a multitude of toxic effects, including NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease). It's alcohol without the buzz.

These changes are not seen when humans or animals eat starch (or glucose), suggesting that fructose is a "bad carbohydrate" when consumed in excess of 25 grams per day. It is probably the one factor responsible for the partial success of many "low-carb" diets.

One of the more recent findings that surprised researchers is that glucose actually accelerates fructose absorption, making the potential health risks from HFCS even more profound.1

You can now see why fructose is the number one contributing factor to the current obesity epidemic.

Is Uric Acid the New Cholesterol?

By now you are probably aware of the childhood obesity epidemic in America—but did you know about childhood hypertension?

Until recently, children were rarely diagnosed with high blood pressure, and when they were, it was usually due to a tumor or a vascular kidney disease.

In 2004, a study showed hypertension among children is four times higher than predicted: 4.5 percent of American children have high blood pressure. Among overweight children, the rate is 10 percent. It is thought that obesity is to blame for about 50 percent of hypertension cases in adolescents today.

Even more startling is that 90 percent of adolescents who have high blood pressure have elevated uric acid levels.

This has led researchers to ask: what does uric acid have to do with obesity and high blood pressure?

In his book, The Sugar Fix: The High-Fructose Fallout That is Making You Fat and Sick, Dr. Robert J. Johnson makes a compelling argument for a previously unrecognized connection between excess sugar consumption and high uric acid levels. However, he promotes artificial sweeteners as an alternative to sugar and makes other recommendations that I don't agree with.  Dr. Johnson is a conventional physician who has not accepted large parts of natural medicine. However, he is one of the leading researchers defining the extent of fructose toxicity. He has spent many years of his life dedicating himself to uncover this mystery.

There are more than 3,500 articles to date showing a strong relationship between uric acid and obesity, heart disease, hypertension, stroke, kidney disease, and other conditions. In fact, a number of studies have confirmed that people with elevated serum uric acid are at risk for high blood pressure, even if they otherwise appear to be perfectly healthy.

Uric acid levels among Americans have risen significantly since the early half of the 20th century. In the 1920s, average uric acid levels were about 3.5 ml/dl. By 1980, average uric acid levels had climbed into the range of 6.0 to 6.5 ml/dl and are probably much higher now.

How Does Your Body Produce Uric Acid?

It's a byproduct of cellular breakdown. As cells die off, DNA and RNA degrade into chemicals called purines. Purines are further broken down into uric acid.

Fructose increases uric acid through a complex process that causes cells to burn up their ATP rapidly, leading to "cell shock" and increased cell death. After eating excessive amounts of fructose, cells become starved of energy and enter a state of shock, just as if they have lost their blood supply. Massive cellular die-off leads to increased uric acid levels.

And cells that are depleted of energy become inflamed and more susceptible to damage from oxidative stress. Fat cells actually become "sickly," bloating up with excessive amounts of fat.

There is a simple, inexpensive blood test for determining your uric acid level, which I recommend you have done as part of your routine health checkups. Your level should be between 3.0 and 5.5 mg/dl, optimally.

There is little doubt in my mind that your uric acid level is a more potent predictor of cardiovascular and overall health than your total cholesterol level is. Yet virtually no one is screening for this.

Now that you know the truth, you don't have to be left out in the cold, as this is a simple and relatively inexpensive test that you can get at any doctor's office. Odds are very good your doctor is clueless about the significance of elevated uric acid levels, so it will not likely be productive to engage in a discussion with him unless he is truly an open-minded truth seeker.

Merely get your uric acid level, and if it is over 5 then eliminate as much fructose as you can (also eliminate all beer), and retest your level in a few weeks.

Sugar Sensitization Makes the Problem Even WORSE!

There is yet another problem with sugar—a self-perpetuating one.

According to Dr. Johnson, sugar activates its own pathways in your body—those metabolic pathways become "upregulated." In other words, the more sugar you eat, the more effective your body is in absorbing it; and the more you absorb, the more damage you'll do.

You become "sensitized" to sugar as time goes by, and more sensitive to its toxic effects as well.

The flip side is, when people are given even a brief sugar holiday, sugar sensitization rapidly decreases and those metabolic pathways become "downregulated." Research tells us that even two weeks without consuming sugar will cause your body to be less reactive to it.

Try it for yourself! Take a two-week sugar sabbatical and see how different you feel.

Are Fruits Good or Bad for You?

Keep in mind that fruits also contain fructose, although an ameliorating factor is that whole fruits also contain vitamins and other antioxidants that reduce the hazardous effects of fructose.

Juices, on the other hand, are nearly as detrimental as soda, because a glass of juice is loaded with fructose, and a lot of the antioxidants are lost.

It is important to remember that fructose alone isn't evil, as fruits are certainly beneficial. But when you consume high levels of fructose, it will absolutely devastate your biochemistry and physiology. Remember the AVERAGE fructose dose is 70 grams per day, exceeding the recommend limit by 300 percent.

So please BE CAREFUL with your fruit consumption. You simply MUST understand that because HFCS is so darn cheap, it is added to virtually every processed food. Even if you consumed no soda or fruit, it is very easy to exceed 25 grams of hidden fructose in your diet.

If you are a raw food advocate, have a pristine diet, and exercise very well, then you could be the exception that could exceed this limit and stay healthy.

Dr. Johnson has a handy chart shown below, which you can use to estimate how much fructose you're getting in your diet. Remember, you are also likely getting additional fructose if you consume any packaged foods at all, since it is hidden in nearly all of them.

Fruit Serving Size Grams of Fructose Limes 1 medium 0 Lemons 1 medium 0.6 Cranberries 1 cup 0.7 Passion fruit 1 medium 0.9 Prune 1 medium 1.2 Apricot 1 medium 1.3 Guava 2 medium 2.2 Date (Deglet Noor style) 1 medium 2.6 Cantaloupe 1/8 of med. melon 2.8 Raspberries 1 cup 3.0 Clementine 1 medium 3.4 Kiwifruit 1 medium 3.4 Blackberries 1 cup 3.5 Star fruit 1 medium 3.6 Cherries, sweet 10 3.8 Strawberries 1 cup 3.8 Cherries, sour 1 cup 4.0 Pineapple 1 slice (3.5" x .75") 4.0 Grapefruit, pink or red 1/2 medium 4.3

Fruit Serving Size Grams of Fructose Boysenberries 1 cup 4.6 Tangerine/mandarin orange 1 medium 4.8 Nectarine 1 medium 5.4 Peach 1 medium 5.9 Orange (navel) 1 medium 6.1 Papaya 1/2 medium 6.3 Honeydew 1/8 of med. melon 6.7 Banana 1 medium 7.1 Blueberries 1 cup 7.4 Date (Medjool) 1 medium 7.7

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