In my practice, we refuse to take anyone who smokes. If a patient is not willing to take the most fundamental, commonsense step toward improving their health, how can they expect us to help
28 Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights. September 2009. Health Effects of Secondhand Smoke on Children. Available: http://no-smoke.org/pdf/
shs_children.pdf. Last accessed February 18, 2010.
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them? I simply refuse to waste my time or effort. I’ll see a smoker only the first time, but they are told beforehand that we don’t treat smokers. If they have a sincere desire to stop smoking, I will accept them with the strict understanding that the first thing they have to do is stop smoking. Believe me, I have an immense amount of compassion for anyone trying to shed such a destruc-tive, addictive habit. I’ve never been one to assume it’s easy, but I’m also not interested in all the rhetoric and excuses. There is no greater force than a deep conviction in your soul to change your life for the better. But if a person can’t commit to improve, I certainly am not going to waste my time.
More than 95 percent of the smokers who have come to my clinic have stopped smoking. I have no special secret. They’re simply told they must stop smoking within the first thirty to forty-five days after their initial visit, and we provide them with whatever they need to accomplish the task, be it acupuncture, Nicorette gum, Zyban, hypnotherapy or, on occasion, a swift kick in the pants. Ultimately, however, it’s the patient who is respon-sible for his or her own health, not the doctor. And the credit for stopping this terrible habit goes to the patient, not us.
This book is about “keeping the doctor away,” but in some circumstances, a good doctor may become necessary. With your doctor, you can form a team that can return you to health; it won’t happen, though, unless you’re willing to do your part. This goes not only for smoking but also for any other medical situa-tion requiring a partnership with your physician.
Acid Trip
Assuming you don’t do illicit drugs, the next most destructive vice you can have besides smoking is drinking coffee. It’s about at this time during my lectures when hundreds of doctors try
to hide their Starbucks coffee cups under the conference room tables at which they are seated. You may have thought the next worst vice was alcohol, right? Wrong. Barring a severe alcohol addiction, I’d much rather have my patients drink a glass of organic red wine once every few days than to drink a cup of cof-fee every morning. Caffeine has nothing to do with it, actually.
If you want caffeine, go to a drugstore and get caffeine tablets. I do not recommend this for many reasons, but it would be better than having a cup of coffee.
The reason you should abstain from drinking coffee is because it contains 208 different acids. Decaffeinated is no better. Even though the caffeine is gone, it still contains the full original acid profile. These acids wreak havoc on the insulin and glucose levels in your body. Health is all about body chemistry, and the easiest way to change your body chemistry, either for good or for bad, is by what you put in your mouth. Your body must maintain a serum pH level of approximately 7.35 to 7.45 (slightly alkaline) to be healthy. In fact, each individual organ system of your body has its own regulated pH level, with the entire body averaging out around 7.2. When you ingest acidic items like processed foods and coffee, you begin to skew your entire body chemistry from alkaline to acidic, creating perfect conditions for diseases that need acidic environments in which to thrive.
We buy alkaline batteries because they’re energized and have the power to run our appliances. But have you ever opened the back of an old radio you haven’t used for a long time and looked at the batteries? Often they are crusty, discolored and oozing strange fluid. When an alkaline battery loses its power, it becomes acidic and dies. A similar type of thing happens to the
“batteries” in your body when you drink coffee. I don’t recom-mend tea, either. Even though it may have some beneficial herbal
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ingredients, tea still contains upward of 170 different acids. Even red wine contains acids, but not nearly as many as coffee. Green tea is the best bet, containing just under 100 acids. If you must drink tea, do so in moderation.
Soda Saturation
The following are some interesting facts you may not have known about the phosphoric acid within your favorite cola soft drink:
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Aside from the additives—artificial colors and phosphoric acid—the biggest killer in soda is the sugar. We’ve already talked about the dangers of sugar and its effect on the body. Did you know that a single twelve-ounce can of cola has thirty-nine grams of sugar in it? That’s over nine teaspoons! Try to put that in a glass of water and drink it. Even worse, those twenty-four-ounce convenience-store plastic cups hold seventy-eight grams of sugar, or almost twenty teaspoons! Enough said.
