Effects Of Detoxing

Do you still have concerns about raw milk? We agree that any milk, including raw milk, is dangerous when it has been produced poorly. When produced well, raw milk far exceeds anything you could buy in the store. We just want to pass on some love to this post at Plumpest Peach. Well said, well said.

Also, while all milk contains IGF- (insulin growth factor) (even human milk), raw milk from jersey and guernsey cows that are on pasture does not have the escalated levels of IGF-1 that is prevalent in conventional milk treated with rbST hormones.

The scares concerning mercury in fish have caused many to curb their fish consumption, or avoid it altogether. Many of the reasons are rightly founded in that both mercury and pcbs’s are harmful to humans, but that isn’t the whole story. Research around the world is indicating that selenium is a mineral which binds to mercury and gives protection against its harmful effects. In the U.S., the EPA describes selenium as an element that is “antagonistic to the toxic effects of mercury.”

After measuring selenium levels in 1000 commonly consumed foods, yes, I said 1000, the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that 16 of the top 25 sources of selenium rich foods are ocean fish. Thereby, most ocean fish provide the selenium needed to protect one from the harmful effects of mercury.

Interestingly enough, only one study showed harmful effects from mercury related to seafood consumption and the study involved the consumption of pilot whale meat, which does not contain more selenium than mercury as other ocean fish.

Make sure you are getting enough selenium in the fish you are eating! Look for wild caught! Be gone!

Source: Vital Choice

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Soy has been proclaimed as a health food for the past several years. While it has some benefits, it depends on the manner in which it is consumed. Fermented soy products like tempeh, miso and soy sauce are safe and somewhat beneficial to eat. The unfermented soy products are the ones to avoid.

90% of the soybeans used to make substances like soymilk and meatless entrees are genetically modified, red flag number one. Second, soy has one of the highest percentages of pesticide residue. Lastly, the unfermented soy has to be processed in many ways to be digestible at all. Soy is not edible in its natural form. Manufacturers extract soy protein isolate to use in their products by mixing the beans with an alkaline solution to remove fiber, then precipitated and separated using an acid wash and, finally, neutralized in an alkaline solution. The last step is to spray dry the resulting curds at a high temperature to produce a high protein powder. Nitrates, which are carcinogens (cancer causing), are produced during spray drying. A variety of artificial flavors are added to the soy substance, including MSG.

Soy also contains isoflavones. Some say they are beneficial, but there is overwhelming evidence that they cannot be good for you. Isoflavones are similar to the hormone estrogen, and your body reacts the same to them. For instance, drinking two glasses of soymilk a day is enough to alter a woman’s menstrual cycle. In soy-based infant formula there is the equivalent of five birth control pills that infants drink per day. It has been linked to infertility in men and early onset of puberty in females in western cultures. Many claim soy reduces the risk of cancer and use Asian culture as an example of this. While Asians have fewer cases of breast, uterus, and prostate cancer, they have a high rate of esophagus, stomach, liver and pancreas cancers in addition to thyroid and digestive cancers. Digestive cancers imply a connection to food sources. Laboratory rats given soy exhibit the thyroid and digestive cancers, too.

Soy is also full of anti-nutrients. They contain enzyme inhibitors. Enzymes are necessary to break down proteins and other nutrients and soy makes it more difficult on the body to get what it needs from food. One inhibitor is called Hemagglutinin, which is a clot-promoting substance. It causes red blood cells to clump together so oxygen is not as easily transported. Cooking or processing does not denature these inhibitors, but they are reduced to manageable levels after a long period of fermentation.

There are more negatives than positives when it comes to soy products. Stick to fermented soy like tempeh, miso and soy sauce. If you think about it, it’s incredibly unnatural to make a meat flavor and texture out of a soybean anyway. Let’s use what nature has given us without massive amounts of processing to keep our bodies fueled. There are plenty of nutrient rich whole foods out there just waiting to be eaten!

By: Ashley Dance

Two words I would never put in the same sentence, unless the sentence started with avoid. The news story is all over the place and I feel like I should address it before I start getting, “I told you so” emails from you guys.

The article in question, found here: www.cnn.com

The article describes a college professor doing an experiment on himself to prove a point about calorie counting, one of the things I don’t promote as a useful means of maintaing your health. That being said, at the latter part of the article a nutritionist chimes in to say, “There are things we can’t measure,” which I would have to agree with whole-heartily.

To give you a little perspective here I will explain quickly my story. I eat whole fruits and vegetables, occasionally sprouted grains or spelt flour, raw grass fed milk and about 5 grass fed eggs a day. My numbers are normal as they say but about 3 years ago I put myself to an experiment to see if I could gain “mass” while lifting weights and not changing my diet but increasing the amount of food I took in. So in short, I took the above listed foods and ate them till I went from 145 all the way up to 205. Does that mean I was unhealthily pursuing my goal of muscle mass? No. Because I was keeping my food in the context of whole, nutritious, balanced and organic.

What difference does this make?
The difference is clear, my body never got addicted to the food it consumed because of refined sugars and other chemicals, but more so than that my body didn’t burn out it’s filters in the process of my weight gain. Eating non-nutritive sugary sweets such as twinkies will wreak havoc on your filters as well as your insulin production which affects so many other organs and systems in your body. That being said, when I stopped eating one extra meal I dropped twenty pounds in five weeks. I was finding my “perfect weight” or healthy weight that I believed I needed to be at to do my job correctly.

