Periodontal Disease, Gum Disease – What you need to know (with Recipes)

Periodontal disease is the scientific name for all gum disease, ranging from gingivitis to periodontitis. Gingivitis is inflammation and swelling of the gums; periodontitis is the last stage of periodontal disease when the ligaments that attach a tooth to bone are inflamed and infected as well as the bone itself, usually resulting in tooth loss.

According to the mainstream dental community, there is one cause and one treatment path for periodontal disease. This is their take on it:

  • Our mouths are full of bacteria
  • Mucous that covers our teeth mixes with bacteria to form plaque
  • If plaque is not brushed and flossed away each day, it turns into tartar
  • Tartar attracts more bacteria, resulting in more tartar
  • Tartar and bacteria cause infection of the gums
  • Pockets form in the gums, gums recede and/or no longer adhere to teeth
  • Tartar cannot be brushed away; it must be removed by a dentist.
  • Oral hygiene and dental cleanings are the only defense against gum disease

They tell us, while gingivitis can be reversed with better oral hygiene and regular dental cleaning, untreated gingivitis can (and probably will) result in periodontitis. As the infection spreads under the gum line, pockets form between the gums and the teeth and the gum line recedes. In time, the infection breaks down bone and connective tissues. Conventional treatment for periodontitis includes deep cleaning, antibiotics taken orally and or packed into the gum pockets, and surgery (bone grafts and tissue grafts for advanced cases.)

One Body, One Source of Disease

While other causal factors are discussed (smoking, hormonal changes, genetics, diabetes) there is little to no recognition of the mouth being one part of an entire system. We know that the balance of good vs. bad bacteria and keeping Candida in check in our gut is essential to health. Most of us know the same is true of our skin. Why would the inside of the mouth be any different? Why isn’t an infection in our mouth considered a failure of our immune system or our bacterial balance rather than our dental care?

This conventional, accepted theory of periodontal disease and tooth decay and its treatment mirrors conventional medicine—symptoms are treated rather than the cause. But through the work of Weston Price, we have known for more than seventy years that isolated populations who did not practice oral hygiene but ate healthy, indigenous foods were free of dental disease—both tooth decay and gum disease. When the Western diet was introduced, dental disease followed.

Today, we are re-learning that simple truth. When it comes to health, in every part of the body, nutrition is the key.

Nutrition

The bottom line is that nutrition is the one cure for anything that ails you. It’s a little more complicated than that, but not much. Our bodies were made to fight disease, to maintain a balance between good bacteria, bad bacteria, and yeast. The common Western diet does not support this balance. Nor does the Western diet give us the nutrition (vitamins and minerals) we need to promote health and maintain a strong immune system.

A healthy mouth requires a healthy body. In a healthy body, bad bacteria do not run rampant, causing infection and disease. The immune system does not become overwhelmed and incompetent when faced with a minor gum infection.

Though it would not be advisable to avoid the dentist, it would be advisable to research the use of fluoride and other chemicals before using them to treat your periodontal disease. One article touted the efficacy of a particular antibiotic used to pack gum pockets, claiming its use resulted in shrinking gum pockets by one millimeter. Natural solutions have been known to shrink pockets by 3 millimeters or more.

A healthy diet is a must. If you suffer from periodontal disease, your mouth is telling you to feed your body right.

  • Avoid all artificial ingredients: colorings, flavorings, preservatives, and GMOs
  • Avoid processed foods
  • Avoid pasteurized dairy
  • Eat organic as much as possible, especially the “dirty dozen” and animal protein
  • Soak or sprout beans, nuts, and grains to release enzyme inhibitors
  • Eat at least 80% raw, focusing on a variety of foods with lots of green leafy vegetables
  • Eat a balanced diet with plenty of healthy fats
  • Drink a gallon of pure spring water daily
  • Stop eating refined sugars

If you supplement your diet with vitamins and minerals, make sure they are not synthetic. Choose whole food vitamins and minerals so your body can properly assimilate them. Vitamin D, vitamin C, and B vitamins are essential to dental health.

If you smoke, stop. If you smoke anything—stop. Smoking cigarettes or marijuana introduces free radicals and other toxins that damage the gums and therefore encourage and promote periodontal disease. Obviously, chewing tobacco products is even worse.

