1. ELIMINATE REFINED SUGAR FROM YOUR DIET

Table sugar, brown sugar, high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, and most of the other common sweeteners are poison to your body. Artificial sweeteners are toxic chemicals and should be avoided at all cost. Given a choice, choose white sugar over NutraSweet any day but know that both are terrible for your health.

2. CUT OUT OR AT LEAST CUT DOWN ON ALL OTHER PROCESSED AND REFINED FOODS

If you’re one of those people who has nothing but microwave dinners in your fridge and snack bars, cereal, and chips in your pantry, you’re not eating healthy. Even if all of those products wear the organic label, processed, refined, and pre-packaged foods should not be your main staples. There are some great meal replacement bars and shakes out there that are very nutritious but they need to be secondary to the mainstay of a healthy diet: raw fresh produce.

3. GET SUNLIGHT

Sunlight is natural and we need it. All of life needs it in one way or another. If you are healthy and do not have toxins oozing out of your pores, then you shouldn’t have to worry about skin cancer. Use common sense. The more fair skinned you are, the less sun you need. Build your tolerance slowly and get a tan. For more information read Sunshine & Vitamin D featured in this issue.

4. TAKE THE RIGHT MULTIVITAMIN/MINERAL SUPPLEMENT

If you bought your multivitamin/mineral supplement at GNC or a drug store, you’re probably wasting your money. For more about multivitamin-mineral supplements read What’s Wrong With Vitamins from our May issue.

5. MAKE SURE YOUR DIET IS ALKALINE

If you follow the previous suggestions, your diet will be alkaline. Cancer, viruses, bacteria, and virtually every other illness or disease from lupus to diabetes thrives on, even generally requires, an acidic environment. Dr. Shillington recommends Body Balance to help you regain the proper alkaline pH in your body. Body Balance is available at his website www.organicsolutionsstore.com.

6. MAKE SURE YOU GET ENOUGH OMEGA 3’S

Dr. Kelly recommends Cod Liver Oil by Nordic Naturals. “This will give you a healthy dose of Omega 3s.” He says, “I don’t recommend a 3-6-9 blend because the body can convert Omega 3s into 6s and 9s if needed. But it can’t convert anything else into 3s. And you need the 3s to heal. You need the Omega 3s to take away inflammation. Studies show that most people will die from inflammation and inflammation related health problems.” Dr. Kelly’s contact information is available on his website www.drtimkelly.net.

7. HOT COLD HYDROTHERAPY

Hot and cold hydrotherapy dramatically moves blood and can lower your stress levels for optimum health. Many health practitioners will tell you there is no better way to treat disease than hot and cold hydrotherapy. For more information see page 65.

8. WORKOUT THE RIGHT WAY

Yoga is a great way to get a good, low-impact workout, to tone muscle, and to build stamina. Do something at least a few times a week that will make you break a sweat and breathe heavily. Your body detoxifies through its skin and lungs more than though defecation and urination. Sweating and breathing heavily has many health benefits.

9. STOP SUPPRESSING YOUR SYMPTOMS

When you take drugs for colds, headaches, and other minor (and major) health ailments you are not making yourself well. You are generally suppressing the symptoms. A lifetime of suppressing symptoms like headaches, sore throats, and coughs will have detrimental affects on your health. When you don’t feel good, your body is trying to tell you something while it tries to fix the problem. Don’t ignore it.

10. HAVE THE RIGHT MINDSET

Dr. Shillington says, “All disease is curable! But not all patients are! There are those who are determined to be victims and who are actually trying to succumb!”

Sometimes people want to be sick, whether they know it or not. If you swear you have tried everything, then maybe it’s time to ask yourself some really tough questions. What is your illness doing for you? How do you benefit? Tough ones to answer, and hard truth to face, but the reality is you won’t get well until you are emotionally ready to be well.

William Duffy’s bestselling book, Sugar Blues, published more than 30 years ago, raised America’s awareness about sugar addiction and its prevalence in our diet. Duffy pointed out the connection between physical and mental illnesses and sugar consumption. He also taught his followers to read labels, to discover that sugar was added to our canned fruits and vegetables, drinks, crackers, bread, soups, and to nearly every processed food. But Duffy wasn’t the first. The hazards of refined sugar have been known since the late 1700s.

Refined table sugar comes from two sources: sugar cane or sugar beets. Sugar cane is crushed to extract its juice. The juice is boiled until it thickens into syrup. The syrup goes through multiple processes that purify it and separate the sugar crystals. It may be treated with phosphoric acid and/or calcium hydroxide and carbon dioxide, and filtered through activated carbon or bone char. The final result leaves pure sucrose crystals void of color.

Beets are washed, sliced, and soaked in hot water to remove their juice. The juice then goes through several steps for purification, much like cane juice, until it too is reduced to sucrose crystals.

Refined sugar is void of all nutrition. All of the vitamins and minerals once present in the sugar cane or sugar beet have been removed. In order for our bodies to digest and detoxify from sugar ingestion and regain proper ph (refined sugar is acid forming), the body must pull vitamins and minerals from the bones, teeth, and organs. The reason excessive sugar intake leads to tooth decay is because it leaches calcium from the teeth and bones. It also kills off the symbiotic bacteria in our intestines which produce B vitamins.

