Medicinal Effects of Foods - Part 3

I have many clients who come to see me worried about weight gain and what has become known in our culture as "emotional eating". These clients want to stop using eating as a way to medicate themselves. The thing is, everything we put in our systems has biochemical effects. Keep in mind that thoughts and emotions are "things" from a biological standpoint. They are real biochemical processes with ingredients and metabolic outcomes that can be tracked. The simplest form of medication that we've learned over the millennia is the use of food and drink to change the way neurotransmitters in the gut and brain behave. Because eating is something we must do, changing the way we relate to food as medicine is important. You can easily see why it would be important to quit smoking and you can make efforts to do so. But a person can't just quit eating. This is why it's so difficult to tease apart.

Let's start here: You can't take food and emotions apart. Because emotions and thoughts are built from the basic ingredients we take in. When looking at "emotional eating" it is important to really understand this statement. The foods (and other substances) you ingest become you. There are whole supermarkets full of "food products" that have little or no connection with what could be conceived of as Real Food. Just as real food becomes the biochemical building blocks of your muscles, your organs, your immune system, your thoughts and your emotions, so too do all the new-fangled chemicals that have entered our food supply in the last 100 years. It is vital that you start asking yourself "Is this what I want to build myself out of today?"

For most of us, sugar is our biggest weakness and the thing that has the biggest negative impact. Sugar is pro-inflammatory, depresses the immune system, contributes to mood instability, creates an acidic internal environment, worsens PMS symptoms, and hastens aging, just to name a few. But we love the stuff! Why? It makes perfect sense from a biochemical standpoint. The same bank of lights in the brain that gets turned on by serotonin (the neurotransmitter that makes us feel happy) also gets amped up by sugar. When we feel down, depressed, stressed, unhappy or need an escape, flooding the system with sugar can help to temporarily change our internal environment. The trouble is that sugar is like jet fuel: it burns hot and fast. Once the body has overcome the flood of sugar, the natural levels in the bloodstream are even lower than where they were before the sugar rush. A signal from the brain says "hey, running out of juice up here, need more of that feel good stuff!" and off we go to find another fix. The trick here is to short circuit the response and reach for foods that increase natural serotonin rather than settle for the quick fix that only temporarily bandaids the situation. In this case, reach for protein. The best choices would be eggs, turkey, elk, pork, crab, shrimp, and salmon (vegetarian options include 200 kcal portions of spirulina, spinach, and watercress) because they are high in tryptophan which is what the body uses to create serotonin.

There are whole manifestos available on the detrimental effects of food additives and toxic residues out there so I won't go into a dissertation here. (If you are interested in a few good references check out "Aspartame Disease" by H. J. Roberts; "Excitotoxins: the taste that kills" by Russell Blaylock; "Diet for a Poisoned Planet" by David Steinman; and "Sweet Deception" by Joseph Mercola). Suffice it to say, each of these toxins has an impact. If you are susceptible, the way they are incorporated into your system will have worse effects. For example, there are case studies showing that you can actually fool your doctor into believing you have multiple sclerosis by ingesting just the right amount of aspartame (aka Nutrasweet). Aspartame is actually a drug, not a food, and we are misusing it in America. Artificial sweeteners are the worst offenders largely because they have become so common in foods. I urge you to get these toxins out of your diet, and especially out of the food supply for children. We are already seeing dire consequences of long term use, and I hate to see what's in store for our teens who are gulping down gallons of diet sodas.

Take control of the sweet portion of your food supply and you will solve big groups of issues including the craving for the sweet taste itself. It takes about 2-4 weeks. That's all. But you have to be vigilant. If you need help, enlist a good nutritionist to walk you through the process. Making changes to the way you look at, think about, shop for, prepare, and eat food is extremely difficult. It's not as easy as "just do it". There are so many reasons WHY we eat and in order to get a handle on some of the biggies, it's ok to ask for help. Sugar and sweet cravings are biggies. It's not just about willpower so stop beating yourself up. It's about biochemistry and learning to create the internal environment you want.

Get Smart. Get Fresh. Get Real.

Medicinal Effects of Foods - Part 2

Ever done an "unintentional cleanse"? You know, that one-strawberry-too-many warning gurgle? That I-love-tomatoes-so-much-I-can't-stop-eating-them oops-gotta-go? It's that time of year here on the West Coast when the fresh fruits and veggies start rolling in by the bushel and I get a little too excited about some of them, especially those strawberries... So why do they do that? What's the deal with the "flush"?

As mentioned in Part 1, depending on amount, what we ingest can be sustenance, pharmacological or toxic. That innocent strawberry actually contains a number of toxins that it creates to help ensure that at least some of it's seeds have a chance to grow to new plants. If the strawberry can't protect itself against slugs and earwigs and snails in some way, then it's chances of survival as a species are slim. Some of those toxins are at doses too low to be problematic for the human body. But interestingly enough, something we think of as benign can become a toxin that overwhelms the body's ability to process it: fructose.