Just by eliminating the habit of drinking sodas, one of my nurses lost seven pounds in less than a week. Another employee who suffered from constantly cracked and bleeding hands had
the condition clear up almost completely within two weeks of stopping her soda habit.
I hope you don’t make a habit of eating at fast-food restau-rants, but if you drive by, notice the typical customer. It’s not a pretty sight. As much as I hate soda, it is definitely better than diet soda. It’s no accident to see countless people struggling with body fat issues, most at obese levels, ordering huge hamburgers, large orders of French fries and sugar-laden desserts along with . . . a diet soda! God bless these people, but do they really think one diet soda is going to cancel out this avalanche of sludge they’re dump-ing into their bodies? Aside from all the synthetic compounds in these artificial sweeteners and the dangers they pose, researchers are just now discovering how these sugar substitutes actually con-tribute to not only weight and body fat gain by inhibiting metab-olism, but also contribute to overall chronic disease!
A study done at Purdue University and published in the Jour-nal of Behavioral Neuroscience examined two groups of rats given yogurt to eat. One group received yogurt with sugar. The other group received yogurt with saccharin. In a short time, signifi-cant changes were identified in the rats consuming the artificial sweetener. Over the fourteen-day test, the saccharin rats began to eat significantly larger amounts of food as their appetites became overstimulated. As a result, the rats gained a huge amount of weight, mostly as fat.29
Most important, the core body temperature of these rats decreased, meaning their metabolism slowed down! When you consume something sweet, the body recognizes the sugar and
29 Susan E. Swithers and Terry L. Davidson. 2008. A Role for Sweet Taste:
Calorie Predictive Relations in Energy Regulation by Rats. Behavioral Neuroscience. 122 (1): 161–173.
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mobilizes all its resources to begin burning off the extra fuel.
If what you eat tastes sweet but there are no calories in it, your metabolism gets confused. The next time you eat something genuinely sweet, your body’s burn-off mechanism never gets trig-gered and fails to engage. Do yourself a favor and switch to water.
It really is the best real thing. Or try club soda (carbonated water) instead if you must have carbonated beverage.
“Juiced” on Juice
Why would I include juices in the same category as other vices?
After all, it’s not like people get addicted to orange juice. The truth is that juices contain just as much sugar as sodas do. Don’t believe me? Check the nutrition labels. No matter where it comes from, sugar does the same negative things inside your body. Juice has vitamins, right? Maybe, but the detriment far outweighs the benefit. When you eat whole fruit, the skin and fiber in the whole fruit prevents the sugars from entering your system too rapidly and getting you “juiced” from the rush.
Even so, overconsumption of carbohydrates leads to hyper-insulinogenic states, further resulting eventually in many chronic diseases, including diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Juicing at home with your own juicer, using organic vegetables and fruits, is different, however, and actually highly beneficial. Try and get most of your supplementation needs from your vegetables and whole fruits and take an additional good-quality supplement for added measure. Unfortunately, just 17 percent of the U.S. popu-lation actually gets the recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables per day.
On a side note, let me mention the many fruit-juice blends now available on the market. Most of them, unfortunately,
contain high-fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners and added synthetic ingredients. However, believe it or not, a limited few of these companies actually have good-quality products. Gener-ally speaking, the greater the number of fruits within a blend, the better and healthier the blend is due to synergism. Read the labels and check the contents yourself.
My particular favorite, and the one that my family and I have consumed for two years now, is available from indepen-dent distributors. I am somewhat biased so you’ll have to choose and determine your own truth. However, I believe the discern-ing individual will agree that a delicious blend of nineteen fruits in a bottle—without any refined ingredients and providing in a four-ounce serving the equivalent antioxidant profile found in eighty-nine apples—is a very good choice. (The company boasts that four ounces of this juice is equivalent to thirteen servings of fruits and vegetables.) See the resources section for more details.
I literally used to drink a gallon of orange juice daily when I was growing up. Now I can’t stand it because it’s just too sweet.
If I do have some freshly squeezed juice, I have to water it down.
If you eliminate all sweets from your diet for several months and then try to drink a glass of juice, you most likely will be unable to do so. You’ll probably feel nauseated, perhaps even becoming sick and experiencing an upset stomach with cramping. If you choose to discipline yourself and stick with this program of abstaining from sugar and juice concentrates, one of the first things to dis-appear as a result of being on a healthy and balanced diet will be your sweet tooth.
