The Body’s Temperature Tolerance

A Sign of Health

A few days ago I turned off the A.C. and opened the windows. The temperature dived as we move into the fall. Last night, the temperature dropped to 43°. Inside I woke up to a house at 48°. But I wasn’t uncomfortable. My hands and feet were as warm as the rest of my body. I went outside with a t-shirt and shorts and was still comfortable.

I wasn’t always like this, but I am comfortable with temperatures from 40° to 103° F. I used to hate the heat. Back when I was out of shape,  I hated to sweat.  It felt toxic, and it was. I was unhealthy and my sweat smelled bad and felt “icky”. I was overweight. Just about anything temperature under 80° was fine with me. At over 350 pounds I had plenty of insulation for the cold weather.

When I lost weight this changed. Hot weather was a bit easier to deal with, as I did not sweat as easily, but cold weather was much more difficult for me. My feet and hands would get cold easily. If it did get over 85° I would be uncomfortable.

The healthier I became the less temperature extremes bothered me. I noticed that a little bit of sweat, even a lot of sweat, feels good. And the colder weather is more comfortable because my blood is healthier, and I have much better circulation now.



Chemical Dumbing Down Of Society

Whether you ascribe to conspiracy theories or plain cause and effect, there is no doubt the chemical cocktail we breathe, ingest, and absorb each day is dumbing down America.

CNN reports Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-New Jersey, told a hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Superfund, Toxics and Environmental Health that of the 84,000 chemicals on the market today, only about one percent has been studied for safety and that our children are “guinea pigs in an uncontrolled experiment.” He has introduced legislation to require chemical manufacturers to prove product safety before products are marketed to the public.

The Environmental Working Group has conducted studies—body burden testing—since the early 2000s. They measure toxic chemicals in the blood of adults, children, and newborns. Testing for 550 chemicals, they have found 486 in their test subjects. Notable chemicals of concern include:

  • BPA
  • Lead, mercury, methymercury
  • PFCs – “teflon” chemical
  • PCBs – banned in the US in 76, still found in cord blood
  • Musks from fragrances
  • Pesticides
  • Perchlorate (rocket fuel)

Cord blood studies show an average of 232 chemicals in the blood of newborn babies, chemicals found in plastics, cosmetics, shampoos, conditioners, mattresses and electronics. The Environmental Working Group is following these children from birth through early childhood and discovering a definite correlation between the number of chemicals found in their blood at birth and later development.

In addition to the chemicals we are exposed to through contamination of our food, water, and environment, our government purposefully forces us to ingest toxins through mandatory vaccinations and fluoridization of our water. Fluoride is more toxic than lead and accumulates in our bodies, yet we drink it every day.

Dr. Russell Blaylock, a retired neurosurgeon, released a you-tubevideo titled Chemical Dumbing Down of Society. It is his belief that the government allows or encourages the use of mercury in vaccinations and fluoride in water to purposefully dumb down our citizens to maintain a malleable society.    Whether our government promotes a toxic environment as a means to control society, chooses to ignore toxicity due to pressure from big business, or is simply not doing its job protecting its citizens, it is time we recognize the fact that our government does not protect us. Our government knowingly allows toxins that can affect our health and development to be included in medications, vaccines, food, water, soaps, shampoos, conditioners, beauty products and household items. It is imperative that we raise awareness on these issues and demand new protections.



Is Caffeine Making You Fat?

An Excerpt from the book The Decaf Diet, Is Caffeine Making You Fat?

by Eugene Wells

As Americans, we are on the verge of a national health crisis. Not only are we fatter than ever before, but we are getting fatter faster than ever before. The obesity epidemic is spiraling out of control and if we don’t come up with some effective nationwide solutions soon, researchers believe that the United States may experience its first modern decline in life expectancy, as a result of obesity’s associated health problems. Obesity and the diseases that come with it – type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and many more – are the largest threats to our national health. We need solutions, and we need them fast.

One dietary factor that we seldom consider in our weight loss efforts is caffeine, which most of us regularly consume in the form of coffee, tea, soft drinks, and chocolate. How do these caffeinated beverages and foods affect our weight loss efforts? For years, the discussion of caffeine’s impact on weight gain has been confined to the dark corners of internet chat rooms and forums, where some coffee drinkers were beginning to make connections between their caffeine habits and weight gain. Now, we have access to a wealth of new research that proves their suspicions correct. Caffeine does make us fat, by contributing to overeating and by slowing metabolism.

