Women Heal Yourselves

Sugar: Is your Sweet Tooth Rotten?

Did you know the average American consumes 26 to 135 pounds of refined sugar a year? It is no wonder we are a nation riddled with disease.

Sugar’s major problem is that it raises the insulin level and inhibits the release of growth hormones. This depresses the immune system.  Excessive Insulin also promotes the storage of fat. Eating sugar can produce rapid weight gain and increase triglyceride levels, causing cardiovascular disease.  Eating sugar is like an open invitation to the onset of disease.

Sugar is addicting.  Have you ever notice when you give into a sugar craving that you seem to want more and more for days on end? I find myself getting into these cycles when holidays come around. I think, “I haven’t had any sweets for awhile what will a couple of cookies harm?” But then I can’t seem to stop eating them. Sometimes it takes a week to get off the sugar go round. My best defense from this cycle is to get back into the gym, nothing like seeing that it takes an hour on the elliptical to burn off that 300 calorie candy bar to make you not want to eat one.

 Want to know just how bad sugar is for you?  Here is a list of all the bad things refined sugar does: (scroll to the bottom of the page) http://www.healingdaily.com/detoxification-diet/sugar.htm

So why do we have sugar cravings anyway?

 It could be an emotional issue. Did your family gatherings as a child center on sweets? Sometimes we can relate sweets to a time in our past ‘when everything was right with the world’  a ‘feel good’ time like a family gathering that was special to us and deserts were a yummy part of that feeling. So now as adults when we feel stressed we desire to go back to that calm time and the taste of sweetness puts us back there.

But there can also be a physical reason we crave sweets, such as low serotonin levels. This is quite common in menopausal women. Serotonin is a brain chemical that makes you feel content and happy.  Sugar may increase the absorption of tryptophan, an amino acid, which the body uses to make serotonin. This means that eating something sweet may make you feel happy and avoiding sweets may make you feel crabby. That is why many women who have been on antidepressant medications and get off of them may crave sweets, the medication worked by keeping serotonin levels high, as your level drops, you crave sweets.

Do yourself a favor and buy a supplement like tryptophan or 5HTP, and if low Serotonin levels are the problem, your cravings should subside. You may also want to supplement your diet with Chromium Picolinate; a mineral that studies have shown may reduce carbohydrate cravings.

 Here is a video on how to break the sugar habit.

But let’s get real; we all want a treat every now and then.

How can we enjoy our sweets and not overdo it?  First keep in mind that not all sugar is bad. Basically anything ending in “ose” on an ingredient label such as, sucrose, fructose, and glucose plus corn syrup has had its natural goodness removed, the end result is a product that severely inhibits the immune system and compromises the body in many ways. Stay away from these bad sugars as much as you can. Read the labels of processed foods you buy, you’ll be surprised how many have these types of sugars in them.

I have been buying a certain brand of yogurt for years. I had thought I had read the label but took another look the other day. It had high fructose corn syrup. Something I never would buy if I had been paying attention. I found another yogurt that has plan sugar and I found it actually tasted better. An even better choice would be plan yogurt and add my own fresh fruit. But at least for now I switched to a lesser evil. Best rule of thumb is opting for products with the most natural ingredients you can find. Many organic cookies use pure cane juice or fruit juice as the sweetener much better than any processed sugars. It will still cure your sweet craving but won’t put you into the sugar cycle.

Did you know that some sugars can actually be GOOD for you?

 Here is an interesting note from one of my favorite health letters. You can read the whole article here: http://wrightnewsletter.com/2007/09/20/sugar-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

“A sugar cane extract called ‘policosanol’ is an excellent alternative to cholesterol-lowering statin drugs. It also appears to be effective at lowering triglyceride levels.

Another sugar cane extract that does the body good is D-mannose, which is naturally found in cranberry juice and is often used to treat E.coli, the common cause of most bladder infections.

Xylitol is also on the list of helpful simple sugars. One of my colleagues reports a 93 percent reduction in ear and sinus infections in his patients who use an intranasal spray made from xylitol. In another form, xylitol can actually prevent tooth decay, and some manufacturers have even added it to breath mints and chewing gum.

Then there are polysaccharides, which are simple sugars that combine in metabolic “chains” and cause immune cells to be more active and vigilant against bacteria and other germs. Echinacea, a well-known immune-boosting herb, is a rich source of polysaccharides.”