You should also know that most juices are not fresh but are made from concentrate. The true juice is boiled down to its basic elements for processing. Once the concentrate reaches the appro-priate spot in the assembly line, water is added back to restore it
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to its fluid state. Do you think they’re adding pure water from an artesian well on a tropical island to reconstitute your apple juice?
Hardly. Consuming pure water is essential to healing, as we’ve already discussed. That’s another reason to stay away from fruit juice and anything made “from concentrate.”
If you’re looking for a substitute sweetener, remember to stay with “God-given,” not “man-made” substances. For instance, honey has lots of benefits, such as the antioxidant and antimicro-bial components (but it’s still sugar, so be careful). The advantage is that honey has enzymes that are still intact and has a greater fructose rather than glucose component so it will metabolize more slowly. Another good natural sweetener is stevia, an herb that comes from Japan. Today you can find stevia in its powder or extract form everywhere, including the regular grocery stores.
The extract is a good choice; if you choose the powder, stay away from the overly “white” versions, which signify they’ve proba-bly been overprocessed. There are many strains of stevia as well, some of which have an aftertaste. With some trial and error, you can find the right one perfect for yourself.
There are many other topics and options related to natural and synthetic sweeteners, discussing the pros and cons of sub-stances such as xylitol, brown sugar, sugar cane and others. How-ever, due to space limitation, these options are discussed in more detail on the members-only website. Additional updated infor-mation will also be provided as it becomes available.
Alcohol? Chocolate?
Believe it or not, alcohol may be the lesser of the vices you can consume. Go ahead—I’ll wait until you stop cheering and jump-ing up and down. Understand this isn’t a license to go get ham-mered every Friday night after work. Alcohol has got plenty
going against it. For instance, alcohol turns to formaldehyde as it passes through the liver. For the most part, though, it’s a God-given product: the fermentation process wine goes through, for instance, is a natural one during which most of the sugar is removed. Red wine, specifically, has some beneficial properties and antioxidants such as oligomeric proanthrocyanadins and res-veratrol components.
Beer, on the other hand, is very high in carbohydrates.
Hard liquors are even worse due to the effects on the liver and of course, the long-term neurological implications. Hard liquor is absolutely not good and highly detrimental. The major point to keep in mind with regard to consuming any alcohol is active moderation with judicious selection regarding the type of alco-hol consumed. And in the interest of full disclosure, in case anyone cares to know, I do not drink, nor have I ever drunk any type of alcohol. Yes, I was made fun of all during my fraternity years because I didn’t drink. However, I was more popular with the girls as a result and I’ve retained more brain cells than my fraternity brothers. Those are just some of the benefits of not drinking alcohol.
A lot of people consider chocolate a vice. In fact, some peo-ple are nearly addicted to it. Of course, anything in excess is bad for you, but chocolate has some excellent antioxidant properties.
A study done at the University of Cologne in Germany and pub-lished in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that ingredients in chocolate could significantly lower blood pressure.30 Another study performed at Cornell University and
30 Dirk Taubert, MD, PhD, Renate Roesen, PhD, Clara Lehmann, MD, Norma Jung, MD, Edgar Schömig, MD. July 4, 2007. Effects of Low Habitual Cocoa Intake on Blood Pressure and Bioactive Nitric Oxide. The Journal of the American Medical Association. 298 (1): 49–60.
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published in the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Agri-culture and Food Chemistry showed that chocolate is loaded with antioxidants that prevent cancer, heart disease and other conditions. In fact, the levels of phenolic phytochemicals, or fla-vonoids, were found to be nearly twice as high in chocolate as those found in red wine or green tea.31
Keep in mind, all these studies were done on dark chocolate.
Milk chocolate has much more sugar added to it, along with dairy products making it over processed and nutritionally void. Dark chocolate naturally contains more cocoa, which is where the anti-oxidants come from and what gives chocolate its unique, bitter flavor. Once again, eat chocolate in moderation. The higher the cocoa content, the better the chocolate is for you. You can find many bars now that contain up to 85 percent cocoa. A one- or two-square serving daily is best, because the flavonoids contained in chocolate are very powerful and a little goes a long way.