December is a unique time of the year. As Christmas approaches and the year comes to a close, everything in our lives seems amplified. Sometimes, the most amplified things are the struggles we face, or the things in our lives we feel are missing. As human beings, it’s easy to allow these things to consume us, forgetting who we are, and who we’re supposed to be.
Christmas and New Year’s can be the best time of the year, but it can sometimes feel like the worst. These are the days where we want everything to be perfect, and these are the days we feel it most when they are not.
The holidays put a magnifying glass on everything bothering us. Many of us might be facing broken relationships, lost loved ones, family dissension, economic disparity, health related scares, or loneliness. Whether you’re going through one of these things, or everything on the list, there’s still hope.
Each struggle has an origin, and each struggle serves a purpose. What needs to be determined, is are your life’s struggles for the right reason’s or the wrong ones? Are you struggling because you followed your dream, or because you were afraid to? Because you told the truth, or because you lied? Because you had the courage to let go, or because your fear of change made you hold on to tight? Because you loved and lost, or because you were too afraid to love at all? Because you fought your addiction, or because you gave into it? Each option poses a painful challenge; the key is to accept the one that will make you better, not worse.
Our Struggles Give Us Our Humanity
Without making mistakes there’s no way to learn and move forward. Progress is only made through failure. Through our mistakes we learn how to create our success. This can be applied in any area of life, whether it’s personal, professional, economical, etc. No matter what you’re involved in, you will face a point in time where a personal struggle will engulf your life. Real heroes are judged by how they react in the face of overwhelming odds (George Washington, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Jesus Christ, etc.). We all face moments that we don’t understand, but there has to come a time when we accept what life has laid before us, and we use it to become who we’re supposed to be.
Regardless of where you are, and how you’ve handled you’re life’s challenges to this point, you can be certain that others around you are about to deal with life altering strife of their own. There will be a time when you can share what you’ve learned, and when you can turn your pain into strength for someone else. One day you can be thankful for the tests that life has put you through, because it allowed you to teach another person how to pass the tests life has laid before them.
This holiday season I want you to embrace the pains that have put you in touch with your humanity. These pains will give you the gift of compassion, and your compassion will give you the gift of helping those who need it.
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Questions On Sugar
My question is:
What food is good to have with wine ( since it is suppose to prevent heart attacks) since cheese and meat are ruled out?
Sally
That's a good question Sally=)
I know how good it is to have something tasty with wine, here's my advice.
Make sure that around your wine and cheese time's you have something rich in soluble fiber (oats/oatbran, dried beans, nuts, flaxseed, barley, oranges, apples, carrots, etc). Soluble fiber binds with the fatty acids in your stomach and prolongs the digestive time helping to regulate blood sugar.
Make sure that if you are eating meats with the wine that the meat is as lean as you can get, or the safe bet is to substitute fish and poultry.
If you’re eating bread with the wine do your best to get something rich in fiber (multi-grain). Look at the ingredients and look for bread packed with oats, flaxseed etc.
Also make sure to get plenty of insoluble fiber (dark leafy vegetables, green beans, fruit skins, root vegetable skins, whole wheat products, corn bran, seeds $ nuts). This will keep you regular and help remove toxic buildup in the colon, also helping to prevent colon cancer.
Hope that helps=)
Derek
Ok Derek...I have a question too...
I’ve been reading about sugar (LOVE YOUR BLOGS) and from what I’ve read in other places, Stevia and Agave Nectar are ok...is this true? What do you think of substituting these on cereals, in lemonade, etc?
Wishing you the best Christmas ever
We miss you on the west coast
Jen
I recommend agave nectar as a choice sweetener. It’s 25% sweeter than sugar, so you can use less and get more! It’s also low on the glycemic index at 39 or less. This means you won’t get the spike in blood sugar that regular sugar causes, and it goes through a longer digestive process.
Stevia seems to be a reasonable substitute. However, there is not as much research on this product in the west, and many organizations are not willing to back it. It has had reasonable success in Japan and South America, but researchers fear that with America’s higher consumption rate, it could have a dire effect on our bodies. Short term answer: More research of this product needs to be done to safely recommend it.
What food is good to have with wine ( since it is suppose to prevent heart attacks) since cheese and meat are ruled out?
