Archive for September, 2009

Your Heart’s nutritional needs can be met by a diet of whole foods. The realization that our heart needs  vitamins, and minerals is not well understood. The overall consensus is that a heart condition such as a heart attack, heart failure, atrium fibrillation, stroke, heart valve problems, and infections are just circumstantial occurrences. The aging process is blamed, along with stress, and genes. What is left out is that healthy bodies are produced by good nutrition, our hearts are no different.

A healthy heart program is not that different than a healthy lifestyle. It is known among holistic practitioners that the heart and circulatory system is dependent on, and responds to nutrition. The energy dense foods, with high nutritional value are the ones that supplement and support muscular movement, nerves, cell health, and immune function. The heart is a muscle and can recover in the same way muscles do. Muscle strength is not a product of a pharmaceutical.  Pharmaceutical drugs can and do cause a loss of nutrients, that are vital to heart health.

Your heart is made up of cells that depend on nutrients. The low fat craze is worrisome, because eliminating healthy fats will cause more problems than it will fix. The type of low- fat foods on the market are high-tech, nutritional robbers, that will have the opposite effect. Low-fat diets are low in fat-soluble vitamins, such as vitamins A and D, plus others. You need good fat for your body to be able to absorb the many nutrients from plant food. Healthy people around the world do not count the fat grams in every piece of food.

Magnesium, Calcium, iodine, and B complex are important to the heart muscle, and normal heartbeat. These are not the ones that come in a capsule, because those are not going to be assimilated. What supplies the body with what it needs comes from whole foods. The thyroid is dependent on iodine, but so is the body both dependent on thyroid function and iodine. Remember it takes awhile before the body shows signs of poor nutrition, and that is one of the reasons it appears as if heart disease increases with age.

Irregular heartbeats can be caused by a magnesium deficiency. Magnesium can be obtained from wheat brand, wheat germ, cashews, sesame seeds, millet, wild rice, brown rice, greens, and dried figs etc. It is referred to as a natural calcium channel-blocker. Magnesium can lower blood pressure, and helps the heart function.

Vitamin P available from citrus fruits, aids in absorption of vitamin C from our food supply. Capillary health is promoted by the action of this nutrient. Vitamin P flavenoids have the ability to decrease inflammation, improve blood flow, and strengthens blood vessels. They aid in the prevention of coronary disease because they also combat free radicals, and improve immunity. A diet high in vitamin P may decrease the chance of heart disease. Citrus fruits are full of Flavonoids, which are known help with conditions from hay fever to cancer. By reducing cellular damage caused by free radicals, they are a holistic therapy.

This is a list of some of the foods that contain flavonoids: grapefruit, oranges, apples, apricots, pears, peaches, tomatoes, blueberries, cherries, cranberries, red plums, strawberries, red cabbage, onions, parsley, prunes, and rhubarb. Bioflavonoid helps lower cholesterol levels. Bioflavonoids have an antibacterial effect and promote good circulation.

Omega-3 fatty acid found in fish oil, has an effect on heart function, including decreasing the risk of arrhythmias, decreases triglyceride levels, and reduces the growth rate of atherosclerotic plaque, and may slightly lower blood pressure. We are talking about substances that help you stay both active and healthy, when we are talking about your heart’s nutritional needs.

Alternative diets pertain to diets that are not conventional. A conventional diet is one that is practiced widely, and widely accepted. It is any eating that falls into what is broadly accepted by a majority of the group. An alternative diet is usually an unconventional choice, because the largest part of the group does not use that pattern of eating.

Alternative diet seems to be a term used for all diets that diverge from the common, and observed eating habits of the population. This is true the world over. The conventional diet that American’s consume is one of the most unnatural diets, because it is defined by marketing and industry, and it boils down to money. Nature works, and it is not accurate to think that technology can improve on the nutrition derived from the earth.

Alternative diets offers options to America’s conventional diet. Alternative diets in a way broadens our food choices, adding rather than subtraction from our diet. The majority of allopathic health care professionals point a weary eye toward this trend. They allow the responsibility of America’s diet to fall into the hands of agriculture, ranchers, FDA safety inspectors, and a whole new industry of industrialized farming and manufactured food, when they council patients on good eating patterns.

What few of us realize is that  America’s conventional diet is in a way the biggest alternative diet plan, away from a natural food supply. At no time in history has man fooled with the food supply as now. It is truly astounding that the American diet is considered natural, and most alternative diets are thought of as either extreme or detrimental to our health. While this may hold true because of the way American’s seem to go to the extreme when they approach something new, it’s usually with an all or nothing mentality. However, that does not negate the basic tenants of these proposed alternative ways of eating.

It is thought by many main stream health practitioners that many alternative diets limit food choices, and bring about nutritional deficiencies. The public is advised to tell their doctor about any alternative therapy which includes diet changes. People with chronic illness are advised many times not to start an alternative diet without first consulting a doctor, as if he is an nutritional expert.

The alternative food camp has made some rather dramatic claims with diets helping patients heal from many conditions including cancer. According to mainstream medical press, there is little scientific evidence for this. Most doctors recommend a well-balanced diet. The best quote is moderation in all things. Here lies the problem, there is no moderation in the American diet. The reason is simple, just about everything considered standard American diet fare should not be eaten for health reasons.