If you are eating 80% raw, chances are you will be eating an alkaline diet. If your diet is acidic, it will promote disease. Sugar creates an acidic pH. In order to self adjust the pH of the bloodstream, the body will pull minerals, such as calcium, out of bone and tissue to regain the proper pH. Sugar is your enemy. You want to heal bone, not degrade it.

How to Treat an Acute Gum Infection

If you smoke, you need to stop smoking. Enough said.

Your diet is key, especially when you have an acute infection. No sugar! Stop eating it now!  Sugar feeds bacterial infections and feeds yeast infections. When your gums are infected and you eat candy, your gums will hurt more. If the infection is severe, they will hurt a lot more—now and later. You just fed the infection.

Now, what else can you do for immediate relief and healing?

Keep your mouth clean. Brush after eating. Get a new toothbrush and brush correctly, not just the teeth, but the gums as well.

Stop brushing your teeth with toxic chemicals. Buy good natural toothpaste or make your own.

Chew raw garlic. This is not for the faint of heart. Raw garlic has a very strong taste and it burns when you chew it, but it works. Eating raw garlic may take practice. Chew as long as you can and try to chew it a little longer each day.

Doc Shillington makes a wonderful solution called Tooth and Gum Formula that aids in healing gum disease. His patients report that their checkups amaze their dentists due to the reduction of deep pockets. We can attest to the power of this formula. Check out Heal Cavities, Gum Disease, Naturally with Organic Oral Care – Toothpaste recipes included for the recipe.

Take a good whole food vitamin. If you are vitamin deficient, one or two days of taking a really good vitamin supplement will make a world of difference. Your gums may stop bleeding and hurting with a day. Total Nutrition – Make your own Homemade Multivitamin and Mineral Formula.

Add oil pulling to your daily routine. Two of the best oils to use are coconut oil and sesame oil. You just put a little oil in your mouth and swish it through your teeth for 20 minutes the first thing in the morning before you eat or drink anything. (See link below). If you want to kick it up a notch, add some neem oil, peppermint oil, clove oil, or oil of oregano to the coconut or sesame seed oil. This will obliterate infection, but if you thought chewing on garlic was uncomfortable…

Oil pulling will get in between your teeth and deeper within your gums to help eliminate bacteria and Candida in ways that nothing else can, without causing damage like conventional treatments.

If you have a infection, this infection can drain into the teeth and gums. Shillington’s Herbal Snuff is perfect for clearing up a sinus infection. It’s also good for sore throats, and other infections in the mouth. You can snort it (only a tiny bit needed, and it burns, but it works), or place it directly on infected area of mouth, or directly on the tonsils. This stuff works amazingly well, but it’s not pleasant.

To Recap:

  • Don’t smoke
  • Eat a healthy, nutrient dense diet
  • Use a good, soft toothbrush and healthy toothpaste
  • Take whole food supplements, paying special attention to your need for vitamin D, vitamin C, and B vitamins
  • Buy a new soft toothbrush (stop tearing up your gums with rough toothbrushes)
  • Avoid conventional toothpastes (buy a good natural toothpaste, or make your own)
  • Help heal your gums with natural solutions that promote gum health
  • Chew raw garlic
  • Practice oil pulling

Recommended Supplements:

Further Reading:

 



Your Healthy Diet Isn’t Complete Without These Foods!

When it comes to eating healthily, we all know roughly what to do –limit the fast food, get our 5 a day, cut out snacks etc. But when it comes to writing your healthy eating shopping list, have you remembered to add these goodies?

Kale

This high-fibre leafy green vegetable is a top source of vitamin A, which works to strengthen your immune system and keep your eyes and skin in top health. As well as this, just 1 cup of kale contains almost the same amount of vitamin C as a whole orange! Need another reason to toss some kale into your salad? To top it all, kale is packed with antioxidants which help to fight off illnesses such as cancer. Definitely a healthy diet must!

Watercress

Watercress is full of iron and contains an abundance of antioxidants that combat lung and breast cancer. Just three daily ounces of watercress can enhance your levels of particular antioxidants by 100%! Also, the high iodine content in watercress means that it helps to strengthen the thyroid gland, making it a beneficial superfood for hypothyroidism sufferers.