Fructose is one of the most common naturally occurring sugars in our food supply. It has benefits in relatively small doses as a fuel source for the metabolically active tissues of the body. It takes a bit longer to be broken down though and the system in charge of this process is easily overwhelmed. When the amount of fructose to be broken down builds up faster than the body can process it, a shift occurs which ultimately is like the internal disassembly crew throwing up their hands and giving up then pressing the emergency eject button on the contents of the gut to get rid of the excess -- and off you run to the potty.

Other foods that can have this effect usually have either a relatively high amount of fructose, or are high in soluble fiber. The two big categories of fiber are soluble and insoluble. The first acts in the gut like a sponge, soaking up excess fats, pulling in toxins to be removed, and pulling out excess water. The second acts like a scrubby as it passes through the intestines giving you a good cleaning out as it moves along. The soluble fiber's ability to absorb water is the culprit when it comes to causing an episode of diarrhea. Because it pulls water into the gut, high amounts of soluble fiber can create a very stool watery consistency. The intestines don't work well when the contents are too loose, so again, the emergency eject button gets pushed and off you skip to the loo again. Often people I work with have the opposite issue of constipation which generally can be dramatically improved by increasing both water and soluble fiber intake, both of which are sorely lacking in the "standard American diet" (aka SAD).

The other main ingredient that can have laxative effects on the gut is caffeine. Many people around the world have trained their guts to need a daily dose of caffeine in order to get moving. The reason for this is that caffeine is a powerful stimulant for peristalsis and acts as a diuretic. There are two main types of movements that the intestinal muscles produce, peristalsis and mass movements. Peristalsis is like a kneading action that pushes a blob of food back and forth against the intestinal lining exposing the contents to as many areas available for nutrient absorption as possible. Then, kind of like musical chairs, there is a signal and all the food blops move downstream a ways in a "mass movement" to be kneaded again. If you have a lot of caffeine, you increase the rate of kneading and you increase the amount of water that is taken out of circulation, some of which empties into the gut. This increase in fluid and movement can also cause that regular stop at the restroom about 20 minutes after your morning cuppa mud.

Of course, each of these effects can be employed on purpose to relieve relatively minor constipation. They can also be little reminders that you are over-indulging. I'm just happy to be in the midst of strawberry cleanse season! Be sure your strawberries are organic though, especially now with the new carcinogenic pesticides being approved for conventional strawberry crops... sigh... Eat REAL...

Medicinal Effects of Foods - Part 1

As one of my dear friends and colleagues Jonathan Treasure says, the same substances can be food, medicine, or poison depending on amounts. This is a very important point that I try to make with my clients (and family and friends!). Just because something is "natural" doesn't mean there aren't potentially life threatening consequences in large amounts. Take alcohol as an easy example. It is a natural substance which in small quantities can be medicinal and in larger quantities becomes toxic (if you've never had a hangover, just watch the nature programs that show elephants and monkeys getting drunk on fermenting fruits). At high enough doses, alcohol becomes a poison that can kill you by causing total nervous system depression thereby shutting off vital communication that keeps the heart beating and the lungs breathing. As I mentioned in a previous post, what I find fascinating is when normally bright and intelligent people say to me "well it's natural and I was feeling better so I thought I'd take twice the dose to feel twice as good"... yeah... Hemlock is natural too...

It is important to understand that the vast majority of the medications we take were derived from the natural world, at least at the beginning. Aspirin is derived originally from the bark of the white willow which is high in salicylic acid. Scientists started to create this acid in the laboratory cheaply and now it's available over the counter as aspirin. One of the problems is that salicylic acid causes internal bleeding both by damaging the gastric and gut mucosa (which you can't feel until the damage is severe), and by inhibiting platelet formation which is essential for proper clotting. And yes, even that 81mg "baby aspirin" causes these problems. There are ways to protect the mucosa from these detrimental effects, one of which is to pre and post medicate with l-glutamine powder or capsules.

Interestingly, there are common foods that are high in salicylic acid. Those with greater than 1 milligram per 100 grams (or about 3.5 ounces) include: green peppers, olives, mushrooms, tomatoes, radishes, apricots, blueberries, blackberries, cantaloupe, dates, raisins, guava, almonds and peanuts. Spices that also contain greater than 1 mg per 100g are: cumin, curry, dill, garam masala, oregano, hot paprika, rosemary, thyme, turmeric, and mustard. This is when your spice cabinet becomes your medicine cabinet! The salicylic acid content is in large part the reason why these foods and spices are anti-inflammatory. However, eaten alone, they can aggravate gastric symptoms in susceptible people.

So this is another good reason to combine foods when creating meals. When consumed with foods that contain l-glutamine (a common amino acid) and foods that provide good sources of minerals, salicylic acid is easier for the body to handle because of the healing effects of the l-glutamine and buffering effect of minerals. Good food sources for l-glutamine include: eggs, pork, dairy products, wheat germ and oats. Good sources of magnesium (which is the active ingredient in most antacids by the way) are barley, buckwheat, oats, almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, black beans, white beans and navy beans.

Starting to sound like another plug for eating REAL FOOD? You betcha!