When Is A Problem A Problem? Only When It Becomes A Crisis?
This photo is of a promotional display in front of one of our local chain supermarkets. Very clever design – someone clearly had a talent to be able to create it - the display is made of twelve-pack boxes of soda pop (the other pictures give you the detail perspective). I find it maddening that our soft drink consumption has become so enormous that supermarkets have to pile their supply on pallets outside the store because they don’t have room for them inside the store (not to mention that there’s a percentage of product that the supermarkets are willing to accept will be stolen from the unguarded displays).
There are many huge problems affecting our health today. We no longer eat fresh, whole organic nutrient-dense foods; instead our diets are now dominated by processed foods devoid of nutrients and filled with toxic chemicals, synthetic fats and artificial sweeteners. Neglecting the critical nutrient of movement or exercise in our lives, which like fresh foods, is genetically essential for health, the vast majority of people now live sedentary lives which further hastens the onset of virtually all diseases. As a result, the current disease rates for heart disease, diabetes, cancer and obesity keep increasing (by the way, obesity is the defining risk factor for heart disease, cancer and diabetes). The most startling aspect of these statistics is that heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity were nonexistent amongst our genetic ancestors, the Paleolithic hunter-gatherers that determined the genetic code that our bodies live by today.
One of the central players in this cultural health maelstrom (def: a situation marked by confusion, turbulence, strong feelings, violence or destruction) is our nation’s habit of consuming sweetened beverages that destroy our health – in particular, Americans love soda pop. Soft drink manufacturers make enough soda pop for every person to drink 54 gallons per year. That works out to be 576 12oz. cans per year or 1.6 cans per day. It also works out to be over 15 teaspoons of sugar (150 calories) per day. Making matters worse is that soda pop is most often sweetened using high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners, both of which have even greater health risks than sucrose or table sugar. By the way, eating 50 extra calories per day for five years will cause you to gain 50 pounds. Hopefully you are starting to understand the connection between the consequences of our lifestyle choices and their effect on our health (i.e. the ever-increasing diabetes and obesity epidemics).
SODA POP DESTROYS YOUR HEALTH IN THE FOLLOWING WAYS (for the complete version of this article click here):
Soda pop causes calcium and bone loss
Soda pop causes diabetes and insulin resistance
Soda pop causes cancer
Soda pop disrupts the critical pH of the body
Soda pop causes weight gain (contributing to the obesity epidemic) in three ways
Soda pop causes atherosclerosis (clogging and hardening of the arteries), high blood pressure, and heart disease
Some people reading this will be thinking ‘Isn’t that a bit extreme; after all, what’s more American than having a soft drink at a picnic or my son’s baseball game?’ (not to mention that soda is usually served with a hot dog or chips that have been deep fried, and a sandwich made with processed flour and cured meats – boy, we’ve got this disease-food thing down to a science don’t we; unfortunately an evil science).Or my favorite, ‘I just have one once in a while – if it’s in moderation it can’t be that bad, can it?’. There are two types of toxicity or poisoning: 1) Acute: resulting in vomiting, fainting, convulsions, death, etc.; 2) Slow or chronic accumulation of toxins which ultimately break down the body’s physiological function. Soda pop falls into the second category (diet soda is even more toxic than the regular sugar-poison variety). (My cynical response to the “everything in moderation” paradigm is to ask ‘Is it okay to do crystal meth or cheat on your spouse, in moderation?’)
IMPORTANT: Don’t make the mistake of thinking that diet sodas containing artificial sweeteners like sucralose (Splenda®) or aspartame (Nutrasweet®, Equal®) are safe – they are far from it; and they actually cause weight gain (if you think about it, who’s always drinking diet soda? Yep, overweight people). Scientific research links artificial sweeteners with leukemia, brain cancer, migraines, depression, and blindness – more on that topic later.
Make water your predominant beverage – it’s what we are genetically designed to drink.
Midwest farm life or beach life in Southern California? That’s easy, right? Then I remember that I have a 9, 10, and 15 year old to deal with and suddenly the appeal of acres and chores for attention-demanding kids changes my perspective. I have dreams of kids leaving in the morning (on foot) and not returning until late in the day, totally exhausted. Even better would be living as an Amish without a car to drive them around all the time. Boy oh boy, summer is hectic!
