Nutrition and Physical Degeneration

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration is a phenomenal book by Dr. Weston Price. Since reading it, I have made significant modifications to the way I eat.

Every time I think about teeth, Dr. Price's astonishing pictures come to mind. In the 1930's, he traveled to isolated places around the world to study people who had not been exposed to modern processed foods. He found communities where people had virtually no dental decay or physical degeneration. Once regular consumption of processed foods began, immunity to tooth decay was lost, and children born to parents who ate these foods had significant dental and facial deformities.

It is distressing that the state of our food supply is now very much worse than when Dr. Price conducted these studies, with comparable impacts on people's physical and non-physical health. Reading this book, you truly understand why our society has so many problems with physical and mental illness, infertility, and crime. And of course, dental decay and deformities.

For example, he describes a time when heart disease was essentially non-existant. There used to be no such thing as a 'heart attack'. Now, American Heart Association statistics (for 2004) show coronary heart disease is the single leading cause of death in America, accounting for one of every 5 deaths. There are 1,200,000 new and recurrent coronary attacks per year, and about 38% of people who experience a coronary attack in a given year die from it. (2004)

Heart disease is a nutritional issue! Malnutrition!

Of the societies that Dr. Price studied, those that followed their 'traditional' diets (free from modern packaged and processed foods) had no heart disease. They were also free from diseases like tuberculosis, which was rampant in many areas of the world in the 1930's when he did these studies. They was no mental illness and no crime.

People in these societies took special care to provide special foods, called 'sacred foods' by Dr. Price, for women and men of childbearing years, for pregnant and lactating women, and for young children. These foods provided very important nutrients that were necessary to support the birth and growth of healthy children. The readily available modern diets that are recommended to us are sadly lacking in these vital nutrients. So now we have problems with infertility, miscarriages, and difficulties in childbirth. Mental deficiencies and physical deformities in babies and children are becoming increasingly common.

These are all occurring because we have had multiple generations of insufficient nutrition.


Change the Way You Eat

Fortunately, it is possible to make a difference in your own health and in the health of your children, now and in the future.

As a result of reading this book, I eat significantly better, and I can feel the difference. In particular, it is worthwhile to acquire raw cheese, and if possible, butter and raw milk from livestock that have been fed on green pasture. (I will definitely write more about raw milk in another post to this blog.)

For about ten years, I was a vegetarian. But vegetarian diets lack nutrients that are required to maintain optimal health. I now eat a significant amount of meat, and actively seek out meat from grass fed livestock, when it is available.

Dr. Price hoped to find a society of people who was optimally healthy on a vegetarian diet. He was disappointed, because he was not able to find such a vegetarian society. Since learning this, I have heard of person after person who experienced health challenges and chose to abandon their long-term vegetarian lifestyle.


Eating Better Today Makes a Difference

It's never too late to improve the quality of your diet.

In his book, Dr. Price has pictures showing three children from one family. The oldest has perfect physical form and wonderful health. That child was born before modern foods were available to the parents. The second child, born after the parents began eating modern foods, has significant dental and facial deformities. (These types of deformities were the first that Dr. Price observed to occur in the children of parents eating modern foods.) Prior to conceiving the the third child, the parents returned to eating their traditional diet, free from modern foods. And the third child is once again perfectly formed, free from deformities.

I think everyone should read Dr. Price's book, particularly if they have or want to have children. The pictures will astound you. And you can really only understand the implications of the images when you read the text. Get the book from the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation. It is also available from sites such as Amazon.

An excellent source of information is the Weston A. Price Foundation, a non-profit organization that advocates for people's right and ability to get nutritious whole foods.

Based on the work of Dr. Price, people around the world have adopted a way of eating and food preparation called the Nourishing Traditions diet, so named after Sally Fallon's excellent book by that title. Sally Fallon and the Weston A. Price Foundation provide voluminous information about how people in our modern societies can eat in a way that provides the nutrients that are necessary to support optimal health. Personally, I do not strictly adhere to this diet, but I have definitely incorporated numerous aspects of it, and I continue to make modifications.