Pomegranate

Pomegranate is another food full to the brim with antioxidants,  which lower the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, and heart disease. Studies have also shown that pomegranates can reduce cholesterol and blood pressure, as well as protect the kidneys against harmful toxins, preventing kidney problems. And of course, they taste beautiful!

Salmon

Aside from being absolutely delicious, salmon has a number of great health benefits. Packed with omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins A, B and D, iron, calcium, selenium,  and phosphorous, salmon is definitely brain food that helps to improve your memory. It also contains tryptophan, a natural sedative, which means it can help aid sleep to help you get a good night’s rest.

Lentils

Budget-friendly and versatile, lentils are a very healthy staple to include in your diet. There’s over 9 grams of protein in just 1 cup of lentils, not to mention 8 grams of fibre, which can help to lower cholesterol and reduce digestive problems such as irritable bowel syndrome and constipation.  They are also a fantastic source of folate, which can decrease the risk of heart disease by reducing your homocysteine levels.

Spinach

This superfood not only tastes great, it is versatile and packed full of nutrients. One cup of spinach holds 20% of the recommended daily amount of fibre, which helps to maintain low blood sugar and aid digestion. As well as this, the high amounts of vitamin K within spinach means it’s great for keeping your bones healthy and strong.

Broccoli

This yummy green vegetable is bursting with soluble fibre, which is excellent for lowering your body’s cholesterol. It is also a fantastic source of calcium and vitamin K, which are both very important for preventing osteoporosis and maintaining good bone health. Broccoli is also beneficial to the heart, thanks to the anti-inflammatory properties of the isothiocyanates found within it. These can prevent blood cell damage.



How to Kill Candida and Balance Your Inner Ecosystem

Most people ingest too many refined, processed foods. Even us health nuts have a tendency to do this. In this fast paced world, with the body biologically programmed to desire sweets and other easy carbohydrates that are so much harder to find in nature, it’s common and totally normal to have too much Candida in our body.

If you experience this problem, and again, most people do, here are some ways you can balance your gut flora. Balancing the flora will alleviate many health issues, even little annoying ones you thought you were stuck with for the rest of your life such as itchy ear canals, body odor, and eczema.

Garlic

Most people know that garlic is antifungal, antiparasitic, antibacterial, and antiviral. It also helps with a host of other issues including the removal of toxins in the body. If I could only choose one single item to work with when it comes to healing and treatment modalities, I would choose garlic. Unfortunately, many people don’t know exactly how to use it to reap the benefits.

First and foremost, don’t cook it. It loses all its Candida fighting properties when you do. Secondly, cut it up and give it a minute before ingesting it. Or, if you’ve got a strong stomach and an even stronger mouth, chew it up for a minute with your mouth open, breathing in and out. This is also an incredibly effective treatment for tooth and gum problems, and even bad breath; though swallowing it, of course, can lead to garlic breath for many, but garlic breath is a sign of a toxic body.

Don’t use garlic from China, even if it’s organic. One way to tell, is those smaller, bright white garlic bulbs are almost always grown in China. China’s soil is just too toxic.

Essential oils

Oil of oregano has antifungal, antibacterial, and antiparasitic properties as well. Oil of oregano is exceptionally powerful and can be taken in tablet form.

Some other essential oils that kill candida include lavender, thieves, tea tree, and peppermint, though I don’t recommend taking these oils internally. They are a good solution for Candida skin rashes, though they can be painful to use. In most cases, they will not harm the skin even though you will feel a burning sensation.

Oils

Coconut oil is known for its antibacterial, antifungal, and antiparasitic properties, though it’s efficacy with Candida control is weak compared to other ingestible choices. Neem oil is an oil with similar antiparasitic properties, a bit stronger at parasitic control than coconut oil, but it should only be applied topically.

Other notable items that are known to combat fungus include wormwood, black walnut hull, Spanish black radish, Pau d’Arco, goldenseal, coptis chinensis, ginger, cinnamon, and olive leaf extract. All of these are great to have around, and a few of them are exceptional at killing parasites, viruses, and bacterial infections (coptis chinensis, wormwood, black walnut hull, Spanish black radish) but while they are certainly antifungal, they’re not the strongest solution.

