It has been said that there is no pain worse than a toothache. Images of what people will do to deal with this are branded into our consciousness through movies like Cast Away with Tom Hanks, Marathon Man with Dustin Hoffman, and many others. I’m sure that you can think of a few others without trying too hard.
The pain, the throbbing, the agonizing feeling that your head is about to explode are a reality for many at this very moment. I have had women tell me they would rather experience childbirth than the pain associated with a toothache. As a man, I wouldn’t know, but at least with childbirth you have something to show for the experience at the end.
It is also a reality that much of this is entirely avoidable. Here are a few ways to get a handle on this starting right now:
1. Understand that you can have a cavity without experiencing tooth pain. This is probably, the main reason that people get into trouble. They assume that if a tooth isn’t hurting, there must not be anything wrong with it. Nothing could be further from the truth. You can even have multiple cavities — on the same tooth — without pain in the early and moderate stages of decay. How is this possible? It’s simple. The outer layer of your tooth, called enamel, is mineral. It has no nerves and therefore will not send you a pain signal to say it is breaking down.
2. Watch your diet. Avoid sugary foods, drinks, and snacks. Cut sodas out of your diet. The average 12 oz. can of soda contains about as many teaspoons of sugar. Many foods also contain hidden sugars. Foods with bleached flour (think bread, pizza, bagels, cereals, chips, pasta, etc.) are among the stickiest and most acid-forming foods out there. I would venture to guess that the residue following a sandwich or pretzel will probably stick to your tooth longer than a caramel. Bad news if you don’t brush after meals.
3. Develop disciplined oral hygiene habits. Make brushing your teeth after meals and snacks, as well as daily flossing, a part of your daily routine. Many people start out well (especially after a trip to the dentist), but become less disciplined after a few weeks. Very often they will stop flossing altogether, for example. You need to make your hygiene routine as regular a part of your daily habit as eating.
4. Get out of the “emergency” mentality. Some people will only see a dentist for emergencies. You know who you are. So does the dentist. As my receptionist puts it when one of these people calls: “His (or her) head must be on fire.” Emergencies end up costing you far more than preventive care. If you don’t believe it, ask your dentist about the cost of replacing a missing tooth. It can cost ten to twenty times more than a filling!
5. See your dentist regularly. Believe it or not, this actually saves you money in the long-run. Patients that see their dentist at least twice a year are much less likely to experience the high costs associated with neglect than those who see their dentist only when they perceive a problem. There is also the matter of lost income associated with time out of work. Perhaps not least importantly, you will avoid much of the pain and discomfort that comes with abscesses, bleeding gums, broken teeth, and swollen faces.
Take care of yourself. Apart from the health risks involved with infection and the inability to digest your food well when you lose your teeth, tooth pain can put a serious dent in your disposition. It’s hard to be happy when you are losing sleep because of constant throbbing or when you can’t concentrate at work or at home. You can find more tips on how to prevent dental problems and save money while doing so in the article section of my website.
Known as the Doctor of Dental Wellness, Dr. Richard Walicki is a graduate of the Temple University School of Dentistry. Dr. Walicki is a general dentist with a focus on wellness and has maintained an active private practice in Philadelphia for over twenty years. His mission is to help people attain practical solutions for their dental health problems through education, prevention and nutrition. Dr. Walicki is a contributor to the LiberationWellnessBlog and a supporter of real food. Additional articles of related interest can be located on his website. A free newsletter and bonus report are also available.
On the Morning Edition July 19, 2010, NPR covered the increasing popularity of fresh milk.
It was an honor to sit down with April Fulton and discuss with her all my reasons for choosing fresh milk.
I think she did a fantastic job piecing together all the information she collected to give a balanced explanation on why some consumers choose fresh milk. I was thrilled to hear that a former FDA person actually admitted that pasteurization does destroy some nutrients. At the end of the program, the narrator says “The food safety expert says not getting sick is what’s important.
He would never drink raw milk. But he thinks banning it only encourages Liz Reitzig and others to skirt the law, and that could put them at greater risk.
If you’re one of the one to 3 percent of the population that drinks raw milk, Acheson says make sure that the cows are clean, your hands are clean, and the bottle are sterilized and stored properly.”
This is the most flexibility I have ever heard from a government person on raw milk. Kudos to NPR for covering this important topic and doing such a great job on it!
