Poop: That’s Right….Poop

If you don’t think detoxification is important, stop pooping and see how well you feel. Stage one of detoxification is exhaling, stage two is pooping.

The colon does three things:
First, it absorbs nutrients (unless the gut integrity is compromised from leaky gut or Celiac Disease).
Second, it passes waste product.
Three, it absorbs water (which can be considered a nutrient) from poop.

Your body will either move poop or absorb it. Those are the options. If you’re not moving it, your absorbing it.

Common complications with constipation include:
-painful bowel movements (due to water reabsorption and hard stools)
-acne
-fatigue or sluggishness
-compromised sleep
-headaches, migraines
-poor digestion
-dependency on sugar and caffeine
-a overall “shitty” feeling

To start pooping more regularly:
-drink adequate water
-eat more fruits and vegetables to increase fiber
-stay away from mucous-forming or sticky foods like dairy, sugar, bread
-avoid processed foods
-get to bed on time
-exercise

Dairy 102

Calcium is one of the main reasons people, especially women over 40, drink milk and eat cheese and other milk derivatives.

The largest scientific study ever done is called the Nurses Study. In this study, over 85,000 nurses participated to prove that dairy helps diminish osteoporosis among women. However, the results were completely contradictory. Indisputably, the study revealed two things:

1. Women who consumed the most dairy had the highest rate of osteoporosis.

2. Women who consumed the most dairy suffered from hip fractures earlier in life.

Why?

When dairy is pasteurized, it becomes incredibly acidic in our body. Calcium, which is found in Tums, is a powerful acid buffer. Therefore, when we consume this acidic food (most people….every day) our body becomes acidic. To prevent significant problems, the body will leach calcium (which is stores in our bones) to buffer the acidic environment.

In other words, every time we consume dairy we are draining our calcium reserves.

You’ll notice the dairy industry has really began cutting back on the advertising as it relates to strong bones. Sure, it’s still there, but the amount of billboards has diminished greatly.

Dairy 101

When people refer to dairy, they mean dairy from a cow. However, dairy comes in many forms. In fact, any mammal creates dairy. Sheep and goat are also very popular for consumption, but nothing like from the cow. So, for sake of simplicity, we’ll speak of the cow.

Fact: We are the only species to drink another mammals product. This by itself may seem a little unsettling. However, some might say we are at the top of the food chain so maybe it’s not that weird.

Fact: We are the only species to consume breast milk after infancy. There are 4,629 recognized mammals in the world, none of which consume milk (even from their own species) after infancy.

It’s amazing what marketing does for social acceptance. Can you imagine a 45-year-old man drinking milk that came from some mother’s breast? Of course not. At the same time, it’s completely normal – even expected – he consume milk from a female of a different species. Is that not strange?

Despite the social norm, there are some other things to consider.

Fact: the human population, like all mammals, are not designed to break down milk after infancy. These enzymes which are responsible for digestion are no longer active. There is an article a client gave me today that was published in the Wall Street Journal (Tues. Feb 6, 2010). Its focus was on lactose intolerance. The advice was that people who are lactose intolerant (which is everybody – just depends on the degree) continue to consume a little milk to keep forcing the body to try to make the enzymes. I’m sure 99.9% of the readers thought this made sense.

There is a reason we don’t produce the enzymes – we’re not supposed to.

Lactose intolerance is becoming more prominent today for two reasons:

1. We are consuming way more milk and cow dairy products than ever before. (Advertising)

2. Pasteurization: the process of heating up the substance to kill unwanted bacteria. Unfortunately, this heat also destroys many of the nutrients, enzymes, and denatures the proteins. This process makes a once recognizable food an unrecognizable food. As a result we are intolerant to it.

It is my opinion, based on the above, that we are not meant to consume dairy. Most people have a different opinion. In this case, I would recommend it be organic (without question), family farmed, and raw.

What about calcium?

The only reason we started pasteurizing milk is because the cows were so unhealthy due to poor factory farming processes. The solution was to treat the milk, but it should have been to treat the cow. Health cows make healthy milk (but maybe not for adult humans).