My favorite combination for eliminating excess yeast in my body is undecenoic acid (Thorne SF722) and very high quality probiotics. Combine this with Shillington’s intestinal cleanse and with big salads everyday with lots of different vegetables, and you’ve got yourself a clean colon free of excess Candida in days, often in just one day. What I love about undecenoic acid and probiotics is that they don’t kill off good bacteria. They only eliminate Candida and other fungi. If I want to knock out parasites as well, I use MicroDefense – Pure Encapsulations, which has wormwood and black walnut hulls (and other good stuff that parasites hate).

Whatever approach you take with intestinal maintenance, a diet with a diverse selection of lots of raw vegetables is the most important thing you can do for your colon and your whole body.

Recommended Supplements:

(You can take these altogether)

Further Reading:


Foods that Kill Cancer

In order to defeat cancer and ensure there is no recurrence, the body must be brought into balance and the immune system rebuilt and fine tuned. So how is this feat accomplished? Detox, detox, detox and achieve a slightly alkaline pH, while filling the body with the best, organic, nutritionally dense food available. Your goal is to rebuild a killer immune system as you bathe every non-cancerous cell in your body with nutrition.

For specific foods known to eliminate cancer, check out the following list:

Omega 3

Oily fish, fish oil, flax seed oil, hemp oil, and healthy oil blend supplements provide omega 3 fatty acids (and other beneficial fatty acids), which fight inflammation and make the body less hospitable to cancer cells. Vitamin D is also known to kill cancer, and you can find many fish oils and some vegan oil blends with vitamin D in them.

Cruciferous Vegetables

Cruciferous vegetables include broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussel sprouts, watercress, kale, collard greens, cauliflower, bok choy, turnips, rutabagas, radishes, arugula, and more. These vegetables contain sulforaphane and other helpful compounds, which help fight tumors, breast, prostate, brain, and colorectal cancers, as well as leukemia. Broccoli sprouts and mature broccoli in combination really pack nutritional, cancer fighting punch.

Berries

Black raspberries appear to reign supreme, though all berries contain cancer fighting phytonutrients and high amounts of ellagic acid, which inhibit tumor growth.

Maitake and Shiitake Mushrooms

Google maitake mushrooms and cancer and the American Cancer Society pops up at the top of the search list. For one brief moment it seemed they might actually be doing their job, but no. They claim there have been no studies to show that maitake or any other mushroom help fight cancer. Continue your search and study after study reveals they do indeed.

Mushrooms boost immune function and are a great source of antioxidants. They are also rich in vitamins C and B vitamins as well as calcium and other minerals.

Tumeric

Curcumin, found in turmeric, inhibits the spread of cancer (metastases) along with its anti-inflammatory and oxidative effects. Tumeric can be found at farmer’s markets in root form. It can be used liberally to spice your food (great on salads or in salad dressing as well as in cooked dishes) with no side effects.

Tomatoes

The active compounds found in tomatoes, carotenoids and lycopene (especially lycopene), are very helpful, especially in the fight of prostate and pancreatic cancer in men. Seven to ten helpings are week are suggested, both cooked and raw juice. To gain the health benefits of juice, make your own. Store bought tomato juice will be pasteurized. Lycopene is a strong antioxidant.

Folate

Egg yolks, avocadoes, apricots, green leafy vegetables, and pumpkin are among the foods rich in folate. For meat eaters, chicken livers are very high in folate. Studies involving folate or its synthetic form, folic acid, show a significant reduced risk of colorectal cancer. Folate or folic acid ?is essential for the body to correctly replicate DNA.

Garlic

Even the National Cancer Institute admits garlic “…may reduce the risk of developing several types of?cancer, especially cancers of the?gastrointestinal tract”.
Garlic reduces inflammation, fights free radicals, and fights cancer. Eat it raw or chop it up and let it sit for 10-15 minutes before cooking with it or its beneficial compound, allicin, will not be released.

Grapes

The compound found in red grapes, resveratrol, is a powerful antioxidant that also saves cells from oxidant-caused death. Grape seeds have huge benefits. We recommend you don’t eat grapes without seeds.

Conclusion

An alkaline, balanced diet with plenty of nutrition, and as few toxins as possible, makes the body inhospitable to cancer. Sugar feeds cancer. Processed and refined foods feed cancer. Raw, organic vegetables, especially when grown for maximum nutrient content (as opposed to large scale farming) should be the foundation of any healthy diet. We also recommend that anyone with cancer undergo a full body detox with a supplement regimen specifically designed for your current state of health. For more information on what to do for cancer, check out the first three sources. For information on detoxifying, check out Cheap And Easy Detox Diet Plan.

