Archive for July 26, 2015

Can You Eat Potatoes ( or other starchy Real Whole Foods) ? Test Your Blood Sugar!

4 girls after walking cere

( I love this pic of my girls! Raise healthy kids!  They’re depending on us!)

Potatoes, corn, carrots, plantains, bananas, beans,…wow, they sure do cause confusion.  Years ago, Dr. Atkins came out with his first book and completely demonized these foods by lumping them in with grains and sugars.

It was a great book, and he had a TON of research behind his initial recommendations, which were that if you’re overweight and want to lose, cut waaay down on the carbs, and consume lots of protein and fat.  He’s right.  Crappy carbs will not only put weight on us – and our kids – but they’re the perfect vehicle for:  inflammation, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, neurological conditions, ADD, ADHD, skin issues, and just about every disease out there.  Crappy carbs cause an Inflammatory Environment in our body – and our kids bodies.

Crappy Carbs are Evil.

But are those Real Whole Foods I listed above “Crappy Carbs”?  No. But that doesn’t mean you get to eat them.  Sorry.  The real answer is, “It depends.”  What do they do to your blood sugar after you eat them?  There’s an easy way to find out:  buy a blood sugar kit, aka, a Glucometer.

IT’S SO FUN – honest!  You might think Glucometers are just for diabetics, but they’re not.  Anyone can buy a kit in any drugstore or Walmart, or off Amazon, anywhere.

If you’re a weight loss client of mine, you probably already own one.  If you’re not a client, but a blog reader, buy one today.  Here’s why.

When blood sugar rises above “normal”, (normal is between 80 – 100, but some labs have lowered that value to 70 – 90), the pancreas releases the hormone INSULIN.  Insulin is an anabolic, building hormone.  Insulin takes the excess blood sugar, the amount that sends the value over “normal”, and stuffs a little in our muscle cells (the empty ones), a little in the liver-glycogen storage (if it’s low) and then…….turns all the rest of the excess into FAT/triglycerides, and stores them in the fat cells.

How does Blood Sugar get above normal?  EASY.  Every single carbohydrate we eat becomes blood sugar in our gut.  EVERY. SINGLE. CARB. Whether it’s from a grain, pure sugar, fruit, veggies, beans, nuts, whatever.  The carbohydrate in those foods is reduced to Glucose.  That’s the gut’s job:  break food down to chemical molecules so our cells can use it.  All carbs become glucose and fructose, 2 tiny, simple sugars that fit in cells easily.  (Today, we’re just talking about glucose; fructose is evil too! More on that later.)

How much blood sugar is too much?  If we weight 150 pounds, we have about 4.7 liters of blood.  “Normal” blood sugar – a measurement of 85 on the glucometer – equals 4 grams of sugar in the whole body.  4 Grams.  4 Grams. That’s 16 calories of carb (1 gram = 4 calories).  More than that, and the conversion of sugar/glucose to fat/triglycerides happen.

A medium French Fry has 47 g of sugar (all carbs break down to sugar).

A can of coke has 39 g of sugar.

Krave Jerky Lime Chile has 39 g of sugar per package.

1 cup of pasta has 43 g of sugar/carbs.

1 cup of orange juice 27 g of sugar.

Those are all obvious Crappy Carbs; the starches become sugar/glucose very very quickly and go from gut to blood stream fast.  But the real reason they’re Crappy is because they’re highly, highly processed and have no nutritional value at all.  None.  They’re so anti-good for us they’re poison!

Conventional wisdom tries to tell us that pasta has B vitamins, or french fries from McDonalds are vegetables.  Bull Crap. Those B vitamins – added/fortified – back into the pasta, were made in a factory in China from synthetic materials.   And those Mc D’s french fries?  19 ingredients!!  Gross! That’s not real!  Read their ingredient list, and several others, here.  Please, read it.  Our kids eat this stuff, and our kids are getting sicker and fatter and sadder than ever.

It’s. The. Food.

So what about YOU, and ME, and potatoes, or corn, or plantains, or all these other starchy fruits and veggies?  How does that affect our blood sugar since we know they’re carbohydrates?