Don’t use Artificial Sweeteners.

 I won’t get into it now but artificial sweeteners are not the answer. It will take a whole other post to tell you why. Lets just say they are not natural to your body and have been linked to cancer and Alzheimers,  Plus they have found that your body still reacts as if they are refined sugars so the cravings are still there which actually causes you to eat more carbs thus causing weight gain. Just don’t do it. Honestly you are better off just eating sugar than using these.

So I hope you have learned something by this post. Get off the sugar go round, you’ll feel better and live healthier if you do.

Estrogen Dominance in Men and in Women

Yes Men can have estrogen dominance!  Does it mean they will weep at movies, or grow breast? Probably not, but it can create many health problems and most likely will be misdiagnosed by a doctor. The problem men have is their Doctor most likely won’t ever check their hormones. But even women, especially women can have too much estrogen. If you took the pill most your life or have been on  Premarin. There is a good chance you have estrogen dominance. You could also be at a higher risk for certain cancers. The even bigger problem now is even our children are at risk.

How can this happen you may ask? The main problem lies in our food and water supplies.  Both beef and chickens are injected with hormones to speed up their growth to get them to the market quicker. This practice has not only affected our meat supply, but our ground water and our health.

 Have you ever noticed how it seems kids are getting bigger and bigger these days?  Many thirteen year old boys now have facial hair and are already six feet tall. Young girls are starting their cycles as young as 9 years old. It is all related to the hormones in our food supply, it does the same thing to our kids that it does to the animals we give it too, it makes them grow up before their time.

 Do you drink out of plastic water bottles? Do you then refill them and use them over and over again? Perhaps one sits in the hot car all day while you go into work. If so you are consuming chemicals with estrogen properties.

Studies have indicated that most water bottles contain trace amount of Bis-phenol A (BPA), a synthetic chemical that interferes with the body’s natural hormonal messaging system and that repeated re-use increases the chance that chemicals will leak out of the plastic over time.

 BPA has been linked to breast and uterine cancer, an increased risk of miscarriage, and decreased testosterone levels. Most experts agree that the amount of BPA that could leach into food and drinks through normal handling is probably very small, but there are concerns about the cumulative effect of small doses.

Even water bottles that are BPA free such as  plastic #1  may be safe for one-time use, but reuse should be avoided because studies indicate they may leach DEHP—another probable human carcinogen.  The FDA issued a health warning advising the public that DEHP could leech out of PVC and pose a health risk in certain high risk groups.  Specifically, there are concerns pertaining to the effects on the development of the male reproductive system.

I’m not going to get into the health symptoms of Estrogen dominance on this post you can read about them here:  http://www.personalliberty.com/health-concerns/the-effects-of-estrogen-dominance-for-women-and-men/   but before you start checking off of the list, if this concerns you get your hormones tested. Many of the symptoms listed both myself and my husband had, but we were not Estrogen dominant, so don’t panic even if you are all you need to be balance your hormones, something easily done with bio-identical hormones.

For now here are some things you can do to prevent estrogen dominance and better health. Get yourself a stainless steel or a glass bottle to use for water.  Where I live we are blessed with pure water, so my whole family drinks out of glass bottles we saved when we bought some beverage from a store. We keep a shelf full of chilled water in glass bottles with screw on caps. When we head out the door we grab one. They are easy to sterilize in the dishwasher and it’s no big deal if one gets left in the hot sun for days. Don’t be talked into an aluminum bottle. Aluminum is very bad for you and has been linked to Alzheimer’s.

Be aware of where your meat comes from.  When you can, buy organic meats, not only will you be doing your family a favor you will find that organic meat taste 10 times better. Buy Organic milk. Especially for kids. My boys are 9 and 10; they never drink milk unless it is organic. Yes they are the smallest kids in the class and I do feel bad thinking they may be the only kids in their class that don’t go through puberty until age 14 or so. But at least I know they will outlive their classmates twelve fold.

 Avoid cooking in plastic containers. Invest in some glass or ceramic dishes, especially for the microwave. Heating plastic is just inviting a chemical party to your body. Avoid it at all cost. Even if you buy those ready made dinners transfer them to a glass container before heating.

Well I hope you learned something I will talk more about hormones and how they effect you in future post.