The proof is in the statistics, we are in a national health crises with at least 2 million Americans subcoming to heart disease, Cancer, diabetes, strokes and auto-immune disorders. Half of Americans are over weight, and a quarter of the children. With this is coming an alarming rise in chronic conditions that the world has never experience before. The remarkable part is this is not due to famine, or a starving population. We have advanced medical technology, and over the top sanitation. The only place to shift the blame is on America’s conventional diet.

America’s conventional diet is costing us $1.4 trillion dollars a year on healthcare. America spends more money than any other country on healthcare, yet we are not the top in life expectancy, or considered the healthiest people on the planet. The major degenerative diseases are increasing in all age groups. What brought us to this point is America’s technology as applied to the food industry.

America’s conventional diet has two major problems, it supplies us with toxic additives, while insuring that we are malnourished. The former Surgeon General Dr. C.  Everett Koop said in 1988 in the Surgeon General Report that the American diet was the cause of approximately two-thirds of the deaths due to disease in America. We are over 20 years from that report, and we have seen to it that we will produce more foods that are detrimental to our health. While at the same time we have increased our reliance of these foods.

The question that we keep asking is alternative diets safe, and we can answer that we know America’s conventional diet is unsafe. We have a tendency to blame overeating, taking in too many calories as the main reason. That is not to say overeating is not partly at fault, but it is not without a scientific reason why it is so widespread. It isn’t because of the over abundance of food. The over abundance is not in food, but food like substances.   If we were surrounded by all types of vegetables as far as the eye can see, we would not be overeating. However, when your diet manipulates your appetite, and turns off the signals that let you know you are full you are going to overeat.

There are very few so called alternative diets than can cause the havoc of the standard American way of eating. We eat a diet that is made up of foods high in the wrong fats, carbohydrates that are not in their natural form, agricultural practices that are stripping the value of our crops,  all puting our health at risk. We have a conventional diet that is the opposite of what nature intended. Most of the alternative diets recommend organic fruits and vegetables, dramatic reductions of chemical laden foods. They tout healthy fats, with whole grain carbohydrates, usually nothing more extreme than America’s way of eating. Which can consist of a fist full of potato chips, some ice cold soft drink, white hamburger buns with bromide, and a flame cooked hormone, antibiotic pumped hamburger. That is a good home cooked meal, beats pre-packaged chemically designed entrees straight from the freezer. Top it all off with a sugar laden treat, that may have blue, green, and red sprinkles, now you are talking America Fare.

Healthcare is blurring boundaries between health, wellness, sickness, and disabilities, and American’s are currently accepting this as a way of life.  It comes out of the growth of drugs/pharmaceutical perceived benefits. The shortcoming of our healthcare system is sick care has become the norm.  Pharmaceuticals now equal health benefits.  Health is defined as having good healthcare, passing a physical, and taking all the drugs to keep all your conditions under control.

Health management is left in the hands of a sick care industry.  Medicine is branching out.  They are now in the businesses of growing longer eyelashes, fixing dry eyes, super charging sexual desire and performance, seeing that you get good nights sleep, and keeping a check on anxiety. For your children they make sure they learn in school, do not disrupt, are paying attention, and are not anxious.  They now have a name for everything addiction, from gambling, computer games, sex, eating, and medication.

Expanding the healthcare industry into a drug dispensing machine, with something oral or topical for what ails you. Patented relief has never been more profitable.  Fast acting bioavailability, with patents and numerous clinical studies, safe except for rare exceptions, can interact with other medication.  The circumstantial evidence of harm that exists for the product will not hit the fan for a couple of years.  Meanwhile it should be incorporated into a healthy lifestyle.  The beneficial effects of long lashes, less pimples, better sex, a good nights sleep, and no anxiety is worth deranged intestine function, liver problems, and diminished kidney function. The stunning announcement that this may not be right for everyone means everyone else, not you.

Part of the environment in America is that everything in nature has added benefits if it comes out of a bottle or package.  The performance of a product is based on an ingredient list that may not be understandable. Today’s pharmaceutical  companies  are developing  new products that address every aspect of a person’s life.  The undeniable appeal to all this is that there is a dispensing machine that is delivering answers to all health inconveniences.

The pharmaceutical industry has one of the most generous sampling campaigns, working with your health care provider; they make it possible for you to get hooked on your trial supply.  All you have to do is ask your doctor for a sample, and tell him the television sent you.

Tracking customers through samples, is their way of seeing that popular drugs make there way into your home.  Label claims, and overall problems of the product understandably are not featured, because the primary focus is healing and recovery.  Limited research into long term use should not concern you.  They know you want immediate relief; consumers do not want to grapple with the future popping up in their thoughts.  The circumstantial evidence of the beneficial effects is enough to reduce levels of anxiety, even when the study reported people were trying to capitalize on the fact that body’s immune system was failing.  In defense of the pharmaceutical industry the results was what they anticipated.  Healthcare is blurring boundaries, because of the pharmaceutical industry touting convenience and immediate results, which appeals to the American public.