Further Reading:

Resources:



The Fascinating Bacteria in our Gut, and How it Affects Our Whole Lives

We are host to somewhere between 300-1000 different species of bacteria, each of which has one goal—to survive and multiply. While they live and thrive in our gut, beneficial bacteria provide many necessary and health-related functions. They help us digest our food. They line our intestinal wall, providing a physical barrier against bad bacteria and fungi that may damage or inflame the tissues. Some produce vitamin K and B vitamins, while others aid in synthesizing vitamins. They produce 95% of our serotonin as well as other neurotransmitters. They make up 80% of our immune system, and more. The by-products of their lifecycle benefit us through a harmonious, symbiotic relationship.

We classify bacteria as bad bacteria when their byproducts or functions can harm our bodies.   For example, most of the E-coli bacteria strains are harmless. In fact, the harmless strains help prevent colonization of pathogenic bacteria and produce vitamin K2, whereas the pathogenic E-coli strains cause a variety of infections and may even cause death.

Related: Candida, Gut Flora, Allergies, and Disease

Aside from illness, researchers are learning that specific species of bacteria exert different influences on their host bodies. One example is our metabolism. The bacterial makeup of a lean person is different than the bacterial makeup in someone who is obese.

One study showed that Enterobacter, an endotoxin-producing bacterium, taken from the gut of a morbidly obese human, induced obesity and insulin resistance in healthy mice. In a volunteer with an initial weight of 385 lbs, Enterobacter made up 35% of the gut bacterium. After 23 weeks of a diet of whole grains, traditional Chinese medicinal foods, and prebiotics, the volunteer lost 113 lbs and all traces of Enterobacter. The conclusion was that this endotoxin-producing bacterium creates inflammation that causes insulin resistance resulting in weight gain.

Another recent study showed a direct correlation between a high or low level of bacterium in the gut and the subjects’ weight. A high level of bacterium, with a high level of diversity, was linked to a healthy weight, whereas a low level of bacterium was linked to overweight individuals.

Related: Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases

The amount of bacteria in the gut relates to more than weight, it is also an indicator of overall health. Our actions affect the amount, the diversity, and the ratio of good to bad bacteria. For example, antibiotic use indiscriminately kills bacteria. Antibiotics do not just target the one pathogen causing an infection in our body; they kill off much of the bacteria in our gut as well. Not only do we need the good bacteria to do its work (including keeping the bad bacteria in check), we need to maintain the delicate balance between bacteria and fungi. Candida is opportunistic. Given a chance, it will quickly mass-produce, wreaking havoc in the digestive tract and, in time, the entire body.

As research continues to reveal that diversity in gut bacterium is essential to good health and can influence bodily functions such as serotonin production (a huge factor in depression) or metabolism (a factor in weight control), researchers are learning more about which particular bacteria are beneficial and which bacteria have an unhealthy effect on the body. The day may soon come when we choose our probiotics to manage our weight, to maintain our mental health, or to treat a variety of diseases. Until that day arrives, our diet choices can and will alter this internal balance.

We do have a basic knowledge of which foods promote beneficial bacteria and which foods and medications promote bad bacteria, and we know how to increase the beneficial organisms to crowd out those that do not serve our health.

Related: Hypothyroidism – Natural Remedies, Causes, and How To Heal the Thyroid

The first and most important step to increase health inducing bacterium in the gut, is to eat a diet rich in prebiotics—in other words, lots of raw vegetables and fruit. A large salad each day, filled with a wide variety of vegetables, provides the healthy bacterium in our gut with the food it needs to thrive. Insoluble fiber also houses good bacteria, giving it a structure upon which to multiply. Raw, whole, organic vegetables and fruits (more vegetables than fruit) should always comprise 80% of our diet.

We not only know what to feed good bacteria, we know what feeds or promotes bad bacteria: processed dead foods, acidic foods (factory raised meat and dairy), pasteurized foods, irradiated foods, sugar, antibiotics, antacids, and anti-inflammatory drugs. Choose only organic grass fed beef, organic free-range chicken, and raw dairy. Never eat farm raised fish. Avoid all GMOs, including second generation GMOs from animals raised on GMO feed.