About Liz Reitzig
Liz Reitzig is a certified Liberation Wellness Nutritionist and a regular contributor to Liberation Wellness (www.LiberationWellnessBlog.com) She serves as President of the Maryland Independent Consumers and Farmers Association and Secretary of the National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association. As a champion for real foods and farm freedom, Liz is the co-founder and partner in a farm fresh buying club and raises her own family on real foods from local farms. She is also a Chapter Leader for the Weston A Price Foundation.
The science supporting a high-fat, moderate protein, low-carbohydrate nutritional approach is sound and has been for many years now. And the more we learn about the detrimental impact that carbs are having on our health, the closer we’re inching to a day and age when we will be able to love and enjoy this fabulous way of eating as a universally accepted dietary option for people dealing with obesity, diabetes, and many of the chronic diseases so many people are currently suffering from.
You might be thinking to yourself that this seems like a wild dream to even fathom low-carb acceptance as a plausible outcome with the current negative atmosphere about dietary fat (that it is “clogging your arteries” and going to give you a heart attack) and almost universal embracement of carbohydrates (that they are “essential” to the human diet) that livin’ la vida low-carb could ever be taken seriously as the natural therapeutic treatment option for healing many of life’s health woes. But there’s good news on that front–we’re getting closer now than we’ve ever been before thanks to the newfound embracement of high-fat, low-carb living by one of the world’s most recognized names in health, Dr. Andrew Weil.
As the father of the “integrative medicine” approach used by so many naturopaths and leaders in healthy living today, Dr. Weil has written several bestselling books over the past few decades on a variety of subjects related to anti-aging, alternative medicine, and using food as medicine. His prominence as a top voice in the healthy industry was affirmed when he appeared on the front cover of Time magazine twice after being named one of the 25 most influential Americans in 1997 and then again as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2005. Heck, he’s even had a mushroom named after him!
Dr. Weil runs the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine where he has started a nationwide trend towards teaching integrative medicine to eager medical school students looking to help patients more holistically than pharmaceutically. In other words, this guy is the real deal when it comes to being a highly influential member of the health establishment. But despite his many years as a high-profile teacher and leader in the health industry, Dr. Weil once again returned to being a student of nutrition and the powerful effect certain kinds of food can have on metabolic health after reading a book in 2007 by a science journalist named Gary Taubes called Good Calories Bad Calories.
A transformation of sorts began happening within the mind of Dr. Weil after he carefully examined the quality science that Taubes offered up in his bestselling book detailing the indelible connection between carbohydrates and obesity/disease due to the rise in insulin levels. His change in thinking culminated right before our eyes on national television when Dr. Weil appeared on CNN’s “Larry King Live” on October 19, 2007 to share what he thought about the concepts he had read in Good Calories Bad Calories with Taubes, special guest host Joy Behar and Dr. Mehmet Oz.
After his appearance on “Larry King Live” aired, the buzz almost immediately began within the low-carb community about how Dr. Andrew Weil might be emerging as the next great champion for this cause we all believe so strongly in for helping a large segment of the population effectively get a handle on their obesity and disease.
It certainly seemed that way when he admitted in an interview published on his web site that “cutting carbs” helped him lose weight while simultaneously promoting the importance of consuming saturated fat in your diet. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if some doctor nobody had ever heard of was espousing this–but Dr. Weil is well-respected and almost universally lauded as a living legend in the world of health.
Check out Dr. Weil’s name listed at the very bottom of PCRM’s Board of Directors: CLICK on the image to enlarge
Given PCRM’s stated problems with a high-fat, low-carb diet and even dedicating an entire web site to discrediting the Atkins diet, it was intriguing to read Dr. Weil’s column on The Huffington Post earlier this month entitled “Fat Or Carbs: Which Is Worse? This brilliant column which should be recommended reading for anyone who cares about the nutritional relationship to health highlights all of the lessons Dr. Weil has accumulated over the past three years since reading Good Calories Bad Calories including key points like the fact that saturated fat in meat isn’t harmful (he describes it as “the safest element” in a burger meal) as evidenced by this January 2010 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the infamous “Seven Countries” study conducted by Ancel Keys forty years ago was severely flawed from the start, the parallel rise in dyslipidemia associated with the astronomical increased consumption of sugar, and the nutritional superiority of choosing grass-fed forms of beef and butter to consume over grain-fed.
While he’s still hung up somewhat on the idea that meat consumption is inherently a bad thing (citing “humanitarian and ecological reasons to avoid a meat-centric diet”), Dr. Weil notes that “we would be much healthier as a nation if we stopped worrying so much about fats, and instead made a concerted effort to avoid processed, quick-digesting carbohydrates — especially added sugars.” I wonder what his colleagues at PCRM have to say about this.