Nancy Appleton, PhD, author of Lick the Sugar Habit explains why sugar is linked to allergies. “Sugar suppresses the immune system – but first it depletes minerals. Minerals become deficient and we can’t digest food because every enzyme needs minerals to work. Some of this food that can’t be digested gets into the bloodstream. The body reacts to this putrefied spoiled food and decides this is the problem and becomes allergic to the proteins in this food just because it could not be properly digested.”

Sugar cane and sugar beets in their natural state do contain vitamins and minerals. Sugarcane juice is the least processed product of the sugar cane.

It contains protein, iron, phosphorus, vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, and C, calcium, and chromium. In Asian countries and India it is poured over ice and sold as a drink. For use
as a sweetener it is pressed from the cane and heated with lime to remove impurities.

The first two times sugar cane juiceis boiled the by-product is a light sweet molasses known as fancy or sulfured molasses. The third boiling produces blackstrap molasses, a very dark dense molasses rich in vitamins and minerals. One tablespoon contains 20% of the U.S. RDA of calcium, magnesium, and iron. The molasses from sugar cane is sold in all three varieties for human consumption. The molasses from sugar beets is not fit for human consumption; it is sold for animal feed.

Raw sugar is processed sugar. It may have minimal or no chemical processing, but generally is processed about half as much as refined sugar. It is dark in color because it still contains some molasses.

Brown sugar is white refined sugar coated with molasses syrup.

For many years the health food stance was “no sugar is a good sugar.” The recent organic movement has brought us “better sugar choices” from organic cane juice and raw organic sugar to organic agave nectar and organic honey. Is there a better sugar or should we avoid them all?

Common sense tells us that the more natural and unrefined the source, the more “whole” the source, the better we can digest and utilize its nutrients. This approach suggests cane juice is preferable to raw sugar and raw sugar preferable to refined sugar. But considering the fact that refined sugar is no better than a poison, is this saying much?

If you suffer from an overgrowth of Candida (yeast), it is best to avoid all sugars until you regain a proper balance of bacteria to yeast in your system. If you are acutely ill with a bacterial or viral infection, the same is true. Refined sugar promotes and feeds bacteria, candida, viruses, and parasites.

If you have cancer, realize that simple sugars feed cancer. In fact, Dr. Appleton reminds us that sugar feeds cancer so well it is used to diagnose tumors. Patients are given an injection of radioactively labeled glucose before a PET scan. This sugar injection helps to locate tumors because cancer cells absorb more sugar than normal body tissue cells.

While Doc Shillington agrees that the less processed the better, he also tells us that sugar shuts down the immune system. “Each time you eat sugar, the immune system takes a few days to recover and start working well again.”

While we can find a vast amount of research proving the link with refined sugar and disease, we are unable to find research to support the belief that eating cane juice,agave nectar, maple syrup, and other such products is harmless.

What we can suggest is a common sense approach. No refined sugar is good for you. It is poisonous to the body and leads to disease. Avoid it.

Once you eliminate processed foods and hidden sugars from your diet, the true taste of food shines through. For instance, rolled oats have a delicate nutty flavor. Real oatmeal is delicious. If you want to sweeten it, add raisons, dates, or other fruit.

When you use sweeteners, remember to choose nutrient dense sweeteners—sparingly. Strive to maintain even blood sugar levels. Every steep rise in blood sugar is followed by a crash. You’ll crave more sweets, no matter their source.

Remember, our goal is to eat a nutrient rich diet filled with whole vegetables and fruits. Raw, live, enzyme-laden food is best. Whether you call it poison, parasitic food, or dead, empty calories, there is no room in a healthy diet for processed sugar.

Stevia comes from the leaves of a tropical plant native to South America. Though it is 200-300 times sweeter than table sugar, stevia is not a sugar. Unlike other popular sweeteners, it has a glycemic index rating of less than 1 and therefore does not feed Candida (yeast) or cause any of the numerous other problems associated with sugar consumption. 

Stevia has been used as a sweetener for centuries, but as is often the case in our country, the interests of big business have superseded common sense and fair play. By law, stevia cannot be sold or labeled as a sweetener or food additive, only as a supplement. 

Some people complain of its strong licorice-like aftertaste, but now some companies claim to have a refining process that eliminates it. Even with its aftertaste, stevia is a perfect sweetener for strong sour flavors such as lemons. (It makes great lemonade!) You can also use stevia with other sweeteners to strengthen the sweetness of a recipe while still preparing a meal with relatively low sugar content. 

For more information about Stevia and the FDA’s decision not to allow stevia as a food additive, check out NaturalNews.com

Agave nectar is produced from the juice of the agave plant, the same juice which is fermented to make tequila. Agave juice is filtered and heated then concentrated into a liquid, with a viscosity similar to maple syrup. It is much sweeter than sugar but has a much lower glycemic index.