If we were to believe the advertisements, one or two servings of sugar filled, pasteurized, yogurt (often with other ingredients added to thicken, stabilize, preserve, and/or add artificial flavor)  would provide all the beneficial bacteria we need. If any beneficial bacteria from this yogurt survived our stomach acid and made it to our intestines, the dairy and sugar content alone would negate its benefits (pasteurized dairy and sugar feed Candida and “bad” bacteria). There are better ways to include probiotics in our diet.

Related: How to Kill Candida and Balance Your Inner Ecosystem

Probiotic foods such as coconut kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut, kimchi, and raw, organic apple cider vinegar all increase healthy bacterium in the gut.  There are also excellent probiotic supplements formulated with very strong bacteria strains that have the ability to make it past the stomach acid before releasing the bacteria into the intestines. These probiotics are rare; most on the market are useless. But the good ones are powerful and can help reset your ecosystem. Remember, while probiotics can be very helpful, more benefit is gained from prebiotics, vegetables in particular. Conversely, if your appendix has been removed, you may need a daily probiotic supplement for the rest of your life. FloraMend Prime by Thorne Research is a very strong and stable probiotic that we highly recommend.

Every choice we make to detox, cleanse, and properly feed our bodies will affect the microbes in our gut. Though we were born with a particular balance of bacteria, it has been influenced throughout our lives by toxins, antibiotics, vaccines, and the foods we have eaten. But we do have the power to change it. We can increase the amount and the type of bacteria in our bodies primarily by the foods we choose to eat and the foods we choose to avoid.

If you want to reduce Candida and harmful bacteria in your gut be sure to check out Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases, and we recommend the following:

Recommended Supplements:

Further Reading:

 Sources: 

  • Na Feiand Liping Zhao, An Opportunistic Pathogen Isolated from the Gut of an Obese Human Causes Obesity in Germfree Mice; The ISME Journal (2013) 7, 880–884
  • Q. Aziz, J. Dore´,A. Emmanuel, F. Guarner, & E. M. M. Quigley; Gut Microbiota and Gastrointestinal Health: Current Concepts and Future Directions, Neurogastroenterol & Motility (2013) 25, 4–15


Inexpensive, Easy Detox – The One Gallon Challenge

You’ve heard of the ice bucket challenge, and maybe even the Ferguson Challenge. Here’s a new challenge: the one gallon challenge. Drink a gallon of cranberry lemonade a day, sweetened with stevia, and spiced with cayenne. This is one of the best ways to detoxify and clean out your system.

There’s more.

Exercise. Sweat. Get your heart rate going. Deep, heavy breathing helps detoxify the body. Exercise vigorously for 20 minutes a day. If you have access to a sauna, especially one of a non-toxic variety, use it! A steam room is great, too, as long as the water is purified, with the fluoride and other chemicals removed.

Rebounding

There is one specific exercise that can help this detox in an unusual way—bouncing. Rebounding on a trampoline, jumping rope, or jogging while ensuring that you’re running with good form (not heel striking) all help circulate your lymph. Do one of these activities for at least 20 minutes a day. Of course, if done vigorously enough to induce heavy breathing and to work up a sweat, the bouncing activities count as the exercise for the day.

Eat. This isn’t a fast. You can detoxify without fasting. You are welcome to fast if you want to and you know your body can handle it, but it’s not necessary in order to receive amazing benefits. Eat produce, salads and fruits. A serious detox is a good time to avoid pretty much anything else and just focus on produce. If the body is very toxic or so sick that it cannot get nutrition out of food, it is a good time to juice. Otherwise, we recommend eating whole, unadulterated vegetables and fruits in order to get the fiber and many other benefits that are lost when juicing.

If the gut is out of balance, i.e. Candida overgrowth and/or an abundance of bad bacteria, eat lots of garlic with those salads, and take a high quality probiotic and some undecylenic acid or oil of oregano. (When taking oil of oregano, do not take it with probiotics as it will kill the beneficial bacteria}.