This certainly begs the question: Is Dr. Andrew Weil breaking ranks from the vegetarian/vegan movement to actively promote the healthy high-fat, low-carb lifestyle? Only time will tell, but with his noted appearance several years ago on “Larry King Live,” his personal weight loss success eating low-carb, and now this 2010 column praising saturated fat and reduced carbohydrate consumption, it certainly seems that way. And before you ask it, yes, I’m trying to get Dr. Weil on my podcast show to talk about this change in his thinking regarding diet. The last time contact was made with his assistant in February this year I was told his schedule would be very busy for most of the rest of the year and to try again in September. It took me a long time to finally land my recent interview with Dr. Robert Lustig, so you know I won’t be giving up anytime soon to get Dr. Weil.
What do you think about somebody like Dr. Andrew Weil espousing the concepts of livin’ la vida low-carb as boldly in the mainstream press as he has done since 2007?
Do you think he has the kind of influence that could convince an entirely new segment of the population to give low-carb living a closer look or will he be characterized by his vegetarian/vegan friends as being out of touch with sound dietary principles? Share your thoughts about this developing story that is sure to be ruffling the feathers of those who promote a low-fat, high-carb, plant-based diet.
Jimmy Moore is the popular blogger, podcaster and author of Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb who lost 180 pounds on the Atkins diet in 2004 and quickly established himself as a highly influential layperson in the field of health and nutrition. His wildly successful Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Blog has been educating, encouraging and inspiring readers since 2005 and his accompanying iTunes podcast The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore is one of the most listened to health broadcasts online today featuring hundreds of enchanting interviews with the leading voices in the world of diet and healthy living! Jimmy’s latest book compiling all the knowledge he has learned along his journey is called 21 Life Lessons From Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb: How The Health Low-Carb Lifestyle Changed Everything I Thought I Knew. He lives in Spartanburg, SC with his beautiful wife Christine and their four crazy cats!
She taught nutrition from the perspective of conventional wisdom for 14 years before she came across the great revolutionary work of Dr. Mary Enig on the healthfulness of consuming saturated fat. Ever since, she has become an activist sharing the truth about nutrition and its impact on health.
Listen to Annette share about why it confused her to learn that nutrition is more about disease management rather than prevention, her exposure to the late, great Dr. Robert C. Atkins at a dietitian’s conference, her asthma diagnosis in 2002 which led her to find alternative nutritional therapies to taking steroids, how Dr. Enig’s book Know Your Fats radically changed her thinking on diet, the anger she felt that almost made her quit nutrition for good, why it’s so difficult for dietitians to break free from the conventional wisdom they’ve been taught, how she got hooked up with Kevin Brown and wrote The Liberation Diet with him, how her frequent letters to the editor about consuming saturated fat raised the ire of some local dietitians to the point they reported her to have her credentials revoked (she won by presenting the science), the quirky disclaimer she uses about the work she is doing now, why you have to eat processed foods to eat a low-fat diet, whether lawsuits about diet are forthcoming, how to get people to break free from their fear of fat, her high saturated fat remedy for heart disease, why fat is so delicious and nutritious in your diet, why she shared the history behind the failed low-fat diet in her book, what role exercise plays in her program, her personal negative experience eating a high-carb diet, how the Internet is leading the revolution for spreading the truth, and her quick thoughts on agave nectar, exercise for weight loss, butter vs. margarine, the so-called “healthy” foods that are anything but, and the profit motive that dominates much of the promotion of food in America.
Click here to access this fascinating conversation with a registered dietitian who truly understands the importance of saturated fat in a healthy diet.
The Liberation Diet By Kevin Brown and Annette Presley
People these days feel trapped by the obvious failure of conventional wisdom when it comes to their diet and health. They have faithfully followed everything they’ve been told is good for them down to the last bit of whole grain bread and tofu burgers that are most commonly associated with the standard low-fat, high-carb, plant-based dietary recommendations but they still inexplicably deal with obesity and chronic disease like never before! What the heck is going on here? Its one thing to fool around with your personal fitness and nutrition where you are expected to gain weight and have unhealthy blood sugars, lipids and the like. But what can explain these things happening when you’re supposedly doing everything 100% right?