Sally
That's a good question Sally=)
I know how good it is to have something tasty with wine, here's my advice.
Make sure that around your wine and cheese time's you have something rich in soluble fiber (oats/oatbran, dried beans, nuts, flaxseed, barley, oranges, apples, carrots, etc). Soluble fiber binds with the fatty acids in your stomach and prolongs the digestive time helping to regulate blood sugar.
Make sure that if you are eating meats with the wine that the meat is as lean as you can get, or the safe bet is to substitute fish and poultry.
If you’re eating bread with the wine do your best to get something rich in fiber (multi-grain). Look at the ingredients and look for bread packed with oats, flaxseed etc.
Also make sure to get plenty of insoluble fiber (dark leafy vegetables, green beans, fruit skins, root vegetable skins, whole wheat products, corn bran, seeds $ nuts). This will keep you regular and help remove toxic buildup in the colon, also helping to prevent colon cancer.
Hope that helps=)
Derek
Ok Derek...I have a question too...
I’ve been reading about sugar (LOVE YOUR BLOGS) and from what I’ve read in other places, Stevia and Agave Nectar are ok...is this true? What do you think of substituting these on cereals, in lemonade, etc?
Wishing you the best Christmas ever
We miss you on the west coast
Jen
I recommend agave nectar as a choice sweetener. It’s 25% sweeter than sugar, so you can use less and get more! It’s also low on the glycemic index at 39 or less. This means you won’t get the spike in blood sugar that regular sugar causes, and it goes through a longer digestive process.
Stevia seems to be a reasonable substitute. However, there is not as much research on this product in the west, and many organizations are not willing to back it. It has had reasonable success in Japan and South America, but researchers fear that with America’s higher consumption rate, it could have a dire effect on our bodies. Short term answer: More research of this product needs to be done to safely recommend it.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Refined Sugar: The Corporate Carbohydrate Part 3
Healthy Sugar
Natural unrefined raw sugar is not the assassin its bizarro counterpart bleached white refined sugar is. In fact it’s a source of minerals including Phosphorus, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, and Potassium. Because the body can extract healthy contents in natural unrefined sugar, it can go through a healthy digestive process, and avoid corrupting the body’s organs and weakening the immune system.
Continuously adding sugar or sweeteners to your food is a bad idea, but there is a time and place for a little extra sugar. When you are faced with that appropriate time, make sure to use unrefined raw sugar. Honey in its purist form is also a healthier sugar source than refined white sugar.
Just because raw sugar is darker, doesn’t mean traditional brown sugar is raw or healthy. Brown sugar is the same as white refined sugar, just with a truckload of molasses in it. Sorry to disappoint.
Glucose, the Brain Sugar
Glucose is the energy source for our most important organ, the brain. Although the brain is far from our largest muscle or organ, it consumes roughly 20% of our total energy. It is vital that we give our brain the kind of energy it needs to function, as our every thought and movement depends on it.
The brain depends on the bloodstream to keep a constant supply of glucose, as it is the fuel that keeps the brain constantly working. The best source of glucose for the brain is found in complex carbohydrates including fruits, vegetables, legumes, and grains.
Complex carbohydrates provide time released circulation of glucose to the brain. However, refined sugar does the exact opposite, leading to countless problems in our cognitive thinking ability and emotional state. Refined sugar actually deprives the brain of the glucose that it uses for healthy functioning. It impairs the brains ability to concentrate, problem solve, remember, learn (any cognitive skill), as mental activity requires a great deal of energy. This is a problem facing our youth, as nutritional options provided to them at home and away often cause behavioral and emotional disturbances, not to mention sugar addictions they will fight for the rest of their lives. On a side note, it would be interesting to see how much money is being put in nutritional health education for children and adults with ADD and ADHD vs. the amount of money spent on pharmaceutical medications for these conditions.
Sugar in Fruits
Fruit is the best way to get the natural sugar your body craves and benefits from. The options and flavors of the world’s fruits are astounding, and many of them are already packed with the vitamins and nutrients our bodies need to keep the immune system running effectively.
Because fruit is a food and not a liquid, the body will take more time to extract the vitamins and nutrients needed, keeping it from entering the blood stream too quickly as it often does with juice. Whole fruits are also a natural source of fiber. The fiber allows for a longer digestive process, and keeps the insulin from removing the sugar from the fruits to quickly.