Cranberry Lemonade Recipe

  • Glass gallon jar
  • Safe, clean, spring water or distilled water
  • 1 cup of organic cranberry juice, not from concentrate
  • 3 organic fresh lemons
  • A citrus juicer
  • Liquid stevia
  • Liquid cayenne

Fill the jar to about 85% capacity with spring water (or distilled water). Squeeze the lemons and pour the juice into the water. Add cranberry juice. Add stevia to taste and then add cayenne to taste. The amount of cayenne used is up to you, but the more the better.

If you don’t have access to a good spring water source, use other clean drinking water that does not have fluoride. If you don’t have access to organic lemons, use conventional. If there are no fresh lemons, use bottle lemon juice. If you can’t get cranberry juice that is not from concentrate, get the reconstituted kind (just don’t get any kind of cranberry juice that has any other ingredients like sweeteners or other juices). If you can’t stand cayenne, don’t use it. No glass jar? Use plastic. No excuses.

If you have powdered cayenne and/or powdered stevia, I recommend using a blender to mix some of the liquid with the powders so they don’t settle later.

Drinking a gallon of water a day makes an amazing difference to your health and your appearance (google gallon a day water before and after). Drinking this much fluid flushes the organs and the lymph nodes, hydrates the skin, and helps the body to rebuild cells and regenerate in ways that most people do not get to experience. The cranberry and the lemon help flush the liver and the kidneys even more, and in my experience it’s a lot easier to drink a gallon of cranberry lemonade than it is to drink a gallon of plain water. And cayenne has a ton of amazing health benefits. For more, check out, Cayenne – Natures Miracle Medicine.

How long should you do this for? I challenge you to ten days. But do it as long as you like. While produce should always be the staple of any healthy diet, no matter what you’re eating, your body will always benefit from this gallon of hydration a day.

Please use common sense with this. If you do not follow a healthy diet with lots of produce, the amount of liquid consumed on this regimen can deplete the body of much needed minerals. Do not attempt to drink a gallon of anything in one sitting. This has been known to kill people, even with just water. If you have kidney problems, this may be the best thing for you. On the other hand, depending on your health issues, it may overload the kidneys. I find that smaller people who weigh less than 120 pounds can see the benefits at 1/2 to 1/3 of a gallon. Your health is in your hands. Again, please use good judgment.

If you’ve got a bit of money and you’re willing to take this detox program to a whole other level, consider detoxifying the blood, killing parasites, and balancing the body’s ecosystem. Shillington’s Blood Detox, MicroDefense – Pure Encapsulations, and will detoxify the blood and kill parasites. SF722 will kill Candida (yeast). Shillington’s Intestinal Cleanse will clean out the colon, and FloraMend will restore beneficial bacteria.

If Candida is an issue for you, as it is for most, check out How to Cure Candida.

Recommended Supplements:
Further Reading:


Could Eating a Low Fat Diet Make You Fat and Sick?

Low fat & low calorie diets aren’t just something that weight loss experts recommend. The Center for Disease Control even recommends that in order to stay healthy and lean you should eat a low fat, low calorie diet.

I am going to show you how eating a diet that is low in fat and calories could be making you fat, sick and frustrated!

Fat free foods, or low calorie foods are so easy to find at any grocery store these days. For just about every full-fat version of a food, there is likely to be a reduced version of the same food. And it is no secret that eating a diet lower in calories and fat is the key to weight loss, so why are obesity rates at an all-time high?

Let’s take a look at a pretty typical day of eating a low fat, low calorie diet. For this example you would be eating three meals per day and of course a low calorie snack for dessert, because everyone deserves a treat now and then, right? Since losing weight is the goal, I want to make sure this diet is fairly low in calories, so let’s aim for about 1,500 calories per day.

The meals that I found are random and were found by simply searching the internet for low fat or low calorie food options. These items would be present in any grocery store in the country and would generally be considered to be healthy by many shoppers.

Breakfast: (Calories/Grams of fat)

1 cup Special K Cereal – 120 calories and 0.5 grams of fat

1 cup skim milk – 86 calories and 0.4 grams of fat

Starbucks 12oz cafe latte with skim milk = 126 calories and 0 grams of fat

Lunch:

Lean Pockets Ham and Cheddar – 280 calories and 7 grams of fat

Baked Lays BBQ potato chips – 123 calories and 3.1 grams of fat

Dinner:

Lean Cuisine Alfredo Pasta with Chicken and Broccoli – 270 calories and 4 grams of fat

Dessert:

Chips Ahoy 100 Calorie Thin Crisps – 100 calories and 3 grams of fat

I think this is a pretty light day of eating, but if you really had some willpower this would be totally doable. You have your three meals for the day, your protein, a coffee treat and even a snack! So let’s count up those calories and grams of fat and see where we are at.