I don’t know how they affect you; I know how they affect me because I’ve pricked my finger and tested a million times in the past 5 years.  Buy the glucometer and test yourself.  They’re cheap and they’re easy to use. Prick your finger 90 minutes after a meal (peak blood sugar), and look at the number.  See how your oatmeal or your pasta or your crackers affected you.

And see how a meal of corn or potatoes or bananas or beans, or any high carb fruit or veggie, affects you.

Five years ago, I had pretty fluctuating blood sugar.  I considered myself “low carb” because I ate a lot of “low carb” foods:  Kashi Go Lean, Low Carb Tortillas, Low Carb Bread, Low Carb Ice Cream, Low Carb Cookies…..  then I bought the glucometer.  Wow.  Did I get a wake up call.  My blood sugars were way too high, and it scared me into action.

No more Low Carb Crap, just Real Whole Foods.  Of course, I worried about the high carb fruits and veggies, and the glucometer showed that yes, they did raise my blood sugar too much.  So I cut way back on them.

In the past 5 years I’ve changed and refined my diet – a lot.   I eat more herbs and spices than ever – every day.  I use essential oils.  I’ve added more fat than I ever thought possible.  I’ve managed to completely delete “cheat days” from my life (thank you God), I’ve become scared of processed foods to the degree that I’m literally afraid of them.  I’ve joined several food co-ops, I go to a couple different farmers markets.

Last summer I went totally ketogenic for a few months.

In other words, I’ve taken several actions, consistently, for several years now, and guess what?  Now when I take my blood sugar ( which I still do all the time – and I take my kids and Mark’s often also), it’s always good.

A few mornings a week I throw a banana into my smoothie – blood sugar stays low.

I eat potatoes or plantains for dinner at least 4 or 5 nights a week.  The other night I measured before dinner, I was 78.  After a dinner of roasted potatoes coated w butter, squash coated with olive oil and parm, a steak, and a piece of dark chocolate, I was 98.

I’VE BECOME SO DARN NORMAL.  It’s awesome!

I believe you can become normal too, with persistence and consistence.

What’s normal?  Normal is when you eat a real whole food, in normal amounts, in a normal diet full of nutrient dense foods loaded with good fats, some protein, and a ton of vegetables, and your body processes it just fine.

Your muscle and liver cells are open to the carbs and the fat both, you sleep well, you don’t feel sick, bloated or brain foggy – ever, and your energy and immune system hum.

By the way, as good as they look, 6 pack abs aren’t totally normal, especially for most women. Having some body fat – is normal.  Being ripped, lean, and shredded, goes against most body types, and the actions needed to get there usually lower thyroid function, lower body fat to unhealthy levels, and mess up our sex and adrenal hormones.

Not normal.

How can you become normal?  There’s only one way: change how your brain things about about your body and food.  No more diet and weight loss focus, it doesn’t work. Focus on your health instead.  Pledge that at least a few times a week you’re going to read something from Dr. Mercola or Suzy Cohen or Dr. Davis/Wheat Belly or if you’re interested in the science behind the Ketogenic Diet (because I really do believe it heals cells and the liver and reverses insulin resistance) check out Dr. Nally here.

Here’s my Cigarette Analogy:  would you ever pick up a cigarette butt off the sidewalk and put it in your mouth? No! That would be disgusting, and there’d be no effort at all in resisting that urge.  I want you to look at a slurpee or a box of cookies or a fast food burger and think:  “I’d never put that in my mouth, that’s disgusting!”.

Here’s something that’s not disgusting, and it’s delicious!  2 Recipes, each I’ve had on here before, but they’re worth repeating.   The first is my Sweet Potato Pizza – Oh My Gosh is it delicious!!

Chipotle Sweet Potato-Zucchini Pizza

20150627_145925

1 large sweet potato
1 large green zuc, ring out water by 20150627_172301twisting in a towel
1 heaping tbsp chipotle powder
3 eggs, beaten
5 tbsp coconut flour
1 tsp salt
Mix all ingredients in a bowl, and pat onto a pizza pan. Bake at 425 for 40 minutes. Top with tomato sauce and cheese ( and whatever else you want, I’ve done corn, cilantro, and peppers). Bake at 425 for 10-15 minutes.