Just when I seemed to be getting a rhythm in my day-to-day schedule during the school year… I get slammed with the reality of summer! As soon as school was out, suddenly my world got turned upside down. Between swim lessons, Jr. Lifeguards and gymnastics, “Mom, I’m bored” (the 10 year old) and “Do you know how embarrassing it is that I have to do Jr. Lifeguards at the beach – everyone will see me” (the 15 year old) and “Can I have another play date” (the 9 year old), I am stuck between telling them all ‘Too bad, you can find something to do’, and maybe it’s better to give them some structure to keep them out of trouble, out of the house, and out of my hair. ‘I should have known’ is what keeps going through my mind; ‘Why didn’t I prepare a little better?’ , and ‘I really need to get this chaos under control’
And of course, the ever-present ‘Mom, I’m hungry’ (I’m thinking a decent famine would be good right about now). Okay, maybe I’m being a little dramatic (me, dramatic?), but drama is my life. With a teenager that of course knows everything, a ten year old that can’t sit still, and of course my nine year old sweet little daughter who has decided that she should fight back when her brothers pick on her well, you might as well call ours the “house of drama”. I am sure many moms can relate.
Being a Mom is full of questions and never really knowing the RIGHT ANSWER. Sure, plenty of people can tell you what works for them but does it really and will it work for me? I wish I had all the answers but then life would be so simple, but of course as humans, we would just be unhappy with that too. What’s a Mom to do? Well as always, I revisit my anchor: my daily schedule. Putting every little thing on a schedule can save the drama and even my life (believe it or not, I actually have an Excel spreadsheet breakdown for each day; if I could only remember to stick to it). My husband Dr. Paul, who thinks he’s the master of logic, organization and common sense (which drives me batty because he often is) tries to help but usually makes me feel worse because he can’t think like a caring Mom to save his life (more like a military commander or coach – not big on sympathy or empathy for the poor bored children; okay, maybe that’s my problem).
If only it were like days of old when the kids helped with the harvest, played by a pond, and ran through fields. I think it was Danny Thomas who said ‘If kids had to chop wood to keep the TV going, we’d have a lot less problems’.
Well, gotta go – for sure someone needs to be fed, driven, or yelled at.
Sweet Misery: A Poisoned WorldAn jaw-dropping expose of the dangers behind aspartame (Nutrasweet®) and how it’s scientifically linked to brain cancer, leukemia, migraines and other frightening health conditions and how that science has been systematically and politically suppressed by the food and pharmaceutical industries. You will never drink another diet soda or eat a “sugar-free” anything after watching this. It views like a Robert Ludlum thriller with surprise villains such as former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld when he headed pharmaceutical giant G.D. Searle, the developer of aspartame, during the Reagan years.
The Future of FoodA scary look at genetically engineered food and the omnipotent chemical giant Monsanto who’s attempting to control food supply across the globe. Like Sweet Misery, it too has a surprise villain in Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as a former board member of Monsanto who voted to allow Monsanto to patent food products for the first time in the history of the U.S. Patent Office, opening the flood gates for massive litigious coercion by the multinational bully.
LINKS
Bonfire Health: Are looking for a step-by-step ‘program’ to get your life on track in the areas of eating, exercise, thinking and stress management. Bonfire Health is it – a powerful lifestyle transformation program. Dr. Kratka is the executive director of this comprehensive health program
Franson Family Chiropractic Blog: An insightful, family-centered, scientific-based lifestyle coaching blog filled with practical, humorous and valuable lessons on life and health.
Life Chiropractic College West: The decision to go to chiropractic school is big one; which school to attend is an even bigger decision. There are only a couple of ‘solid’ chiropractic colleges where the graduates get the comprehensive training in all facets of becoming a clinically competent chiropractor. Life West (LCCW) is the “Harvard” of chiropractic colleges. That’s not simply “alumni bias” – LCCW truly defines the gold standard of earning a Doctorate of Chiropractic degree.
National Vaccine Information Center: A great repository of information to help parents make an informed decision whether the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks. With so many children now suffering from health conditions not seen prior to the onset of high doses of multiple vaccines given in early infancy, the science paints a different picture than what is put forth as ‘dogma’ by medical, pharmaceutical and governmental organizations.
Nut Milk Bags: Making your own nut milk, such as almond milk is quick and easy when you have a nut milk bag and agood blender. This is the best price I’ve found for nut milk bags (for an even better deal, you can purchase four to share with friends ).
42 MINUTES, 30 FLOORS, 720 STAIRS, 56 OH SQUATS, 42 OH LUNGES, AND 45 BURBEES – TRAVELLING AND VERTICAL FITNESS
Travelling has its share of challenges to be sure. Everything from disrupted sleep patterns to terrible water to trouble getting fresh organic food seems to conspire to keep me out of my normal rhythm or routine for staying well. Keeping up with any type of exercise regimen is another thing altogether. If possible I like to check out a local yoga studio or go out for a run to see the city I’m in.
Sometimes though, I find myself needing a quick workout that fits my time schedule and without the hassle of taking a cab or hoofing it across town. I’m not into hotel fitness centers because I’m not really a ‘workout machine/treadmill’ kind of guy. My preference is for a full body functional training type of workout such as swimming, yoga, or what is modeled after ‘Crossfit‘ . If I’m staying in a high rise hotel, what I’ve found to be efficient, intense, and convenient is to hit the stairwell for a ‘vertical workout’.