That’s the answer that personal trainer Kevin Brown and registered dietitian Annette Presley answer for readers in their counterintuitive book called
Brown and Presley do an outstanding job of explaining the breakdown that is happening with nutrition in the 21st Century. They correctly identify whats wrong with a one-size-fits-all approach to promoting the same diet to
everyone without taking into account the specific individualized factors that make one way of eating better than another for certain people. Challenging this conventional wisdom on nutrition is what you get early and often from The Liberation Diet and the authors d
on’t hold back in blasting away at the nonsense that pervades from the so-called health experts and government policymakers responsible for perpetrating these lies on the unsuspecting public. The stories behind how foods like Crisco came into being are truly fascinating and should make you shudder about what the food industry is feeding Americans that we DON’T yet know about. We learn that clever marketing and a little sleight of hand is all it takes to convince people to start eating something their great-grandparents would have never even entertained a thought about eating. From margarine to Cool Whip to Wonder Bread, we’re surrounded by so many fake foods that the message this book implores on the reader is to simply get back to eating real, whole foods again. Duh!
As you turn page after page of The Liberation Diet, you’ll no doubt find yourself becoming angrier and angrier by all the preponderance of the evidence presented that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that we have been
lied to about what constitutes a healthy diet. And even more egregious is the story you’ll read about entrepreneurs Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller who were the ones who set up the accreditation process for medical schools. Because they saw the potential for billions of dollars in profits from pharmaceutical sales, the only schools that would be accredited were ones that taught students about how to prescribe expensive drugs to their patients rather than having them learn about the equally effective nutritional therapies. Unfortunately, this model for teaching medical school students still exists today while millions of people in the United States are needlessly suffering from mostly preventable diseases related their diet. You may need to start breathing deeply or take a walk in between chapters to get your blood pressure down again because this information will have you up in arms!
Brown and Presley also point readers back to the infamous Seven Countries study by Ancel Keys that has become the standard-bearer for the low-fat diet quagmire that is surprisingly still in existence today despite the fact there have never been any scientific studies published proving it is effective for weight loss or improving health. In fact, there is ample evidence that the diet has been a dismal failure for people with obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other diseases of modern man. But rather than admitting they’ve been wrong all these years, the purveyors of the high-carb, low-fat diet keep touting it as the gospel truth while tens of millions more are getting sick and dying from the biggest health scam in the history of the world. And the politicians on Capitol Hill are partially to blame for this as well.
Senator George McGovern and his committee on nutrition in the mid-1970′s were the ones who created all the mass hysteria and fear-mongering about saturated fat when they promoted the now-infamous Dietary Goals for Americans that was later picked up by the United States Department of Agriculture to help them promote the sale of more key crops like grains, corn and bean (which just so happen to be very high in carbohydrate). The authors write in their book, They liked the idea of a low-fat diet because if people cut the fat from their diets, they would have to add carbohydrates. Again, this is still the overriding theme of the USDA Dietary Guidelines released every five years in the United States with seemingly no dramatic changes each time new recommendations are released. This is why The Liberation Diet book was written and so sorely needed in modern-day society. Its time for public revolt against the status quo!
So if everything is so grim and bleak, do we have any hope at all? You bet we do! Its called THE TRUTH and you get a lot of it within the pages of this book. Learn why saturated fat and cholesterol are not the reasons why we have heart disease, how eating butter, lard, and coconut oil are actually good for you, why high cholesterol foods like eggs are healthy, why consuming real whole (raw) milk is optimal for your health, and why the highly processed hydrogenated fats (trans fats) and vegetable oils are the real villains in our diet along with sugar and excessive consumption of carbohydrate. And there are some real doozy stories you’ll read about how common carbohydrate foods consumed by most Americans like cereal actually came into existence. You’ll never believe it until you read about it. This book is peppered with ample evidence that should convince you that eating carbs will make you fat, diseased, and eventually dead from some preventable chronic health problems that nobody is talking about. You’ll learn that there is absolutely zero science supporting a high-carb diet and that livin la vida low-carb is NOT the fad diet it has been made out to be by the anti-low-carb members of the health media.
Other topics of interest covered in this book include calories in, calories out, salt, water, exercise, supplements, and more! Real-life examples of how people have changed their lives by implementing the strategies of The Liberation Diet are also included to encourage you as you take this newfound journey for yourself. Of course, you also get lots of recipes, references and other resources to help you along as you improve your lifestyle for good. Having interviewed both Kevin Brown and Annette Presley for my health-based podcast, I can personally attest that they are the real deal when it comes to articulating information that will help you in your personal weight and health goals. If you’ve been frustrated and felt trapped by the low-fat lie that’s been heavily promoted for far too long, then why not give the concepts outlined in this book a try for yourself? It could be the answer you’ve been looking for all along.