Roasted Potatoes – kids love this and it’s so much better than french fries-

roasted potatoesScrub and dice potatoes
Pour a couple tbsp of melted KerryGold butter and coat them w it
Salt & Pepper
Bake at 425  50-55 minutes, flip w a spatula half way through.

By the way, these things freeze and reheat beautifully, they’re a great Power Cooking food.

Are Your Meds Making You Sad, Overweight, and Sicker? Probably!

IMG_9068Have you ever considered that your muscle aches, brain fog, joint pain or other maladies could be caused by your medicines?  Even weight gain can be a side effect from everyday meds.   Disclaimer:  I realize that sometimes medication is absolutely necessary; my #2 daughter is epileptic. This is about the bigger picture.

Keep reading for the nitty gritty details, and to see family pics that have absolutely nothing to do with this Post:)   (Descriptions:  Shelby and I were in NYC last weekend;  Amanda started an Internship at the Epilepsy Foundation, and we celebrated Macy’s 21st birthday.)

Every year, prescription drugs cause over 81 MILLION adverse reactions and result in 2.7 million hospitalizations. 

Worse:  EVERY WEEK, prescription drugs kill more than 2,400 people. 

“This epidemic of harm from medications makes our prescription drugs the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. Including hospitalizations and deaths from prescribing errors, overdosing, and self-medication, drugs move up to third place.”

Medications are the 4th leading cause of death in the US – did you know that? 

At anyone time, 70% of us are on at least 1 prescription or OTC drug.  Old, young, skinny, fat, whoever.  We take a lot of drugs in this country, and we’re having an epidemic of side effects.  

Most of the time these side effects are treated – by us and our doctors – as another disease, that needs the remedy of a drug.  It’s a viscous cycle. 

Americans take more drugs than people in every other country in the world. IMG959154952And I’m talking literal prescription numbers, not the amount spent on drugs; which is also the most in the whole world.  To say we’re highly medicated is an understatement.

It hasn’t made us healthier.  Despite 70% of the country on drugs, we have higher rates of chronic disease than almost every other country in the world, and the CDC predicts that every single disease, from heart disease to cancer to obesity, will continue to rise through 2030 at least.

We need to start drawing some common-sense correlations here.

Healthcare, which = drugs and doctors and hospitals, does NOT necessarily = healthy.

How many drugs site “ damage to the liver” on the side effect list?   More than half?  Who feels damage happening in their liver?? NO ONE.  No. One.  Statins cause damage to the liver. Auto-Immune drugs cause damage to the liver.  Pain relievers (OTC and prescription) cause damage to the liver. Tylenol is the #1 cause of liver failure in the US; we give Tylenol to babies.  

Liver damage brews for years before symptoms manifest.  

20150715_185716Most diseases take about 15 years to manifest symptoms obvious enough to pinpoint the disease.  Take diabetes T2, the diabetic doesn’t just become diabetic over night, or in a few months.  It takes years of high blood sugar and corresponding high insulin to become diabetic.

Statins carry the risk of actually CAUSING diabetes T2.  It’s on the side effect label.  It’s on the commercials.  It’s a real possibility.  From PubMed: “Statin use is associated with a rise of fasting blood glucose in patients with and without diabetes. This relationship between statin use and rise in fasting blood glucose is in-dependent of age, aspirin use, beta-blockers, and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors.”

Other drugs also raise blood sugar:  steroids, diuretics for high blood pressure and edema, some birth control pills, and decongestants.

Chronic high blood sugar and high insulin cause ED and glycation of the skin, aka, wrinkles and age spots.  One doc on the Heart Summit called ED the “canary in the pants”.  Consider these symptoms of Heart Disease, because they are.

Diabetes is predicted to affect about HALF our population by 2020 – that’s right around the corner.  Diabetes is DANGEROUS, and EXPENSIVE.  If we watched our carbs and meds, T2 is almost fully avoidable, and reversible.

What about Diabetes drugs, like Metformin, which force sugar into cells that have self-protectively shut? Metformin causes serious digestion issues. Gastro-paresis and GERD, here you come. Besides, God had those cell receptors shut for a reason, it’s not a mistake, it’s self protection for the cell.

What if your T2 has progressed to the point of Insulin, what then?  Insulin, in excess (it’s “excess” if you’re a T2) is a caustic hormone.  It zooms through the arteries causing inflammation and damage.  AKA, Heart Disease.