Caffeine contributes to overeating and slows metabolism in a number of different ways. In this article, I will focus on caffeine’s impact on our stress levels, which causes an increase in hunger, muscle breakdown, and a relocation of fat stores to the body’s center. More precisely, caffeine raises our cortisol levels, and cortisol is one of the body’s chief stress hormones. With regular caffeine use, our cortisol levels become chronically elevated, making weight loss and the maintenance of a lean physique difficult.

First, elevated cortisol levels promote appetite, contributing to overeating. Second, elevated cortisol levels also lead to muscle breakdown, reducing our fat-burning muscle mass. Finally, elevated cortisol levels make our bodies prefer to store central and visceral fat, contributing to the “pot belly” look. By stimulating cortisol and its fat-promoting effects, caffeine contributes to positive energy balance and makes weight loss more difficult.

Since caffeine has these fattening effects, cutting back on our caffeine intake is helpful in maintaining a lean physique. While decreasing caffeine is advisable, given the difficulty in reducing caffeine intake and the centrality of daily caffeine use at the workplace, mitigating caffeine’s fat-promoting effects while continuing to drink coffee, tea, and soda may be a more practical strategy than eliminating our caffeine use altogether.

So what can we do to counteract caffeine’s effect on our stress levels without quitting caffeine altogether? The best way to keep your cortisol levels in check is by adopting and maintaining a diet that is high in vitamin C, which is effective in lowering cortisol and keeping this stress hormone under control. To maintain healthy levels of vitamin C in your body, you can eat fresh fruits and vegetables, including citrus fruits, fresh greens, and berries. If you are under a lot of pressure at work and find yourself increasing your caffeine intake, then you can add an additional green salad or some citrus fruit to your diet in order to help blunt caffeine’s cortisol-raising effect. By making fresh fruits and vegetables a regular part of your diet, you will be reducing at least some of caffeine’s fat-promoting effects.

Eugene Wells discusses other ways in which caffeine causes us to overeat while slowing metabolism in his book, The Decaf Diet: Is Caffeine Making You Fat? available at Amazon.com. Wells also describes what we can do to blunt caffeine’s fattening effects when we choose to use it, and how we can reduce our overall level of caffeine consumption to achieve and maintain a lean physique.

 



Ingredients to Avoid

How to Read and Understand Food Labels

My roommate, who makes a concerted effort to eat well, brought home a pecan pie the other day. I looked at the label and wondered why in the world she bought it. The first ingredient was sugar, the second brown sugar—not cane juice, or even organic sugar—just sugar.

So I asked her how something so unhealthy ended up in our fridge. “It’s organic!” she said.
Processed foods are not required to identify GMO ingredients.

I didn’t bother to argue. I just looked closely at the label the next time I opened the fridge. It was made with organic eggs and organic wheat flour, but out of ten or twelve ingredients, those two were the only organic ones.  And this supposedly organic pie was made with partially hydrogenated oils!

The first thing to remember when it comes to reading labels is to read the whole thing. Ignore labels on the front of the packaging that say natural or organic. Read the actual ingredients. When it comes to processed foods, if it says it’s natural, ignore the claim. It means nothing. If it says it’s organic, it doesn’t have to be 100% organic unless it says it is. Remember processed foods can be labeled organic if only 80% of the ingredients are organic. And organic junk food is still junk food.

There are plenty of people who will argue about how you should limit calories, fats, sodium, and more. Our stance is a little different. We think you should eliminate processed foods altogether.  Why? Because they are dead foods, void of natural nutrition. Oh, they may be enriched with artificial vitamins and minerals, but what are you really eating?

Most of our processed foods include high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils (trans fats) and MSG. Avoid them all—always. And learn the multiple names they use for MSG to try and sneak it past you.

Big business has been able to shove their agenda through the FDA—genetically modified foods are not labeled. If you want to avoid GMOs, and we hope you do, don’t eat any processed food unless it is labeled 100% organic.  And remember—make processed foods the exception, not the rule. Fresh food is better for you and better for the environment. You’ll make your body happy if your diet consists of 80% or more fresh, raw, organic fruits and vegetables and you’ll find you aren’t throwing a ton of packaging into the landfill each year.

