Might as well drive that knife right through your heart.
One of the first changes we need to make is how we feel about food. We have been trained by the establishment (Parents, Doctors, TV, Ads) that we can pretty much eat anything we want and when we get sick there is a medicine for that. Its time we start tp look at food differently. How about looking at our food as medicine to prevent and reverse disease?
We can no longer ignore the fact of how food in particular the western diet is making us sick. We have been taught to look at how many calories a food or drink has in the belief that if we can burn more calories than we put in than we can put anything in our mouth. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every thing we put in our mouths sends a chemical signal to the cells in our bodies to respond in a certain way, to produce or reduce hormones, peptides and neurotransmitters to name a few of the effects food has on us. For example when you consume sugar, it stimulates the pancreas to produce insulin. Your brain notices this increase, understands that it’s busy metabolizing what you just ate, and tells you that you’re less hungry. The important thing to note here is that when you consume glucose, your brain knows to tell you to stop eating when you’ve had enough. But glucose isn’t perfect. There are many processes involved when you consume glucose, but one that occurs in your liver produces something called very low density lipoprotein (or VLDL). That leads to cardiovascular disease. So thinking that we can eat or drink something that has 110 calories and we can just burn those calories off later is just one of the many inconsistent belief systems we need to fix or swap out. Just imagine how many chemical processes it took our bodies to break down the sugar, increase hormone levels, then for your brain to receive and send signals to our body that we are satisfied. Its more than just calories. Another problem with sugar and most carbohydrates is that the feeling of fullness or satiety does not last more than a few hours. Now the body begins to send other signals. That it is tired, that it is hungry. And how do we normally respond, by giving it more food. Apart from supplying energy food is also a chemical messenger.
The process the your body uses to break down food to turn it into energy is called the Krebs cycle. Your body can derive energy from fat or carbohydrates. Extracting that energy from your food takes innumerable chemical reactions. Creating energy from carbohydrates however creates additional steps and by products. Mainly the creation of free radicals and pro-inflammatory reactions leading to Chronic Inflammatory Diseases (CID). CID’s include Osteoarthritis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Inflammatory bowel disease, Lupus, Crohn’s just to name a few.
It has been a long held belief that fat is bad and carbs are good. In order for the health of our brain and body to improve we need to change this false belief system that has been created. In a major recent study it was concluded that that a high carb low fat diet raises the risk of early death by almost one quarter. The Lancet study of 135,000 adults showed that consuming high levels of fat cut death early death rates by 23%. Participants who consumed the highest levels of carbohydrates, especially refined sugar, sodas and processed food increased their risk of early death by 28%. This is just one recent study. There are hundreds of other major studies some including participants from as many as 18 countries. All coming to the same conclusion. High carbohydrate, low fat diets not only increase your chances of an early death but almost guarantee you years of suffering with pain and chronic illness.
Imagine yourself taking a bite from an apple, but you did not like how the apple tasted so you spit it back out. Think about that piece of apple you spit out, would you consider it a part of you or something separate from you? How about if you ate the apple but got sick a little later and threw the apple back up. Is part of the apple part of you or separate from you? How about if you eat, fully digest the apple into its smallest particles, use the energy from the apple to create your own energy and new cells, and it’s proteins to build muscle, bone and even new DNA is that apple now a part of you or is it still separate? Most of us will agree that at some point what we are eating is becoming a part of us. Think about what you eating. Ask yourself. Where did it come from? Is this real food? How many chemicals and preservatives have been added to it? If it was a living animal, how was it treated when it was alive? What was it fed? What were its living conditions? For our own health, well-being and longevity we need to start to ask these questions of the food we are eating. In order to live a long, healthy, vibrant life free of disease and chronic illnesses we have to change how we see and feel about what we are consuming as food.
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