Agave nectar is high in fructose and low in glucose. Lighter grades have a mild, neutral flavor. The amber and dark grades offer the delicate flavor of agave with increasing intensity.

We at OLM do not recommend agave as an alternative sweetener. Too much fructose is no better for you then too much glucose. How much is too much? Not much at all. Excess fructose cannot be processed in the liver and gets converted into insulin resistant fatty triglycerides. And raw agave nectar is still heavily processed and not really “raw”.

I know a couple who buys only organic meat. Most of their processed food, like energy bars, is organic. They made the decision to start buying organic food years ago, and yet they still drink soda every day! That’s like a crack addict trying to cut down on smoking. I just want to yell at them, “Save your money! Buy the cheap meat. Buy the frosted flakes and the power bars. Cut out the soda!”

There are 10 to 12 teaspoons of sugar in one can of cola! People who drink soda are destroying their bodies’ ability to properly utilize the nutrition they are trying to get from their organic foods. If you want to improve your health, the first step is to cut out the refi ned sugars like high fructose corn syrup and white table sugar. The next step is to eat more raw fruits and vegetables. The third step is to get a proper multivitamin/ mineral that is easily assimilated. I’m sorry to say that buying organic is not at the top of the list.

I know this is Organic Lifestyle Magazine. It may sound as though I am telling people to stop buying organic foods. I’m not. I’m saying that if you care about the environment, you have every reason to buy organic foods. If you care about fair treatment of animals, you should certainly buy organic meat. But the people I am specifically speaking of are pharmaceutically dependent soda junkies, and I just have to wonder why. They don’t get it. The only reason they are buying organic foods is for their health. And they just can’t figure out why they’re spending so much money at the grocery store and not getting any better. They say they may not be able to keep buying organic if gas prices continue to go up. This couple is even trying to conceive a child, and they can’t figure out why she can’t get pregnant!

Health is so simple, yet we have convoluted it and perverted it and allowed ourselves to be brainwashed. Eat what we ate before cancer, diabetes, ADHD, and auto-immune diseases were rampant. Eat what we ate before we had a food industry bombarding us with commercials. Eat fresh, raw fruits and veggies!

If you are trying to improve your health, you need to start thinking for yourself. Quit believing everything you hear from a company that is trying to sell you something. I see so many people who have decided to follow the advice of a study that says coff ee is good for them, because they’re addicted to coff ee. If I were to show them a study that says coffee is bad for them, they would dismiss it. This isn’t education, it’s self delusion.

Simplify things. Think for yourself. Eat more raw fruits and vegetables. Eat fewer refi ned and processed foods. You will notice a diff erence, not just with your health, but in your pocketbook, too.

Tired of big oil raking in all this profit while they also benefit from massive government subsidies thanks to the Bush administration? Is your children’s college fund going out of your pocket and into your local gas pump? Maybe you are a tree hugging hippie with a hybrid that used to cost $15 to fill up and now you spend $45. Or maybe you’re a hummer-driving logger who would run over a spotted owl if you saw one lying on the road. Either way, unless you are heavily invested in big oil, you’re probably not too happy with what’s happening at the gas pumps. There is no denying that big oil companies are taking advantage of us. But I for one am VERY HAPPY ABOUT IT!!!

I’m not invested in oil. I’m not a wealthy man by any stretch. It hurts me as much as it hurts you to fill up at the gas station. I feel the pain of the people on eBay who are selling their wedding rings to pay for gas. But I also know this: we as Americans drive and drive and drive, and until recently we had no concern over whether or not we were damaging the environment. Oh sure, we’ve all heard of people who carpooled, but we’ve probably never met one unless we live in California. We drive SUVs while people in Europe are cramming themselves into tiny cars like the ones a dozen clowns try to squeeze into at a circus.

A few years ago someone asked me, “What’s it gonna take to curb our oil usage?” I told them it would take more than global warming, more than war, more than the availability of alternative fuels. I said it would take very high gas prices. How high? Well, a lot higher than they are now.

We’re bitching, but how many of us have bought a hybrid? How many of us have written our local congressman or senator to ask why we don’t have electric cars? How many of us have done enough research to discover that this whole hydrogen fuel cell campaign was put together by the same people who bought up the battery patents for electric cars and then chose to sit on the technology so it can’t be used for another 12 years? How many people really understand that biofuel from corn is a worse idea than what we are doing now?

Until we are paying the true cost of gasoline, including the environmental cleanup and the health care costs associated with pollution, we will continue to drive like there is no tomorrow.

I was at the gas station in South Georgia when I overheard a guy talking about how he was thinking of trading in his pickup truck for a hybrid. I couldn’t help but smile. When a guy who wears a cap that says, “I’d rather push a Ford than drive a Chevy,” —a guy who drives a new Ford F 150 pickup with a gun rack, a confederate flag on the rear window, and a McCain bumper sticker—talks about trading in his truck for a hybrid, there’s hope for us all.

Trade in your car for a moped; and take public transportation whenever possible. Better yet, get a bicycle! Car pool to work and walk everywhere else. When you do need to drive, following ten tips can save you gas, and money.