Every little positive change to your diet helps. Even one meal makes a difference, if it provides nutrients that your body has been missing.

Educate yourself and take action accordingly.


Eat Well for Health.

Sandra

Sandra Lynn Lee
Certified Healing Codes Practitioner
Miracle Inspirations
www.MiracleInspirations.com
sandra@MiracleInspirations.com

Everything in this newsletter is the opinion of the author and is provided for informational and educational purposes only. When information is drawn from outside sources, both credit and access to the source are given, when available.

Copyright 2007 Miracle Inspirations. All rights reserved.

To go to the Breathe - Life's Inspirations With Sandra blog.

Fats & Coconut Oil

Good Fats, Bad Fats, . . . Are You Confused??

This blog entry has been moved from the Breathe - Life's Inspirations with Sandra blog.

Hello Friends,

Are you confused by the conflicting information about health that you receive? It can be daunting, particularly when it comes to food. A new study proves that what you were told last year is completely wrong. What was good for you is suddenly harmful, and what common sense tells you to avoid now contains health-supporting antioxidants. Keeping up with this could be a full time occupation, complete with confusion and stress. Your diet would bounce all over the place, and your closets would overflow with mostly useless bottles of supplements.

Ideally, information that is sent to us, through schools (!), health care providers, and the media, would be supportive of people’s health. Unfortunately, what usually determines these priorities is the interests of big businesses, i.e. profits. Finding out what is TRULY good for you requires actively searching for information. Many people give up on figuring out what is best for their health, and just eat what they feel like eating.

How about fats? Essential fatty acids, artery clogging fat. Saturated, polyunsaturated, hydrogenated, trans, cholesterol, HDL/LDL, triglycerides. Canola, soy, Olestra (artificial fat!), flax, fish oil, coconut oil. Butter, margarine, lard. Omega 3 and 6. It’s overwhelming.

If you already know a lot about fats, the next few paragraphs may be review for you. But the information about Essential Fatty Acids and Coconut Oil is more likely to be new. It was for me. If this information is not familiar to you, and you want more details, I invite you to contact me. sandra@MiracleInspirations.com

I began learning the distinctions between good and bad fats over a decade ago. I gave up margarine, and cooked with olive oil, butter, and occasionally "clear" oils (what I call soy, canola, etc.). For essential fatty acids, I swallowed flax oil from the gallon I kept in the freezer. I figured I was doing well fat-wise.

Then I discovered that "clear" oils still contain trans fats and are rancid, even if they haven’t been hydrogenated. They are heated in processing, then treated to make them smell and taste palatable. Exposure to light (while sitting on the shelf in clear bottles), air, and heat in cooking make it worse. Then, there is the whole issue of genetically modified organisms.


Essential Fatty Acids (EFA’s).

Taking EFA’s is absolutely required for health, and you need to seek quality sources. Omega 3, 6, 9, and some 7. People who avoid fats altogether eventually discover the hard way that low fat diets are dangerous.

However, not all EFA’s are created equal. If flax oil and EFA formulas require refrigeration to prevent rancidity, what happens when they enter your body’s core at 98.6? I have stopped eating flax altogether, and what remained of my gallon of oil went down the drain. It tasted horrid from the beginning anyway.

How about fish oil? Toxicity in the oceans makes the quality questionable. It comes in gel caps, so you don’t smell or taste the fishiness. Unfortunately, getting the oil into the gel cap requires that the oil be heated. So it’s cooked and long bad by the time you buy it.

What about cod liver oil? In addition to my concerns about the potentials for toxicity, I am actually more concerned about the depletion of the fish stocks. Over harvesting has severely depleted the fish populations. The widespread recommendation that people take cod liver oil just feeds the already excessive demand for cod.

The essential fatty acids that I take come from Ziquin Educational Group. It is a stable formula that provides the beneficial Omega 3, 6, 9, and 7. If you want information about Ziquin’s quality supplementation and rejuvenation program, please contact me sandra@MiracleInspirations.com.


