Enzymes and digestion.

Are you one of the millions of people who suffers from indigestion or heartburn?  Have you been convinced by Big Pharma that the solution to your problem is by taking over the counter and prescription medication? Well, don't be sucked in.  Digestive aids are a $10 billion a year industry.  Most people can solve their digestive issues by changing their eating habits.  Your digestion is dependent on having the enzymes you need to break down and digest the food you eat - that and sufficient hydrochloric acid.  Hydrochloric acid??? Yes, and many digestive aids work by neutralizing this acid which in the long run leads to worse indigestion.  So, what can you do?

Enzymes are essential for life.  As we age, there are fewer enzymes in our bodies.  Enzymes are crucial for the digestive process and a lack leads to indigestion.  So, where do we get extra enzymes to aid with digestion?  From fresh, raw food.  Fresh raw fruits, vegetables and milk are loaded with enzymes.  (Raw milk is milk that has not been pasteurized.  Contrary to popular belief and what the milk board would like you to think, raw milk is not dangerous if if comes from animals that are grown on open pasture and not kept in tiny cubicles where they develop infectious diseases.  Raw milk does not contain any hormones or antibiotics and is considered by many who take food seriously to be the "perfect food".)  Raw nuts on the other hand are not a good source of enzymes.  Nuts are the seed of the tree that produced them and all seeds contain enzyme inhibitors that prevent the seeds from sprouting until they encounter warm wet conditions.

Any food that is cooked is completely lacking in enzymes.  Any food that has been heated above 118 degrees F is completely lacking in enzymes because heat kills enzymes.  So, if you are not eating fresh fruits and vegetables, you are not ingesting any enzymes.  Canned, baked, broiled, fried, boiled and pickled foods are all lacking in enzymes.

I recommend eating a minimum of 10 servings of FRESH whole fruits and vegetables daily .  One serving is 1/2 cup.  Do not drink juice unless you are making home made juice from fresh ingredients.  Most fruit juices are pasteurized and don't contain the fiber of the whole fruit so are not comparable to the whole fresh fruit. 

Another way to ingest enzymes is by taking enzyme supplements.  These are the fast, easy but less tasty way of doing it but can be very effective.  Papaya and pineapple contain digestive enzymes - papain and bromelain - that make effective supplements.  They are far more effective than digestive aids.  If you have really bad indigestion, I suggest Hyland's homeopathic "Digestion".  But first and foremost, eat fresh food.  If you cannot eat 10 servings a day, start out with 2 or 4 and increase the amount you eat over time, but just eat it!

Day 2: Bottled Water vs Tap Water

Water is essential to life and to good health.  In a moderate climate you should drink 8 8oz glasses a day. In a hot dry climate, or if you are an athlete, even more. Over the past 20 years tap water taste quality has been capitalized on by Big Food leading to the production of millions of plastic bottles of water being produced and sold every year.  Most of the bottles are not recycled so the pollution alone is mind boggling.

But, let's get to the $64,000 question:  Is bottled water cleaner, less polluted and so better for you than average tap water?  In most cases it isn't because it's just tap water that has been put in plastic bottles.  And then of course there is the potential leaching of the plastic molecules into the water which makes it not only less healthy, but potentially carcinogenic..  Then let's look at the cost.  The average bottle of water costs 1,900 times the water that you can get out of your tap. If you buy one 12 oz. bottle of water a day at $1.50 - the average price - you will spend almost $550 a year on  less than 35 gallons of water.  Wow!  No wonder the sellers want you to think it's better for you than tap water!  The profit margin is a capitalist's wet dream. 

If your tap water doesn't taste great or you want it filtered, get some sort of filtration system - even the most expensive will save you money in the long run and you won't be a polluter.  You also won't be a victim to corporate greed.

Interesting factoid:  Coke owns Evian bottled water.  What does it say about the consumer if you spell Evian backwards?

Day 1: Don't eat anything that contains High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)

Attacks on Big Food from every quarter have sent manufacturers running to their spin doctors to try to change the perception of HFCS.  So, now they're going to call it Corn Sugar and are proliferating the air waves with dishonest advertisements claiming that "Sugar is sugar".  Nothing could be further from the truth.

There are so many reasons not to consume high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), so don’t be fooled by Big Food and its claims that it’s a “natural sugar”.  HFCS is not a natural sugar like the fructose in grapes, cherries or other fruit.  It is a highly processed sugar that is 55% fructose and 45% glucose.  Fructose is metabolized by the liver and over consumption of it can lead to liver disease.  In fact a study at Queen Elizabeth College in London in 1969 showed that high consumption of fructose is far more harmful than a high consumption of sucrose (table sugar).

Over 10 weeks, 16 volunteers on a controlled diet including high levels of fructose produced new fat cells around their heart, liver and other digestive organs. They also showed signs of food-processing abnormalities linked to diabetes and heart disease. Another group of volunteers on the same diet, but with glucose sugar replacing fructose, did not have these problems.

HFCS has been linked to a higher risk of heart disease.  It raises blood levels of cholesterol, triglycerides, uric acid, insulin and cortisol.  It makes blood cells more prone to clotting and may accelerate the aging process. 

Fructose is a major contributor to:

·         Insulin resistance and obesity

·         Elevated blood pressure

·         Elevated triglycerides and elevated VLDL (very low density lipoproteins – the cholesterol that causes arteriolosclerosis)

·         Depletion of vitamins and minerals

·         Cardiovascular disease, liver disease, cancer, arthritis and even gout

 

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:

·         After eating fructose, 100 percent of the metabolic burden rests on your liver. But with glucose, your liver has to break down only 20 percent.

·         Every cell in your body, including your brain, utilizes glucose. Therefore, much of it is “burned up” immediately after you consume it. By contrast, fructose is turned into free fatty acids (FFAs), VLDL (the damaging form of cholesterol), and triglycerides, which get stored as fat.

·         The fatty acids created during fructose metabolism accumulate as fat droplets in your liver and skeletal muscle tissues, causing insulin resistance and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Insulin resistance progresses to metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes.

·         When you eat 120 calories of glucose, less than one calorie is stored as fat. 120 calories of fructose results in 40 calories being stored as fat.

·         The metabolism of fructose by your liver creates a long list of waste products and toxins, including a large amount of uric acid, which drives up blood pressure and causes gout.

·         Glucose suppresses the hunger hormone ghrelin and stimulates leptin, which suppresses your appetite. Fructose has no effect on ghrelin and interferes with your brain’s communication with leptin, resulting in overeating.

The bottom line is: fructose leads to increased belly fat, insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome -- not to mention the long list of chronic diseases that directly result.

The really scary thing about HFCS is that it is hidden in literally thousands of processed food products from soups, to cereals and frozen entrees.  Whole Foods advertises that they use only “organic” HFCS.  Organic or not, it’s the same stuff.  This is where label reading becomes crucial:  Take a look at the ingredients in your Tomato Soup.  I have never understood why tomato soup requires sweetening.

When you start to acquaint yourself with all the products that contain HFCS, you will understand why Americans consume an average of 156 pounds of sugar per year per person, why America is currently suffering an obesity epidemic and why the incidence of Type II diabetes has soared since HFCS became the sweetener of choice for Big Food.

Interesting factoid:  Big Food produces 3900 calories per day for every person in the United States.  Most of these calories are in the form of some sort of corn derivative.  The manufacturers have to try to get us to eat all those calories somehow - hence the invention of the Big Gulp - 640 calories of HFCS, flavoring and carbonated water.

DON'T BUY IT!