It took 66 years for me to begin learning the most significant thing thatchanged the quality of my life. What I learned almost two years ago is still relatively unknown by the vast majority of people and their physicians in the United States. Sadly, most people are slowly killing themselves without their knowledge. These people truly believe they are doing what is best for them, but they are doing the exact opposite. They follow diets that are flawed; they are eating foods that are inconspicuously tainted; and they take medicines that do more harm than good. Most people don’t get it.
For many years I had been actively exercising, eating whole grains, avoiding saturated fat, and taking various medications to control some of my bad blood chemistries. I had to always watch what I was eating because I would gain weight as soon as I deviated from a strict program. And it was getting harder and harder as I was getting older and older. Very frustrating.
Let’s step back and consider animals in the wild. They rarely develop degenerative diseases like humans do, and they rarely get fat like humans. They do gain weight intentionally for winter-lean months or hibernation, but they use this storage naturally and lose it naturally. They eat food in the wild when their bodies tell them they are hungry, and they stop eating when their bodies tell them they are full. Yet, when wild animals are raised in captivity, they do get fat, and they do develop chronic degenerative diseases if they are not fed their natural diets.
The differences between wild animals and us are that there are no fast food restaurants or sugary drinks or frozen dinners with a gazillion additives and preservatives in the wild. Wild animals don’t eat meat that has been artificially fattened with hormones and antibiotics and other junk. And they don’t eat genetically modified foods that have never been tested for long-term effects on their bodies. Wild animals eat what their bodies have been designed to eat for tens of thousands of years. In contrast, we eat what has been processed, refined, hybridized, and genetically modified over the last several decades. Our bodies are rebelling! And most of us don’t get it.
We go on diets that have been tested by some of the smartest researchers, and we only lose weight for a little while. Then we gain it back. Our physicians write prescriptions for medicine to change our abnormal blood work that seems to be getting worse as we get older. Our kids are getting fatter and less healthy. We are developing increased blood pressure, obesity, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes at an alarming rate compared to 50 or more years ago. And most of us still don’t get it.
Advertisements on TV encourage healthy eating habits recommending foods that sound like they would be healthy, but they just don’t make us healthier. Health gurus on infomercials encourage intense exercise by selling their 90-minute-long DVDs to bulk up and trim and lose weight. And most of us just don’t get it.
I’m starting to get it. Now, it’s your turn to get it!
Research today from around the world is opening up some of our eyes to what really is happening. The facts that are emerging by combining results of many of these research projects are contrary to some modern-day agriculture processes, to some big food companies’ profits, and to some health studies that were done in the past. The facts are slowly proving that we truly are what we eat.
Let me take you to an island where the people live and eat without exposure to Western lifestyles. The island of Kitava is one of the Trobriand Islands in Papua New Guinea’s archipelago. The Kitavans number about 2,300. They are a primitive tribe, eating fruits (high consumption of coconuts), vegetables, nuts, seeds, and fish. Many prestigious medical researchers have studied them. The Kitavans do not have any blood pressure problems, no heart disease, no obesity, and no type 2 diabetes. However, when some of these people left the island for Hong Kong and began to eat a Westernized diet, they developed varying degrees of high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and type 2 diabetes. WHY?
When man first walked this earth, his body functioned on the foods that were available. In just the last 10,000 years, cereal agriculture began. More recently, the Westernized diet, also known as the Standard American Diet, emerged. It is the way many of us eat in the United States today, and it is made up of unhealthy fats, processed foods, and refined carbohydrates; and is low in fiberand plant-based foods. Because of this diet, the functions of our bodies have been slowly – almost imperceptibly – degenerating. Some of us unfortunately have been degenerating at a much faster pace. Examples are the rise of obesity in children, the incidence of high blood pressure among our kids in elementary school, and the fact that one in three people today in the United States is either prediabetic or a type 2 diabetic.
People get sick because their vulnerable genes interact with various factors in the environment. In fact, 90% of chronic disease is driven by the environment and not by your genes.[1]There is an abundant body of scientific research that repeatedly confirms that toxicity and deficiency cause disease. We are exposed to toxins that accumulate in our system, and/or we don’t get what we need to survive.[2]
To break out of the health trap in which most of us are entwined, we need to avoid toxins that get into our bodies, and we need to ingest the foods that our bodies are designed to use for growth and energy. Avoiding toxins would mean buying foods that are not contaminated with fertilizers and hormones, and are free of preservatives and other artificial additives. Getting the right food would consist of eating fresh vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, and pasture-raised or wild-caught animal products.
Such foods as modern grains, refined sugars, processed foods, and most milk products have been tampered with by science over many years and are not healthy for our bodies. These foods cause normal, healthy bacteria in our guts to change into unhealthy, destructive bacteria. These foods also interfere with healthy digestion and the healthy gut liningto create unhealthy changes in our organs. The outcome is causing a host of degenerative diseases to rear their ugly heads like high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, and others.
There also is a significant dental concern. It appears that the “foods” that produce unhealthy bacteria in the gut and damage in the gut lining also produce unhealthy bacteria in the mouth.
- In a 4-week study, patients were instructed not to perform any oral hygiene for the period of the study, and they had to eliminate refined sugar and whole cereal grains from their diets. At the end of the study, the degree of bleeding gums and periodontal pockets DECREASED. Plaque was present, but virulent bacteria were decreased.[3] It was previously thought that periodontal disease caused systemic disease.[4] Now it is believed that unhealthy bacteria in the gut as well as unhealthy bacteria in the mouth may be the result of a diet of grains and refined sugars.[5]
- A research study published in 2013 looked at DNA remnants of dental plaque around human teeth from Mesolithic times up until current day. The good bacteria of Mesolithic man changed to unhealthy bacteria beginning the time grains were introduced to the diet 10,000 years ago and became significantly worse about the time processed flour and sugar were introduced to the diet around the 19th Century.[6]
Here is the reality to all of this. Almost all the damage unhealthy foods have caused can be reversed or at least improved to create a better life going forward.[7]In fact, significant health benefits have been documented in just 10 days after switching from a Standard American Diet to a Paleo diet.[8]Even type 2 diabetics may be able to reverse their disease and normalize their insulin production again.[9]The way to make a change is to begin an ancestral lifestyle eliminating the unhealthy foods, replacing them with healthier choices, and following a more active lifestyle.
Eating this way will slowly rebalance the good bacteria in your gut and mouth, strengthen the cellular lining of your gut, improve your metabolism, and eventually stabilize your weight. In addition, including stress-reduction techniques, receivingrestorative sleep, and performing efficient exercise will enhance overall health.
Don’t get discouraged. It probably took many years for you to get to where you are today. It may take a while, but you can reverse the damage if you just get it.