Adverse Drug Reactions: One of America’s top killers

ADRs, or Adverse Drug Reactions, continue to plague the efforts of the medical industry. Every day, thousand of people suffer from ADRs, some of which are expected, some aren’t. Research shows that people who take 2 medications have a 6% chance of having an ADR, 5 medications carries a 60% chance, and 8 medications a 100% chance.

While most people don’t take 5 or 8 medications, many elderly people do. For every dollar spent on medications in a nursing home, $1.33 is spent on treating ADRs. This “treatment for the treatment” equates to over 4 billion dollars annually.

The cost of drug-related morbidity was 177 billion dollars in 2000. That’s a 100 billion dollar increase from 1995.

The definition of “polypharmacy” is anyone who takes 9 or more medications routinely (daily). This applies to 27% of elderly people in nursing homes.

“Our elderly people are being drugged to death,” according to Marie O’Connor, Ph.D.

In 2006, the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded annual ADRs hospitalized more than 700,000 people. Of those, 106,000 died.

To date, there have been no reported deaths from vitamins. Ever.

Organic 102

One gram of healthy soil contains approximately 600 million microorganisms and tens of thousands of different bacteria and fungi species. Therefore, the soil is alive. This “life force” provides the foundation for all other life; every plant, animal, and person is dependent on this life.

The health of the soil is dependent on many factors like the sun and water. However, other less-recognized variables play equally important roles. Diversity among plants and animals, for example, provides the framework for the mixture of living organisms, making the soil diverse in nutrient balance, predictable in acidity, and able to withstand natural weather patterns.

Chemicals work just the opposite. Other than nourishing the soil, chemicals such as pesticides, strip nutrients from the soil. This process destroys the living organisms and eventually sucks that life force from the soil.

The United States applies more than one billion pounds of pesticides every year to prevent crop loss due to disease and pests. Interestingly, since the industry began applying pesticides in 1945, annual crop loss due to disease and pests has doubled per acre.

An overwhelming amount of evidence demonstrates organic produce has more nutrients. Additionally, they have less toxic chemical residue. Organically raised animals have less saturated fat and more omega-3 fatty acids.

Every chronic disease is caused in some part by nutritional deficiencies. With every major disease skyrocketing in terms of incidence, cost per incident, and severity, it makes sense to take a conservative approach early in life to limit these terrible outcomes. It’s never too late to nourish the body.

Organic 101

The concept of organic food has been a hot topic in the media, nutrition industry, academic settings, and health professions. Most young people believe organic is better for many reasons, while most of their parents disagree. While each generation over the past 70 years may have a different opinion, it’s interesting to note that every single generation prior to 1940 agrees. Why? Because there was no such thing as non-organic food prior to 1940. That’s right…organic farming is not new or trendy. With exception of the last 70 years, organic farming was the only alternative.

At the end of WWII, there were many unused chemicals, most notably, DDT. DDT and similar chemicals were used in gas chambers and were responsible for killing many people. While these chemicals destroyed the central nervous system in human beings, smaller doses do the same in insects and small animals. As a result, many tons of pesticides were sold to the food industry to revolutionize how we grew our food. The hopes were to improve crop health, farmer’s yield, and grow more food to feed the needy.

After several decades and lots of research, it’s becoming unavoidably obvious that these chemicals – collectively called pesticides – are destroying our soil. As a result, the environment is suffering the consequences. Human beings, of course, are a part of this environment.

In the peer-reviewed journals, pesticides disrupt the central nervous system and mimic estrogenic activity. As a result, they have been linked to several diseases and even more symptoms.

Over one-billion tons of pesticides are applied to American farmland every year. Less than 7% of this farmland is considered sustainable for crop growth.

Aside from pesticides, other controversial variables surface in the literature. Genetic modification, growth hormones in animals, antibiotics, additives, and preservatives all serve as concern for human and environmental health.

Check out this fun video:

When grocery shopping, I simply ask my boys, “Kids, do you want your food with or without bug-spray?” It’s an easy decision for them.