Sugar in Juice
Though fruit juice has the vitamins and nutrients of a fruit, it lacks the fiber whole fruits provide. Since juice comes in liquid form, the sugar enters into our bloodstreams much faster. Unless our blood sugar is low, this isn’t such a great thing. The fiber found in fruit “blunts” or slows down the affect of insulin, thus allowing our bodies more time to appropriately utilize the glucose. With fruit juices the body has to secrete more insulin to bring blood sugar levels back to normal, and if you remember the job of insulin, the excess sugar is often stored as fat.
It’s a bad idea to drink a lot of juice with a meal heavy in refined carbohydrates (the refined carbohydrates are bad enough in the first place), because in the end the body will have to produce far too much insulin to remove the sugar, only to have to store it as fat.
Mixing any sugar based liquid (wine, fruit juice, soda) with foods high in fat (red meat, cheese, exc.) isn’t wise. It’s easier for fat to enter the bloodstream with the sugar before it goes through it’s natural digestive process. This can lead to increased risk of artery clogging, higher cholesterol levels, and hypertension (high blood pressure).
The healthiest time for fruit juice is after a good rigorous workout when blood sugar is low and needs to be replenished. This will help the body to restore its energy levels. Unless your blood sugar is really low, I would recommend eating some fruit to get the added fiber.
More Hidden Sugar
The funny thing about sugar is all the ways corporations have to hide it. William Duftey, author of “The Sugar Blues” writes, “The use of the word carbohydrate to describe sugar is deliberately misleading,” and I agree. Refined white sugar is not a carbohydrate, it’s a man made poison that’s cheap, can keep a long unnatural shelf life, and makes addicts out of unsuspecting consumers.
Sugar is added to a limitless list of foods including spaghetti sauce, salad dressings, ice cream, soups, cereals, ketchup, and almost all processed foods. It’s a cheap way for food corporations to get us to enjoy their product, and ultimately become physically dependent on the content of the products.
Sugar is even put in certain brands of cigarettes and cigars. What I find more ridiculous, is that companies don’t have to provide the use of sugar with their smoking products. This is obviously a sinister trick employed to addict youngsters who might not have otherwise liked a harsher tasting natural cigarette. After a certain point it doesn’t matter if they like the taste or not, their already addicted.
Why Sugar’s a drug
In the online dictionary by Farlex, one of the definitions for drug is, “a chemical substance, such as a narcotic or hallucinogen that affects the central nervous system, causing changes in behavior and often addiction.” Hmmm, doesn’t this sound a little to much like refined sugar?
Refined sugar and flour stimulate the transmission of neurotransmitters in the brain including dopamine (associated with the brains pleasure system), serotonin (associated with regulation of mood), and norepinephrine (associated with the body’s stress response). The body and the brain eventually become dependent on sugar to help get the fix needed to continue the transmission of these neurotransmitters. Without the sugar, the body will go through withdrawals effecting things like mood, energy, sleep, etc. Refined sugar sends our bodies through emotional and psychological highs and lows. Oddly enough most people end up trying to fight back with more refined sugar. Just as drugs warp the body and brain, so does refined sugar.
What about Artificial Sweeteners?
There is only one word to describe artificial sweeteners, dangerous. I could list several to avoid, but that would be as if I were promoting the others in some morbid way. Artificial sweeteners typically come out to rave reviews, to only find that after a few years on the market they can cause cancer, develop tumors, destroy the immune system, cause dizziness, and even bring about hallucinations. Just thinking about artificial sweeteners frustrates me to no end.
An artificial sweetener is simply a group of synthetic chemicals meant to fool our taste buds into thinking its sugar. How on God’s green earth, does anyone think that this could possibly be non-poisonous to our body’s? Artificial sweeteners are simply another destructive way for corporate food companies to get rich off addicting their consumers to yet another manufactured toxin.
Where to Go from Here
Lets be honest, cutting sugar completely out of your diet is about as realistic as seeing a flock of pigs flying across the sky. Just like we can have a healthy relationship with fat, we can have a healthy relationship with sugar. Here’s what we need to do to build that relationship.