As a dentist, patients often solicit my advice regarding the use of oral nutritional supplements. A common question is: Are they effective? The answer: it depends. If you are deficient in a particular mineral or vitamin, then most definitely.
Of course, this begs the next question: How do you know if you are deficient?
Any competent physician or nutritionist can be of assistance here. Apart from symptoms produced by certain deficiencies that are often observable clinically, a simple urinalysis or blood test can be used to identify which specific vitamins or minerals are lacking. It sometimes surprises people to learn that vitamins are essential elements to good health. In fact, by definition, their absence will produce a disease.
For example:
• Lack of vitamin C produces: scurvy (fatigue, nausea, bleeding gums and loose teeth)
• Lack of vitamin D produces: rickets (bowed legs and arms from a failure to mineralize bone)
• Lack of vitamin A produces: night blindness
There are many forms of B vitamins. Here are a few of the diseases produced by their deficiency:
• Lack of vitamin B1: beriberi (can have several forms causing either cardiovascular or nervous system difficulties)
• Lack of vitamin B2: ariboflavinosis (symptoms include cracking of the lips and corners of the mouth)
• Lack of vitamin B3: pellagra (symptoms include the “four Ds”: diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, and death).
And the list goes on. The same holds true for certain mineral deficiencies. Most people know that a lack of iron will produce anemia. While it is true that some deficiencies are more difficult to acquire than others, the fact remains that if you are excessively low in a given substance, the consequences generally follow.
One reason that blood tests are not always a reliable indicator of deficiency, however, has to do with the fact that the blood attempts to maintain a balance of all those things it needs (a corrective mechanism called “homeostasis”), regardless of deficiency. Thus, unless seriously out of balance, vitamin and mineral levels in blood can come back “normal” (because they can be found in the blood), though they are low elsewhere. In other words, the blood took them first so that it could maintain normal levels.
So, how do you know what to take? One of the most reliable ways is to be tested. Then, you can determine what you need and what the most optimal levels are for you.
In the absence of reliable testing, it is generally best to obtain your vitamins and minerals from natural sources.
This means getting it from your food or through the use of “whole food” vitamins. Not all synthetic vitamins are well absorbed and so will produce variable benefits. Sometimes, they can actually create deficiencies, because your body has to convert these “vitamins” to a more useable form. In the process, it takes nutrients from other sources in order to facilitate the process.
For that matter, improper or inefficient digestion can also make it difficult to extract the needed nutrients from your foods or vitamins. In this respect, some individuals also need to take digestive enzymes to facilitate the breakdown of proteins, fats and carbohydrates.
In my experience, several companies that produce high-quality whole food vitamins, minerals and herbal extracts are, Standard Process®, NutriWest®, and Simplexity Health™ Dr. Royal Lee, a dentist who founded Standard Process® actually developed the process for creating whole food concentrates. He stated many times that it was not possible for a synthetic vitamin to create the same result as a whole food concentrate complex of vitamins. In other words, synthetic vitamins can alter function, but they cannot support function. He stated that “the natural vitamin complexes contain the various closely related principles that are normally found together in foods.
The more we study those complexes, the more complex they appear. That is why synthetic and chemically purified ‘vitamins’ are really not vitamins at all. They are only fragments of vitamins.” Dr. Lee then goes on to explain that “Vitamin deficiencies are now becoming recognized as specialized forms of starvation. Even overweight persons getting their full quota of calories, carbohydrates, fats and proteins, are very often starving to the danger point of disease from vitamin deficiencies.”
Your body was designed to assimilate nutrients, known and possibly as yet unknown, from whole foods. So this is the first method of balancing body chemistry. After this has been accomplished, any remaining imbalances can be addressed with whole food supplements such as those listed above. Your body has to have whole nutrients to maintain a healthy balance and function. Lack of balance leads to disease. So, yes, taking supplements (the right kind and in the proper amounts) can make a difference in both dental — and overall — health.
Known as the Doctor of Dental Wellness, Dr. Richard Walicki is a graduate of the Temple University School of Dentistry. Dr. Walicki is a general dentist with a focus on wellness and has maintained an active private practice in Philadelphia for over twenty years. His mission is to help people attain practical solutions for their dental health problems through education, prevention and nutrition. Dr. Walicki is a contributor to the LiberationWellnessBlog and a supporter of real food. Additional articles of related interest can be located on his website. A free newsletter and bonus report are also available.