What about a life style change instead of statins or diabetes drugs?  After all, heart disease and diabetes are caused by our life style, which is our every day choices.  To reverse or avoid them, stop eating grains, sugars, and chemicals, and start eating Real Whole Foods, sleep more, move more, and practice stress management.

20150712_101243It’s a no brainer!

Let’s move to pain relievers, which we give to our babies.

Did you see the news release last week about NSAIDS and heart disease? The FDA says that NSAIDS, from Advil to Aleve to Celebrex, can cause heart attacks and stroke – even in people with NO RISK FOR HEART DISEASE AT ALL.

If you take NSAIDS, please read this link.  Apparently, the whole “COX-Inhibitor” action of the NSAID isn’t the advantage we’ve been lead to believe.  Research has discovered that the inflammation they cause is then followed by repair.  COX-1 and COX-2 enzymes unstick platelets and prevent clots.  Blocking them with Advil or Celebrex (or other NSAIDs) encourages clots.

Birth control pills also cause blood clots.  How many young women take both daily?

Back to statins:  Liver damage – check. Blood sugar increases – check.  Muscle pain – check. Testosterone depletion – check. Memory loss – check. CoQ10 depletion – check.  

Hey!  There’s a pill for all that! ( sarcasm )

Is heart disease because your body is low in statins?  Is pain because your body is low in NSAIDS?  Is diabetes because your body is low in metformin?  Nope.

We don’t get sick from a lack of drugs.  Usually, we get sick because of our actions and choices.  When soda, alcohol, bread, sugar, pasta, fast food, junk food, too little sleep and no focused attention on stress management, are a normal part of our life, of course we’re sick.  

Why do we take so many drugs?

We’re one of 2 countries IN THE WHOLE WORLD, who actually allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to us, the consumer.  In 1997, Congress revised a law allowing pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly without covering most of the possible side effects.

20150711_115653Numbers wise, seeing these advertisements has made us want drugs a whole lot more.  We actually ASK our doctors for these drugs now, which is the whole goal of advertising.

In 1997, spending on ads was $280 million; by 2002, it was $2.8 BILLION. Now, it’s $3 BILLION. On average, if you take one prescription drug you’ll be exposed to 70 potential side effects. Some of the more commonly prescribed drugs average around 100 side effects each — and some drugs even carry over 500!

Back to my beginning:  drugs can cause death and disease. Yes – sometimes they save a life, absolutely.  But when we’re talking Chronic Disease, and that’s what MOST people are taking drugs for ( 88% of all health care spending is on Life Style/Chronic Diseases), the only thing that can really REVERSE a disease, and not just manage symptoms, is a Life Style Change.  That’s it.  Life Style Change.

Real Whole Food, Moving, Sleeping, and Stress Management.  These are choices we need to make and focus on.  Choices we need to teach our children.

Our health is the result of our actions and choices and even our thoughts.  We have power over all that, let’s take it.

Reasons To Exercise You Didn’t Even Know About, and How To Fit It In.

debbie (27)Who loves to workout?  I do!  I have plenty of friends and family who do, and I work with several clients who do.

Even if you don’t, READ THIS POST.  Exercise, or more accurately, moving, is so crucial to a normal healthy brain and body, that science tells us not moving is probably more unhealthy than smoking.

Exercise balances and normalizes our testosterone and estrogen.  Men, you want more testosterone as you age?  Exercise.  Women: bad periods, rough PMS, menopause?  Exercise exercise exercise.  Moving our muscles and stressing them, reduces the inflammatory conditions of these cyclical changes.  Ever been PMSing, worked out, and then felt so. much. better.?

More benefits: exercise, any exercise that makes our muscle move and feel a little stress, causes the muscle cells to make special proteins that go through our blood, into our brain and GROW IT.

Parents, this applies to kids too.

When our muscles move, they create a protein called BDNF ( brain-derived-neurotrophic-factor).  BDNF literally goes to the brain neurons, and waters and fertilizes them.

When our muscles move, our neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin, GABA) are “balanced”.  The percent of studies showing that exercise reduces anxiety and depression better than every single drug on the market?  About 100%.  With no negative side effects.