High fructose corn syrup and soy are very likely to be GMO foods.

So yeah—our best advice is to avoid the label issue altogether by avoiding that processed food. But if you are going to eat it, read the label carefully and choose wisely. Don’t pay too much attention to anything but the ingredients list. It’s not so important how many grams of saturated fat it has, it matters where the fat comes from (for instance, some saturated fats are very good for you, others are very bad). If you don’t understand any of the ingredients—pass. Buy something better. Go organic!

Here is a short list of Ingredients and Phrases to Avoid:

Feel free to add to the list in the comment section below!



School Lunches

For years our school systems have been feeding our children from boxes and cans. Prepackaged, processed foods and fried foods are the standard. Meals made from scratch with fresh whole fruits and vegetables are too expensive for the most of our schools’ meal budgets. And the schools supplement their budgets with vending machines filled with soda and sugared snacks and chips.

Click here to see Full Sized Infograph Image

The result has been two-fold: our children’s mental/psychological welfare has suffered and so has their health. We’ve conducted studies that have proven a truly nutritious lunch program results in a sharp rise in academic ability and a decrease in conduct problems. And yet, current practices continue.

We know the way we feed our children contributes to poor health, including obesity, and yet we continue. Not only are we “saving money” with our current lunch program, we are supporting big business.

But the status quo will soon change. Why? Because we’ve seen the light? Because we recognize how truly stupid it is to ignore the nutritional needs of growing children? Because we’ve recognized the link between poor nutrition and chronic or terminal illnesses? Or declining test scores?

No. It seems we may change the way we feed our children because we are running out of soldiers.

Mission Readiness, a group of retired military leaders, is lobbying to eliminate junk food from the schools because obesity is the leading medical reason military applicants are rejected; 27% of military age Americans are too obese to serve.



Cold Sores vs. Canker Sores

These pesky blisters are painful, ugly, and slow to heal. What we call cold sores or fever blisters are caused by the herpes simplex virus. Herpes infections are reoccurring, plaguing us in times of high stress or other illness such as a cold or fever—hence the name. It is said that most of us have acquired this virus by the age of 20.

These blisters are red raised areas filled with fluid. Several small blisters often merge to form a larger one.  They appear on the lips, the roof of the mouth, in the nose, or on the face. Once they rupture, bright red skin is exposed that scabs over.

Canker sores form on the tongue, the gums, and the inner sides and the base of the mouth. They appear as white or yellow blisters circled in red. These sores are actually ulcers, small bacterial infections. They can be caused by irritation or injury to the mouth from orthodontia, sharp foods, or rough toothbrushes; by food allergies; or from vitamin deficiencies such as iron, folate, or vitamin C or vitamin B12.

Both infections may include swollen lymph nodes and flu like symptoms.

Also check out Natural Remedies for Cold Sores, and Natural Remedies for Canker Sores



Dental Fluorodosis

For fifty years, fluoride has been added to municipal water across America. We’ve been told it makes our teeth stronger and prevents decay. In recent years we have learned that fluoride is actually industrial waste, that tests were never done by the FDA to assess its safety, and that its use in drinking water was first suggested by the Nazis as one of many means to dumb down society through ingestion of toxins. None of these revelations has resulted in its removal from our water supply, not when the mainstream belief that fluoride inhibits tooth decay remains firm.

A recent Fox News interview with dentist Gerald Curatola reveals a new threat from fluoride—fluoridosis. He states, “Forty one percent of adolescents age twelve to fifteen have some form of fluoridosis defects on their teeth. And this ironically makes the enamel of the teeth weaker, not stronger.”

Fluroidosis is caused by “over-exposure” to fluoride. Mild symptoms of fluoridosis are white spots on the teeth. Severe fluoridosis erodes the teeth. They become so soft, they crumble.

“…if this is what we can see the effects of fluoride are on the outside,” said Dr. Curatola, “you know, we start to question what the effects of fluoride are inside the body.”

Since some non-fluoridated communities report less tooth decay than fluoridated communities, perhaps new interest by legislators calling for a review of the fluoridation issue will result in safer water.