Prevent Chronic Diseases, Repair Your Own Health, Part Two.

UNDIGESTED FOOD: THE CULPRIT

A Naturopathic Practioner,  Brenda Watson, on PBS, explained what ills befall us if we don’t  digest our food well. This trained Naturopath pointed out that chewing our food is the first step towards digesting well.  Saliva has to mix with food to start breaking it down.  It needs to be chewed well without being washed down with soda or other liquid.

When we have sufficient acid to digest our food, the sphincter muscle at the lower end of the esophagus closes and churns the food without problems.  Here the foods mix with the digestive enzymes. Protease for protein digestion. Lipase reduces fats and Amylase digests starches.  Hydrochloric acid is the most common acid known to most people.  This breaks down the food even more before it goes liquified into the small intestine.  Acidophilus and Bifidobacteria are also present there to help liquify your food into usable segments.

The small intestine has a mucosa membrane that sorts out the digested proteins, starches and fats. When this lining is stressed to thinness by undigested food, (Leaky gut) due to not enough digestive enzymes, it begins to let not just the good nutrition through to the blood stream, it lets through whatever comes in contact with it: toxins, parasites, bacteria, foreign matter such as heavy metals.

You have to understand that undigested food also makes a toxic situation and those toxins pass through into the blood stream too. Inflamation arises.  Auto-immune responses are triggered in many people, so disease starts.  Left to its own devices, the poisoned body turns on its owner and lupus, heart and vascular disease, arthritis, all “itises”, go to the chronic stage. This is the major and direct cause of your health problems that are not birth defects, and maybe Mom’s digestion influenced that badly.  Further, if food isn’t made up of live foods, the enzymes to digest aren’t there and the body stresses to produce them.  More toxins happen.  ALL CHRONIC DISEASE HAS ITS ROOT IN THE DIGESTIVE TRACT THROUGH IMPROPER DIGESTION.  

Eating bad foods make it harder to digest well.  Fake processed foods stress the body even more and tax the body’s ability to make enough digestive enzymes.  And speaking of enzymes, the entire body needs enzymes to function.  They aid in almost everything so it is critical that we eat the minimum of five live foods every day. Nine is better.  Enzymes in the small intestine help make the B vitamins.  Without them we have brittle hair and nails, dry skin and much more serious problems.

Once again, antacid pills and liquids are the worst treatment for heartburn.  Take digestive aids such Acidophilus, a probiotic, and hydrochloric acid. All of these support the body.

You are responsible for your health, not doctors or the profession of medicine; therefore, you have to maintain your health and repair it yourself.  After all, the body is yours and the repairs are done there, not in a doctor’s office. # # # # #

FOOD, Start wtih basics to repair damage.

Strive for basic foods, pure and simple.  Learn how to cook rather than eat fast foods.  Box mix and fast foods are fattening, less than nutritious and loaded with things humans should not eat.  Even the lettuce in the salad bar is soaked in a high chlorine solution to prolong shelf-life, and chlorine scars the arteries.  Scarring makes a place in which plaque can grow.  The grease for the fries is likely rancid because they don’t change it often as a cost-effective measure.  Additions to our foods such as additives for flavor, shelf life, and because toxic high fructose corn syrup encourages more purchases are to be avoided as these things are not in our best interest.   Just don’t eat that stuff unless you are cornered into it.

You wouldn’t eat an apple just sprayed with Raid, would you?  Even if I wash it for you?  But you do eat pesticides when you eat commercially-grown produce.  Already discussed in many articles are the DES and hormones in meat products, dairy and poultry. Pesticides, herbicides and toxins make it into our food supply in this modern world.  The trick is to avoid them where possible.

Organic foods are becoming more common.  Prego makes organic sauces.  Organic eggs and milk are becoming easily available.  Imagine brand makes organic soups similar to Campbell’s Select line; but cheaper and healthier, and very good tasting; I tried them.

Health Food stores are expensive compared to grocery gunk but what is your health worth?  Ever priced a hospital stay?  Still, you could get your produce at the organic market and buy your paper goods, motor oil and detergent at Save-a-Bunch-Mart.  Balance is good.  

Make your own baked goods such as bread in a bread maker with flour from whole Foods and other such stores. (I will give you a recipe for Easy Bread, no maker involved. ) Use organic flour to make waffles, pancakes, muffins, biscuits, pie crusts and so on.  We both know you will eat these foods unless you have totally gotten religion about modern foods or you  are wheat intolerant.  It is also cheaper to make your own healthy products.

OK, most of us are stuck eating what we can afford, but we don’t have to eat high fructose corn syrup and trans fats, daily.  Back to learning how to cook, for example,  a simple syrup is one cup water and one to two cups of sugar.  Not that sugar is a health food by any means, but it isn’t the devil high fructose corn syrup is.