• Increase our complex carbohydrate intake (Fruits, vegetables, legumes (beans), whole wheat pasta, brown rice, whole grain bread)
• Frequently eat low-fat healthy organic proteins (poultry, fish, beans, unsalted nuts)
• Eat healthy fats (monounsaturated and polyunsaturated)
• Drink water throughout the day to help circulate vitamins and nutrients from healthy foods
• Avoid as many processed foods as possible
• Stay active in a variety of ways (walking, jogging, circuit training, etc.)
• Know the content of your food before you eat it
Only through our health can we live truly free. By remaining un-educated about what we put in our bodies, we take away the freedom of our people by asking them to be responsible for us when we become unnecessarily sick. This is one of the great tests of our time. My belief is that hundreds of years from now, history will look back at this as a time when humanity struggled with sickness because of overconsumption of addictive foods. They will speak in classrooms of the few who became rich, and the many that became sick.
One day a nutritionally sound humanity will step beyond this barrier. The goal for each of us today, is to be the men and women that will lead America to a free and healthy future. As Americans we have the freedom of choice, its time we start making the right ones.
Natural unrefined raw sugar is not the assassin its bizarro counterpart bleached white refined sugar is. In fact it’s a source of minerals including Phosphorus, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, and Potassium. Because the body can extract healthy contents in natural unrefined sugar, it can go through a healthy digestive process, and avoid corrupting the body’s organs and weakening the immune system.
Continuously adding sugar or sweeteners to your food is a bad idea, but there is a time and place for a little extra sugar. When you are faced with that appropriate time, make sure to use unrefined raw sugar. Honey in its purist form is also a healthier sugar source than refined white sugar.
Just because raw sugar is darker, doesn’t mean traditional brown sugar is raw or healthy. Brown sugar is the same as white refined sugar, just with a truckload of molasses in it. Sorry to disappoint.
Glucose, the Brain Sugar
Glucose is the energy source for our most important organ, the brain. Although the brain is far from our largest muscle or organ, it consumes roughly 20% of our total energy. It is vital that we give our brain the kind of energy it needs to function, as our every thought and movement depends on it.
The brain depends on the bloodstream to keep a constant supply of glucose, as it is the fuel that keeps the brain constantly working. The best source of glucose for the brain is found in complex carbohydrates including fruits, vegetables, legumes, and grains.
Complex carbohydrates provide time released circulation of glucose to the brain. However, refined sugar does the exact opposite, leading to countless problems in our cognitive thinking ability and emotional state. Refined sugar actually deprives the brain of the glucose that it uses for healthy functioning. It impairs the brains ability to concentrate, problem solve, remember, learn (any cognitive skill), as mental activity requires a great deal of energy. This is a problem facing our youth, as nutritional options provided to them at home and away often cause behavioral and emotional disturbances, not to mention sugar addictions they will fight for the rest of their lives. On a side note, it would be interesting to see how much money is being put in nutritional health education for children and adults with ADD and ADHD vs. the amount of money spent on pharmaceutical medications for these conditions.
Sugar in Fruits
Fruit is the best way to get the natural sugar your body craves and benefits from. The options and flavors of the world’s fruits are astounding, and many of them are already packed with the vitamins and nutrients our bodies need to keep the immune system running effectively.
Because fruit is a food and not a liquid, the body will take more time to extract the vitamins and nutrients needed, keeping it from entering the blood stream too quickly as it often does with juice. Whole fruits are also a natural source of fiber. The fiber allows for a longer digestive process, and keeps the insulin from removing the sugar from the fruits to quickly.
Sugar in Juice
Though fruit juice has the vitamins and nutrients of a fruit, it lacks the fiber whole fruits provide. Since juice comes in liquid form, the sugar enters into our bloodstreams much faster. Unless our blood sugar is low, this isn’t such a great thing. The fiber found in fruit “blunts” or slows down the affect of insulin, thus allowing our bodies more time to appropriately utilize the glucose. With fruit juices the body has to secrete more insulin to bring blood sugar levels back to normal, and if you remember the job of insulin, the excess sugar is often stored as fat.
It’s a bad idea to drink a lot of juice with a meal heavy in refined carbohydrates (the refined carbohydrates are bad enough in the first place), because in the end the body will have to produce far too much insulin to remove the sugar, only to have to store it as fat.