As a matter of fact, looking at us biologically and ancestrally, we’ve been created to move (forage/hunt for food, shelter, mates) to stimulate productive brain activity.  Moving makes us smarter and better able to cope with life.

Several studies show that if we want to learn new skills or facts, exercise first.  It stimulates pathways that allow us to build memories/learn in our brain.  There’s a caveat though. If you think you’ll do your learning while you exercise, say, studying on the elliptical or treadmill ( one of my preferred methods when I went to Nutritional Therapy school), keep the exercise “steady state”, and not anaerobic.

Exercise that’s too hard temporarily shuttles nutrients away from our learning centers; exercise that’s easily doable increases nutrients to the learning centers.  That’s just a word of caution on learning while exercising, not a warning against hard exercise, because the benefits of hard exercise are numerous.

Or not.  It depends on how you feel about it.

Here we get to exercise and stress.  I said that of the thousands of studies comparing all the drugs on the market to exercise for relief from anxiety and depression, exercise wins every time.  Hands down.

When we feel “stress”, we’re actually feeling the results from a whole bunch of stress “chemicals”.  (we’re a chemistry set, not a math equation).  Whether our stress is real or imaginary, from traffic or a fight with a spouse or an actual threat to our lives, the chemistry is the same.

Our adrenal glands release epinephrine and cortisol to prepare us to physically defend or save ourselves.  Our heart rate increases.  Our blood pressure increases.  Our digestion stops.  Our arteries constrict.  Our muscle cells dump their magnesium (magnesium relaxes us, but the brain thinks we need to be tense), and **** cells become Insulin Resistant.

When cortisol is in the blood, FAT CAN NOT BE BURNED, JUST STORED.  In this state,our body actually tears apart muscle tissue and converts it to glucose/sugar to burn instead of using the fat in our butt.  

We need to manage our stress, and exercise does that! Most of the time.

Unfortunately, some people are so scared of exercise, so adverse to a whole – imaginary – negative scenario they’re created in their minds, that they have “Exercise Induced Anxiety”.  I stole that from one of my clients who used that term to describe herself.

I get it.  Gym class was traumatic for a lot of us.  It left some scars.  But I know former athletes who don’t like to workout anymore either.  Their younger athletic years were formed by coaches and teammates telling them what to do and how.  Independently exercising, which is pretty much Adult Exercise, isn’t appealing, or motivating, so they don’t do it.

The latest stats from the CDC on who exercises show us that only 20.4% of adults over 18 exercise regularly.

No wonder we have 70% overweight and on pharmaceutical drugs in this country!

What to do? Be determined. Set your mind that you’re going to move every day and you’re going to like it.   Honestly.  It’s that simple.  Oh, and have a plan.  Write it down.  Use alarms and calendars and verbalize to friends and family your intentions.

If you already work out every day, you’re golden.  If you struggle with with either fitting exercise in or moving at all, listen up.

1) Pick something that doesn’t sound scary:

-walk with a friend or a kid or a dog

-play a game in the yard with your kids

-set an alarm on your phone and walk up and down the stairs (in your office or home) 4 or 5 times a day

-set an alarm on your phone and do a wall squat or plank 4 or 5 times a day

2) Pick something fun:

-join Zumba

-join a weight lifting class

-join a beginner yoga class

-join a beginner group fitness class

3) Set Your Self Up For Success

-pack your clothes the night before

-pack a bag and water bottle the night before

-pick a sport or a class or an activity that’s appropriate for your fitness level and not something you’re going to be so sore and fatigued afterwards that you never want to come back

-put it on your calendar, and then stick to the schedule. If you have kids that need to be included, either driving them to the gym or having them with you, CONSIDER THAT.  It takes time to get kids in the car – out of the car – into the gym. Learn to become a Time Master, and teach them how to do it too.  That’s a pretty crucial skill to have.

Honestly, we can’t afford NOT to exercise or move.  Our body was designed by God for us to move.

Want a great book to inspire you to get off your butt and sweat a little it?  Spark, by John J. Ratey, MD.  It’s loaded with information that even I’ve never seen before, and I read everything about exercise that I can get my hands on.

One more reason to exercise:  Exercise GIVES us energy, it doesn’t steal it or drain it, it creates it.   Who doesn’t want more energy?