Total Calories = 1105

Total Fat = 18 grams

This is pretty great news, right? Not only will this diet give you less than 20 grams of fat in a day, but your total calorie count is well below the 1,500 mark. At this rate, you could safely eat another 400 calories of food, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet.

The reason that this diet is going to fail and make you fat and sick is very simply because when you concentrate only on low fat, low calorie foods, you miss a really important part of the bigger picture. There is an ingredient that is added to more of your food than you may be aware of, and it is hiding in plain sight under the disguise of lower calories and healthy foods. And that ingredient is sugar. More specifically, high fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup was introduced in the mid 1970’s as a cheap alternative sweetener that could easily be added to soft drinks. You may have heard that HFCS is a safe product because it is natural, and comes from corn.

While it is true that HFCS is made from corn, it should not be considered safe to consume in any quantity, let alone the quantities that many Americans and people from around the world are consuming it. The truth is, the human body could survive without HFCS without a single negative effect whatsoever.

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) obesity rates in this country doubled between 1980 and 2000, to about 60 million adults.[1] While correlation does not equal causation, it is certainly something to think about when you consider this happened just a few years after high fructose corn syrup started being added to a large portion of our soft drinks and processed foods.

And since it is cheaper to add to food than traditional granulated sugar, it is safe to assume that you will be quite likely to find it in a lot of your food that you buy in the grocery store. Low fat, and low calorie foods are no exception to this.

So how much sugar, or high fructose corn syrup is in all of this wonderful low fat, low calorie food that you just ate for your recommended diet?

54 Grams which is about equal to 13.5 teaspoons!

The World Health Organization recommends that a person with a normal body mass index (BMI) consume no more than 25 grams of sugar per day, which is about 6 teaspoons. [2] So right from the start, when you eat a diet similar to this example, which is low in calories and fat, you are consuming twice the recommended daily allowance of sugar.

But that’s not all. Researchers at Princeton have found that high fructose corn syrup is actually worse for your health than regular sugar. In the study, researchers gave two groups of rats the same amounts of “rat chow”, but changed up their beverage a little bit.

One group got ordinary table sugar in a water solution, and the other group had access to high fructose corn syrup. What they saw was that the rats who consumed the high fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than their regular sugar-water rat counterparts [3].

But that’s not all. The researchers also found that the high fructose corn syrup rats had abnormal increases in fat in their abdomen, as well as a rise in their triglycerides. In other words, they were becoming fat and sick. And if that’s not all, they also noted that another group of rats who were given the HFCS over a period of six months began to show signs of metabolic syndrome in comparison to rats who only were given the rat chow.

It is estimated that about 20 to 25 percent of adult Americans suffer from metabolic syndrome. Below are some metabolic risk factors. While it is possible to have any number of these alone, you are considered at risk for metabolic syndrome if you have three of the following conditions:[4]

  1. Abdominal obesity, or having an “apple” shape
  2. High triglyceride levels
  3. Low HDL (good) cholesterol levels
  4. High blood pressure
  5. High fasting blood sugar

Is high fructose corn syrup the smoking gun in the fight against obesity? The research is not in just yet on that, but researchers are tirelessly working on it. Do you think there may be enough data to show that it is a major contributor to obesity and a wide array of diseases that are costing our society billions of dollars to treat?

This is for you to decide, but you must also decide if it is worth the risk of taking the chance.

If you have ever wondered if weight loss and better health can really be easy, maybe it would be worth it to try a diet that is a way of life, and not the newest fad. Counting calories and grams of fat may mean you eat foods with low amounts of both calories and fat, but if there is even a small chance that you could be at risk for metabolic syndrome and the conditions that come with it, perhaps it is not the best answer.

Sources:
  1. Facts About Obesity in he United States
  2. Consultation Sugar Guidline
  3. A sweet problem: Princeton researchers find
  4. What Is Metabolic Syndrome?