It was WONDERFUL speaking with you; I still can’t believe it! I love your book so much, it is absolutely the best I have ever read on my favorite subjects…nutrition and exercise! The chapter on RAW milk is SO convincing and well written. I can’t even imagine someone reading that and walking away with any other conviction except to drink raw milk! I’ve been in an ongoing (sometimes heated) debate for the past three years with my brother who is convinced that I’m going to die of Listeria. J
When my husband said, “why are you getting that book; you’re not really going to learn anything new are you?” Well, much of what is in your book is simply solid reinforcement of what I have been able to glean from many bits and pieces, but much better written and very clear. And to my delight, I actually have learned a lot that I didn’t already know. That has been the icing on the cake, so to speak, cake made with coconut flour and REAL butter for sure! LOL!
It’s funny all of our low-fat friends and relatives come to our house for dinner and eat our high-fat/low carb/raw dairy foods as if they can’t get enough – like starving wolves!!!!
But then they go home and continue their very misguided low-fat lifestyle.
I do my best to be an ambassador but they are SO brain washed by the USDA and main stream media. I see them with their weight gain issues, allergies, their eye twitches, skin disorders, accelerated aging, sleeping disturbances and strained nerves and just sigh!
It is certainly a fragile battle to be fought, to help the ones we love without jeopardizing the relationship, isn’t it?
THANK YOU for being the diplomat of everything right and wholesome; for going out on a limb and risking ridicule and mockery in order to get the truth out there!
I appreciate what you have done and admire and respect you more than I have words to express! In light of the new USDA food guidelines, getting receptive ears is only going to get tougher.
I’ve heard it all; because several family members have had their gall bladders removed, the only reasonable conclusion is that it is”genetics”. I am not wanting to poke fun at anyone, but do we really need to place the blame for every ill on our genes? Really?!
Folks, genetics have been blamed for every ill under the sun: cancer, diabetes, heart disease, birth defects, excema, schizophrenia, obesity, breast cancer, etc.; along with a few “disorders’ such as laziness, obsessive compulsiveness, depression, shyness… You get the picture.
Well I’m not buyin’ it folks; I’m just not. After all, most of these diseases and disorders are particular to modern man, and certainly the rest occurred infrequently at best in people who suffered from malnutrition, war, and lack of decent living conditions, or indulged to excess.
But, “No!”, you say. “My mother was diabetic, my grandmother diabetic, and I am also diabetic; therefore it must be genetic”. More importantly, “My doctor says it is genetic!” Well, let’s bow down to the doctor/god who proclaims such truth!
Folks, we live in a processed world. Likely you are eating a similar diet as an adult to what you were fed as a child. This means your mother ate the same types of foods as you ate (and, scary though it seems, your children now do as well). Mom learned to cook from her mother, although Grandma likely ate far better as a girl than she did later in life, which is why she only developed diabetes as an old woman, not at 30, or 20, or… as people do now.
Our great grandparents ate mostly simple, local, whole foods. They had gardens, farms, or neighbors who were farmers. Their diets consisted of fresh, whole (unprocessed) milk, eggs, meat, fresh fruits & vegetables, and whole grains. They used lard and butter for cooking and baking, not crisco and vegetable oil. Fermented foods such as sauerkraut or pickles were part of the daily diet. Processed foods only began to make strong appearances on the local grocer’s shelves around the turn of the 20th century. Even still it was eggs, meat, and butter that were in demand. Now consider this: they and their parents died of old age, not degenerative disease!
I recall well my grandmother’s cooking; she was famous in our little Mid-Western town for her culinary skill. But she was feeding us on all kinds of new-fangled foods like sugar (and artificial color/flavor) laden Jello, casseroles made from canned vegetable and Campbells soup, and Tater Tots. Her pie crusts were dutifully made with Crisco, the fillings filled with canned fruit. Not good; Grandma died at 63.
My own mother fed us hamburger helper, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, turkey burgers (ultimate bluck!) and powdered skimmed milk. She has asthma, allergies, and developed other problems in spite of switching to “healthy” (low-fat) foods when I was a teen. I now tell people that it is important we get our nutrients from real food, not nutritional supplements: Mom popped multitude pills everyday, but even still refuses to eat butter or drink much whole, unprocessed milk (thankfully, she does consume some raw milk). She is proud of her 2 eggs a day, but suffers from severe short term memory loss and has had most of her major joints replaced. (Sorry Mom, but your story is just such a good example )
You must understand: we were not created to require knee replacements and back surgery. Nor were our bodies designed for behavior and learning disorders, degenerative diseases, depression, cancer. Our vision is supposed to hold out pretty well until we’re elderly, as is every other part of our body. And we were supposed to be able to eat all good things, not suffer from Celiac Disease and Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Then, when our time has come, we were designed to die of old age-what a concept!