Mixing any sugar based liquid (wine, fruit juice, soda) with foods high in fat (red meat, cheese, exc.) isn’t wise. It’s easier for fat to enter the bloodstream with the sugar before it goes through it’s natural digestive process. This can lead to increased risk of artery clogging, higher cholesterol levels, and hypertension (high blood pressure).
The healthiest time for fruit juice is after a good rigorous workout when blood sugar is low and needs to be replenished. This will help the body to restore its energy levels. Unless your blood sugar is really low, I would recommend eating some fruit to get the added fiber.
More Hidden Sugar
The funny thing about sugar is all the ways corporations have to hide it. William Duftey, author of “The Sugar Blues” writes, “The use of the word carbohydrate to describe sugar is deliberately misleading,” and I agree. Refined white sugar is not a carbohydrate, it’s a man made poison that’s cheap, can keep a long unnatural shelf life, and makes addicts out of unsuspecting consumers.
Sugar is added to a limitless list of foods including spaghetti sauce, salad dressings, ice cream, soups, cereals, ketchup, and almost all processed foods. It’s a cheap way for food corporations to get us to enjoy their product, and ultimately become physically dependent on the content of the products.
Sugar is even put in certain brands of cigarettes and cigars. What I find more ridiculous, is that companies don’t have to provide the use of sugar with their smoking products. This is obviously a sinister trick employed to addict youngsters who might not have otherwise liked a harsher tasting natural cigarette. After a certain point it doesn’t matter if they like the taste or not, their already addicted.
Why Sugar’s a drug
In the online dictionary by Farlex, one of the definitions for drug is, “a chemical substance, such as a narcotic or hallucinogen that affects the central nervous system, causing changes in behavior and often addiction.” Hmmm, doesn’t this sound a little to much like refined sugar?
Refined sugar and flour stimulate the transmission of neurotransmitters in the brain including dopamine (associated with the brains pleasure system), serotonin (associated with regulation of mood), and norepinephrine (associated with the body’s stress response). The body and the brain eventually become dependent on sugar to help get the fix needed to continue the transmission of these neurotransmitters. Without the sugar, the body will go through withdrawals effecting things like mood, energy, sleep, etc. Refined sugar sends our bodies through emotional and psychological highs and lows. Oddly enough most people end up trying to fight back with more refined sugar. Just as drugs warp the body and brain, so does refined sugar.
What about Artificial Sweeteners?
There is only one word to describe artificial sweeteners, dangerous. I could list several to avoid, but that would be as if I were promoting the others in some morbid way. Artificial sweeteners typically come out to rave reviews, to only find that after a few years on the market they can cause cancer, develop tumors, destroy the immune system, cause dizziness, and even bring about hallucinations. Just thinking about artificial sweeteners frustrates me to no end.
An artificial sweetener is simply a group of synthetic chemicals meant to fool our taste buds into thinking its sugar. How on God’s green earth, does anyone think that this could possibly be non-poisonous to our body’s? Artificial sweeteners are simply another destructive way for corporate food companies to get rich off addicting their consumers to yet another manufactured toxin.
Where to Go from Here
Lets be honest, cutting sugar completely out of your diet is about as realistic as seeing a flock of pigs flying across the sky. Just like we can have a healthy relationship with fat, we can have a healthy relationship with sugar. Here’s what we need to do to build that relationship.
• Increase our complex carbohydrate intake (Fruits, vegetables, legumes (beans), whole wheat pasta, brown rice, whole grain bread)
• Frequently eat low-fat healthy organic proteins (poultry, fish, beans, unsalted nuts)
• Eat healthy fats (monounsaturated and polyunsaturated)
• Drink water throughout the day to help circulate vitamins and nutrients from healthy foods
• Avoid as many processed foods as possible
• Stay active in a variety of ways (walking, jogging, circuit training, etc.)
• Know the content of your food before you eat it
Only through our health can we live truly free. By remaining un-educated about what we put in our bodies, we take away the freedom of our people by asking them to be responsible for us when we become unnecessarily sick. This is one of the great tests of our time. My belief is that hundreds of years from now, history will look back at this as a time when humanity struggled with sickness because of overconsumption of addictive foods. They will speak in classrooms of the few who became rich, and the many that became sick.
One day a nutritionally sound humanity will step beyond this barrier. The goal for each of us today, is to be the men and women that will lead America to a free and healthy future. As Americans we have the freedom of choice, its time we start making the right ones.
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