Coconut Oil – There’s always more to learn!

I had read online of coconut oil’s benefits. But I was really just scanning, and it went in one eye and out the other. Like I wrote above, there’s too much nutrition information to pay attention to. When I discovered that my parents eat coconut oil every day, I finally began cooking with it. What it took for me to actually learn about this truly amazing food was my mother giving me a book. (Thanks Mom, for coconut and for everything else over the years.)

The Coconut Oil Miracle, by Bruce Fife, ND. A few pages into the book, I thought, "Why didn’t anyone tell me this before?! Everyone should know about coconut oil!" I am now a dedicated coconut oil and Bruce Fife fan.

I only give you a tidbit about coconut oil here, because Dr. Fife does a much better job of explaining it all.

Coconut oil is almost all saturated fat with medium chain fatty acids. It is GOOD for your cardiovascular health, not bad like we have been led to believe. It easily turns into energy in your body and is NOT stored as fat. Coconut oil actually increases your metabolic rate, helping people lose weight who want to do so. It tastes a bit sweet, but does not have sugar’s negative effects. It is anti-bacterial and anti-viral. Its fatty acids are saturated, so it is stable in cooking, unlike polyunsaturated "clear" oils. Coconut oil is good for you, both taken internally and applied topically. The funniest part of Dr. Fife’s book is where he talks about the coconut’s only health danger: having one fall on your head and kill you, while you stand under a coconut palm. I still laugh when I read that section.

Coconut products are flowing towards my house, and Ken and I eat them multiple times a day. Coconut oil is almost exclusively the oil we cook with. I continue to use some butter (which is good for you), olive oil for salad dressing, and an occasional bit of sesame oil for flavor. That’s it for oils. Coconut milk, shredded coconut, coconut flour, . . . we’re surrounded by the stuff. There’s more that I’ll share below . . .

We put coconut oil in our tea and on top of soup and other foods. Foods taste richer and more satisfying. When I want butter, I make a 50/50 mixture. If you don’t like the oil’s mild coconut taste and smell, refined oils are essentially tasteless. I put coconut oil on my face, and my skin feels smoother and looks better. I made an herbal coconut oil ointment for bones, joints, cartilage, and skin.

Dr. Fife’s recommendation for general health is to consume 3-4 tablespoons of coconut oil per day. This can include what is applied to your skin.


Sandra Recommends Books by Bruce Fife

Bruce Fife, ND does an incredible job of explaining things so anyone can understand them. Studies and examples illustrate his points. Start with The Coconut Oil Miracle, which explains how coconut oil works and why it is good for you. Coconut Cures describes how coconut oil affects a wide variety of health conditions. I’m experimenting with Coconut Lover’s Cookbook. Cooking With Coconut Flour has recipes for cooking without wheat. Eat Fat, Look Thin is about much more than weight loss. The Detox Book is not about coconut oil. He gives the best explanations of what happens in the body, detoxification, and healing crises that I’ve ever read.


Where to Find Coconut Oil

Shopping for coconut oil in Olympia, Washington, I found it at the Olympia Food Coop and in health food stores. But I was stunned to discover that NONE of the other grocery stores had even one container of this wonder food. (I didn’t check literally all of the other stores, but pretty darned close. I figure one Safeway is like all the other Safeways.) The vegetable oil companies have so thoroughly convinced people that coconut oil is dangerous that few people buy it. For now, find it in health-oriented stores. I encourage you to ask for it at your local grocery store. Create demand, tell other people.


You are a Miracle.

Sandra

Sandra Lynn Lee
Certified Healing Codes Practitioner
Miracle Inspirations
www.MiracleInspirations.com
sandra@MiracleInspirations.com

Everything in this newsletter is the opinion of the author and is provided for informational and educational purposes only. When information is drawn from outside sources, both credit and access to the source are given, when available.
Copyright 2007 Miracle Inspirations. All rights reserved.
To go to the Breathe - Life's Inspirations With Sandra blog.