There is now a new field of study called Epigenetics. This particular field explores how genes can be turned on and off to display differing characteristics dependent upon environmental, nutrient and other factors. It is a fascinating study!
The research of Dr. Weston A Price and others, seems to corroborate these findings. Dr. Price found that food played an absolutely integral role in the development of the human body and mind. Replacing nutrient-dense, traditional foods with the “foods of modern commerce” caused birth defects and many physical weaknesses, along with degenerative diseases and mental/emotional disorders in the people he studied. Today’s foods are far worse than those of Price’s day, and we are also much further down the road of malnourishment, due to the displacement of nutrients in our modern, processed “foods”. The work of Dr. Francis Pottenger, as well as the information coming from the study of epigenetics clearly show that the effects of a poor diet can, in fact, be passed down for several generations. But it also shows that as individuals we can affect change upon we, and our children’s, genes for generations to come.
So is it genetics, really? Well, in one sense I would say, “yes”. But to a much larger degree I must conclude that we hold within our hands, more specifically the tips of our forks, the power to change our very lives and the lives of future generations. It all begins with what we choose to put in our mouths, and the mouths of our families. Choose well.
Maureen Diaz is a certified Liberation Wellness Nutritionist, Educator, and Cooking Instructor. She works from home where she oversees the education and daily life of her large family. Maureen has also produced 3 cooking DVD’s including her latest available now, the Liberation Wellness Cooking DVD. For purchasing information email Maureen at: mamasfollies@gmail.com or visit her website, NourishingTraditionalCook.com, which is (sigh) still currently under construction.
The recession is lingering. . . . and for city dwellers in areas where agriculture is not big, this question can be important for a family’s budget.
While many families have sought out food co-ops and local farmers who aren’t certified organic but certainly are (they don’t use synthetic
pesticides, petroleum-based fertilizers, or sewer sludge), the chickens run free on grass, other families are making the hard choice on whether to spend their money on organic produce.
IS ORGANIC really important?
I recently came across an article in O Magazine — by author Nina Planck did a great job sharing her insights and research.
Our family is a ‘city’ family with a Whole Foods nearby a small market that provides local produce, meats, and dairy, and then
the BIG Super Market — Publix who has its allotted 6 feet of Organic produce 2 feet in the Meat section and so on.
To summarize Nina’s article, there were a whole bunch of European studies. The bottom line is that we now know that organic produce that is free of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer has:
1. A stronger immune system. The nitrogen produces a watery,
sugary cell sap that compromises the plant’s health (imagine that).*
A healthy plant, makes a healthier meal, and tastier.
2. Higher levels of beneficial antioxidants, including vitamin C
which helps prevent aging)
3. More polyunsaturated fatty acids (according to the French)
4. More nutrients according a 5-year study by 33 universities in
the United Kingdom
Maybe this will help you and your family — it’s what the guidelines we use:
These are the fruits and vegetables known to be MOST CONTAMINATED with herbicides and pesticides
My first weekly stop is our local market for any produce, meat, and dairy need. Note that I pretty much put ALL berries on the buy LOCAL or ORGANIC list. IF there is anything on my list that they didn’t have that our family really wants, we’ll go on to Whole Foods. Then for our paper goods and household staples, it’s either the warehouse store or Publix.
Whole Foods brings in a lot of foods from South America — I never buy anything from South America even if it says ‘organic’ from South America because frankly I just don’t believe they monitor the farming practices – but this is just me.
Here’s the list of produce that is LEAST contaminated with herbicides and pesticides
Going Organic for many families is a lifestyle change — becoming healthier in all areas. That’s how it was for us. We are about 70% organic in our food — it’s all the kids knew until they went to school — and then they got introduced to world of their friends lunch boxes. As for our cleaning, we are close to 95% green. Of course, there is always room for improvement!
Why are farmers going organic? One, the demand is huge. Two, the money. For some farmers it’s about raising healthier plants and raising soil fertility — which of course gives better plants! Let’s hope more farmers choose to go down the organic path — more farmers means more choices and hopefully lower prices for us!