The concept of using one’s own body weight and gravity as the source of resistance is now reemerging as a viable way to get fit by providing a fantastic workout. This morning I was staying on the 15th floor of a hotel so, to get to the bottom floor, rather than take the elevator (it was workout time after all), I decided to use the walk down the fifteen floors as my warm up. At each floor landing on the way down, I stopped and alternated doing eight overhead squats or six overhead lunges. At first it didn’t feel like I was doing much because I was only doing the eight squats or six lunges; but after six floors I could tell I wasdefinitely getting warmed up.
Because of the nonexistence of a thirteenth floor (it’s so odd that when building a multi-hundred million dollar high rise hotel, the 13th floor is simply ‘omitted’ – aren’t the people staying on the 14th still on the 13th floor?), I finally reached the bottom or ‘first floor’ for the purposes of my workout accounting (which was actually the floor below the mezzanine).
From this ‘first’ floor, I turned around and ran up the stairs, skipping stairs. At each landing on the way up to the 30th floor and on the way back down from 30 to 15, I stopped and did one burpee . Whenever I do burpees I’m always amazed at how quickly I start breathing hard and soon after, sweating (and I’m not a heavy perspirer, if that’s a word). As my friend and colleague Dr. Stephen Franson says ‘The objective is to move, pant and sweat’.
Right away, by floor six I was having to take a couple of breaths before doing my next burpee; by floor twelve I was sweating. Interestingly though, when I headed back down from the 30th floor, because I wasn’t running up the stairs, the burpees became much easier and I could keep going without having to pause to catch my breath. In the end it took 42 minutes to walk down 360 stairs, do 56 overhead squats, 42 overhead lunges and run up 360 stairs and do 45 burpees.
I was toast and I felt great. Time to eat (hardboiled eggs from the Continental breakfast, some broccoli I had stashed in the in room fridge, oatmeal topped with granola, and a glass of grapefruit juice).
Recently I was at my least favorite place to be – in the checkout line at Costco – when the cashier saw my T-shirt which read “Eat Raw Live Long” and she asked “Do you eat raw?”
One of the favorite things my husband and I like to do is to try out raw restaurants when we’re travelling. I had purchased the t-shirt while visiting a well known raw restaurant in New York City called Pure Food and Wine, which by the way, was soooo good! My husband and I are not what you would call “raw foodists” by any means (nor are we vegetarians, which raw foodists most definitely are), but we certainly enjoy all the fresh raw foods we can get. What we’ve learned is that the more raw fresh food we can eat, the better our health will be.
What I found interesting as the cashier continued to talk was what she said people were telling her about eating a raw food diet. She mentioned that her friend had told her ‘Raw food diets are just a fad and you’ll get sick if you eat that way’. I felt sad (and bothered) that people are so confused about food and health that they would think that eating a raw food diet would make you sick. I wanted to tell her this is how people had been eating since the beginning of time.
Today, we are so far off the path of how God created us to eat that people like this cashier woman and her friend really don’t know what is healthy and what is not. Truthfully, not only does adding raw food to your diet give you more energy, help you lose weight, clear up your skin, but raw food also fights cancer and other diseases. The benefits of eating raw food go on and on. There is nothing to lose.
It’s always hard for me to try to explain to people that you can make good changes in your life without having to totally change everything. People want to think what they think. I know it’s hard to eat “perfectly” all the time and that our schedules and our kids simply don’t allow for it. I just wanted to say to this woman that there is so much to learn about how to be healthier through the way we eat. What my husband and I do is make green smoothies almost every day, we eat a large vegetable salad with lunch and dinner, and then we add even more steamed vegetables at dinner in addition to our protein. We’ve even figured out how to sneak vegetables into our kids’ meals in an attempt to counter all the white flour and other junk they get outside our home.
So my suggestion is this – try adding just this one habit a day – add to at least one meal each day a large fresh vegetable salad, fruit, or even just cut up fresh raw veggies. I know you’ll be amazed how after a few weeks your habit will become second nature. Each month add more raw food to another meal, etc. In just a year you could be consuming 70% of your meals raw. By the way, today there are many raw cookbooks filled with amazing recipes made with only raw food. The ones we use are:
When Is A Problem A Problem? Only When It Becomes A Crisis?
My Crazy Life
Travelling has its share of challenges to be sure. Everything from disrupted sleep patterns to terrible water to trouble getting fresh organic food seems to conspire to keep me out of my normal rhythm or routine for staying well. Keeping up with any type of exercise regimen is another thing altogether. If possible I like to check out a local yoga studio or go out for a run to see the city I’m in.