Gelatins can be made with juiced fruit juice and unflavored gelatin from Knox or other companies.  The gelatin is good for your joints to relieve Rheumatoid Arthritis. Two envelopes a day of Gelatin in food or beverages for three months showed good results in a clinical test.  The Gelatin was then called a drug.  

Switch to olive oil or canola for salad oil, and sesame oil does not go rancid.  It is bacteriostatic.  Avoid vegetable and corn oils, as well as their spreads, as they are part of the problem, being artificial food.

Many people are sensitive to corn, as well.  Sugar, gluten and dairy are the three items that are the most common food allergens. You will have to adjust your eating to accommodate such a situation.

Use organic butter since we do know that mammals can successfully eat it.  Look for brands that are free of high fructose corn syrup.  Never eat diet foods of any kind, low-fat baked goods are screaming rich in fake sugar and calories.  Breakfast shakes will jack your glucose levels to dangerous heights, I found  accidentally.  The doctor thought I had diabetes as a result of drinking one of those shakes before my blood work.  Diet shakes are similar and spike the blood sugar and contain HFCS.

Actually, Atkins’s dieting is too low in fruits; but keeping the blood sugar from spiking with sugar, as the Akin’s diet does, contributes to weight loss.  No diet sodas.  He missed the boat on that call, but sparkling water in fruit juice that you made is OK.  Commercial juices are cooked to dead-enzyme levels and often have high fructose corn syrup in them.  Juice your own.

Pester Congress to ban those bad ingredients and toxic additives, to support farms that grow organically and stop paying farming enterprises to NOT grow food.  That goes for Foreign Aid to other countries.  America pays foreign farmers to not grow food in their countries even though their people need the sustenance.   If we have to, pay domestic and foreign farmers to not use toxins on the crops. It is time to start dealing with global health and well-being.

Fish and egg dishes are healthy, easy and vegetables from all countries will spice up your menus with variety.  Vegan cookbooks are easy to find and are satisfying to cook from.  Just start with as many organic food ingredients as you can manage.  Serve fruits and vegetables as mainstays of your menus and enjoy.

TIP: Serve meatless meals in dishes in a circle or lazy Susan to avoid the cry of, “Where’s the beef?”

Hate the idea of cooking on the go?   Make your own shakes instead of commercial breakfast shakes or Flim-Flam diet shakes which have high fructose corn syrup high in the ingredient list.   Europe doesn’t allow this ingredient in their foods. Good on them.  

Shake It Up, Baby
Throw 1/4th c. powdered milk into a blender with your juiced fruit, whole peeled banana or veggie combo(Carrots are yummy), and blend until foamy.  Vanilla extract, mint (mint leaves) lemon or lime slices are good ways to flavor such drinks for more variety.  In the old days, a raw egg could be added, but today, even the egg industry cautions, “don’t eat raw eggs” because of the Eboli threat. That’ progress?  Organic eggs ought to be the exception, but use your own judgement.

Vegetables can be wrapped in foil and taken on the go. Fruits are easy to pack.

Easy  Bread, No-Kneading involved.

Because most of us will eat bread, this has no trans fats of HFCS in it. The family will love it.  They do not have to know it is this easy.
Warm 1 cup milk and
1 cup water  with
1/4th cup olive oil in a small sauce pan until it is hot but not boiling.
1/4th c. sugar or better, honey for the yeast to work on.
Combine 2 cups unbleached all-purpose organic flour of your choice.  Wheat and rye flowers take different amounts of liquid.
2  packets of yeast or 2 Tbls. of yeast from a jar.
Add warmed liquid to the dry ingredients and                         
1 egg.
(At higher elevations use 1/4th c. more water, 2 Tbls. more flour and only 2 tbls. oil.)
Blend with a mixer on medium speed three minutes and add by hand:
2 to 2 and ½ cups of organic flour.
Let rise fifty minutes until doubled in bulk.  A slightly  warmed oven and a cloth over the bowl works well. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. after the rising is done.
Punch down (that means stir the air out to make elastic dough, for those of you who never made bread by hand before) and put into a greased loaf pan.  Or split it and use two smaller pans.
Bake 45 minutes for large loaf or slightly less for two. Let cool and butter the top.  After ten minutes remove the loaf from the pan, slice a few slices and put it on a pretty dish to serve.
Variation:  
Divide the dough in half and shape into Italian bread loaves.  Brush tops with egg white beaten with 1 Tbls. water.  Add sesame or poppy seeds if desired and bake 20 minutes. Brush again and bake 25 minutes until done.  You can even beat up the first 2 cups of flour, warmed liquid, egg and yeast in a blender.# # #

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