*There was a mention in Planck’s article that when a plant becomes dependent upon synthetic pesticides, it can no longer fend of pests naturally. Kinda like when people become dependent on pharmaceuticals . . .
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Debbie Wysocki is the owner of Women with Dreams and residual Money secrets – companies that empower the average person to live an extraordinary life by teaching how to build profitable businesses in the network marketing arena. She is a wife, mom, volunteer, a top producer in the MLM industry, a wellness educator, a real estate investor, author, trainer, and former Beverly Hills financial analyst who is passionate about helping others succeed. Her motto is ‘How you do anything, is how you do everything!’ To see more of Debbie’s posts, go to: www.WomenWithDreams.com/Blog For more information or to contact Debbie directly at Debbie@WomenWithDreams.com or 954-781-6629
We would like to share with you why we are so excited about grass-fed beef and why this is such a central focus for our operation.
Summary of the benefits of grass-fed Beef as compared to classic American grain-fed beef:
500% more CLA (Conjugated Linoleic Acid – a good fat)
400% more Vitamin A
300% more Vitamin E
75% more Omega-3
78% more Beta-carotene
More on the benefits of CLA In animal studies, 11 out of 11 studies surveyed showed CLA decreases cancer. Four out of five found a decrease in body fat associated with CLA. Two out of two found a decrease in heart disease. Two out of two have found increased bone density. Three out of three have found a decrease in adult diabetes. Dr Tilak Dhiman of the Utah State University is one of the foremost researchers into CLA.
Details:Grass-fed beef is a very different product from the beef normally sold in American grocery stores. The meat sold in grocery stores come from cattle penned up in large feedlots where they are confined, fed grains, treated with hormones and given antibiotics, all to promote fast weight gain and prevent disease that is so prevalent in this unnatural environment.
Grass-fed beef, on the other hand is finished on natural pasture – a diet which provides them what nature intended. Cattle are ruminants; they have multiple stomachs and are very efficient converting the cellulose in grasses to protein (meat). There are significant health advantages to grass-fed beef. First, grass-fed beef is higher in beneficial fats.
Omega-3 fatty acids play a vital role in every cell and system in your body. Most prominently, people who have ample amounts of omega-3′s in their diet are less likely to have high blood pressure or an irregular heartbeat. In addition, they are 50% less likely to have a serious heart attack. Second, grass-fed beef is rich in a good fat called “conjugated linoleic acid” or CLA.
Over the past two decades numerous health benefits have been attributed to CLA through experimental evidence including actions to reduce carcinogenesis, atherosclerosis, onset of diabetes, and fat body mass. Finally, grass-fed beef has higher levels of beta-carotene and vitamin E. Grass-fed beef has a factor of 10 higher levels of beta-carotene than conventional beef.
Vitamin A is a critical fat-soluble vitamin that is important for normal vision, bone growth, reproduction, cell division, and cell differentiation.
Vitamin E levels in grass-fed beef are a factor of four higher than conventional beef. In humans, vitamin E is linked with lower risk of heart diseases and cancer. This potent anti-oxidant may also have significant anti-aging properties.
Kevin Brown
Sadiqua Hamdan
Annette Presley
Debbie Wysocki
Paul Ericson
Maureen Diaz
Janet Demeter
Liz Reitzig
Julie Burns
Jenny Westerkamp, RD
Lauren Snyder Grosz
Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD, CCN
let'spoon
Morley Robbins
Janet Stuck, ND, CNC, MH, CNHP
John Chisholm
Dr. Richard Walicki
Jimmy Moore
Tom Hanks, Marathon Man with Dustin Hoffman, and many others. I’m sure that you can think of a few others without trying too hard.
The science supporting a high-fat, moderate protein, low-carbohydrate nutritional approach is sound and has been for many years now. And the more we learn about the detrimental impact that carbs are having on our health, the closer we’re inching to a day and age when we will be able to love and enjoy this fabulous way of eating as a universally accepted dietary option for people dealing with obesity, diabetes, and many of the chronic diseases so many people are currently suffering from.
fat from their diets, they would have to add carbohydrates. Again, this is still the overriding theme of the USDA Dietary Guidelines released every five years in the United States with seemingly no dramatic changes each time new recommendations are released. This is why The Liberation Diet book was written and so sorely needed in modern-day society. Its time for public revolt against the status quo!
As a dentist, patients often solicit my advice regarding the use of oral nutritional supplements. A common question is: Are they effective? The answer: it depends. If you are deficient in a particular mineral or vitamin, then most definitely.
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