In comparison you may be thinking, “well, you just reduced calories”, on the surface you’d be right, but there’s so much more to it, especially given the parameters I personally place on holistic well being. If you are going to just simply count and cut calories you are going to leave yourself open to all sorts of sickness and diseases like cancer, diabetes and early death. Skinny and obese people alike get diabetes and cancer and crohns and all sorts of sickness and disease. Yeah, that is how seriously I take refinement, chemicals, and GM foods. These foods are NOT time tested – just like the “twinkie diet”! There is no way of completely testing this long term, but if there was mind you, there couldn’t be any protein shakes and vegetables on the side like the professor said he had.

You can lose weight counting calories, it’s not practical but it can be done. You can’t gain or maintain whole health just counting calories and not the quality of the content you are eating. It will NOT be a conclusive answer to overall health, which is what we strive to do here at Life Fitness Academy.

If you have been following along with our fitness challenges you find this one somewhat familiar but a little extra challenging. I have added something to keep it interesting, as per some requests. Given that there are some “weighted exercises” you will need to have some things. 10lbs free weights. 5lbs free weights and of course a pull up bar.

The order will change on this challenge every week. We do this to confuse the muscles, keeping them challenged at all times.
If you have questions about the isometrics please watch the 7 tiger moves video that is on this site. We can answer other questions or send pictures to you if you drop us an email. Now let’s get to it!

Monday
15 min. Run (optional)
25 pushups
100 sit ups
25 bench/couch dips
10 pull ups
Repeat 2 x’s
Advanced double your reps! This should only take 20 minutes. So hurry!

Tuesday
10 min jump rope
Isometrics
7 tiger moves (watch the video) do each exercise for 2 minutes.

Wednesday
15 min run (optional)
10lb weights:
10 bicep curls
10 reps wide (or W)
10 reps in front (prison style)
10 reps with twist (start with weights at your side, as you lift towards your shoulders twist them away from
Your body)
10 reps hammer curls

5lbs combo
2 min of frontal to side raises with the weights
Lift your arms straight over your head in front of you. Lower your arms the repeat at your sides.

2 min chest press
Laying on your back either on the floor or on the fitness ball. Press weight above your chest using the 10lbs free weights.

1 min each arm tricep kickbacks with the 5lbs
Bend over and hold the elbow tight against your side; lift weight moving only at the elbow and wrist.

Thursday repeat Tuesdays workout

Friday
15 minute run (optional)

25 weighted squats w/ 10 lbs
15 1 leg squats per leg
X’s 2
Advanced, use heavier weights or double the reps.

2 pushups
2 pull ups
2 hanging leg raises
2 dips
Repeat this in a circuit for 10 minutes.
Move quickly!

Saturday repeat Tuesday Thursday workout.

Let us chart your progress. Send me your name and your results for the week every Saturday and I will post them on our fitness challenge chart. Now get busy!!!

Article from alternet.org

The following is an excerpt from Devil in the Milk: Illness, Health, and the Politics of A1 and A2 Milk by Keith Woodford. It has been adapted for the Web.

What North Americans should be concerned about is that North American milk is very high in A1 beta-casein, and no one is doing anything about it.
– Keith Woodford

My career as a physician, which now spans over 25 years, has been closely linked to milk and other dairy products. That connection is thanks in part to a book I came across early in my medical training –¬†The Milk of Human Kindness Is not Pasteurized, by William Campbell Douglass, MD, a true medical rebel. It turned out to be one of the most important books on medicine that I have ever read, and it helped form my views on medicine. (The book has since been republished as¬†The Milk Book.)

Fueled by Dr. Douglass’s insights, I quickly became an advocate for raw milk and saw a lot of positive benefits from switching people from commercial pasteurized milk and milk products to pasture-fed, raw, and cultured dairy. Already, I had long been an advocate for eating butter and other full-fat products — another stance that has been largely vindicated by current medical research as well as the catastrophe that is margarine. This phase was followed by my introduction to¬†Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon — another passionate full-fat, raw-milk advocate — and the subsequent founding of the Weston A. Price Foundation, of which I am one of the founding board members. I then authored¬†The Fourfold Path to Healing, along with Sally and Jaimen McMillan, which among other things spoke of the dangers of commercial pasteurized dairy products and the health, social, and economic benefits that would come from our country switching to properly raised cows providing full-fat, raw dairy products.

However, all this time, I had the sense that somehow I didn’t have the full story. In my practice, I was continually faced with patients whose medical situation improved only once they had stopped cow’s milk entirely. Butter and ghee didn’t seem to cause problems, but I still saw patients whose immune systems didn’t heal or who had excess congestion and its attendant problems as long as they consumed any kind of cow’s milk. Something was still up.

In Devil in the Milk, Farm Management and Agribusiness Professor Keith Woodford delivers what seems to be a key to answering why problems persist when some patients ingest milk. As the author explains, there is a protein called beta-casein in the milk-solid part of cow’s milk — but not in the fat (butter) and not in the whey. The type of beta-casein varies in cows according to their genetic makeup, but the most common types are known as A1 beta-casein and A2 beta-casein. A1Beta-casein, common in American and European cows, releases an opiate-like chemical upon digestion called BCM-7, which is the exact culprit in the myriad of symptoms I have seen all these years. These symptoms include joint and muscle pains, fatigue, digestive disturbances, and headaches. A1 beta-casein refers to the type of beta-casein that has histidine instead of proline at position 67 of the protein chain. As a result of this mutation from proline to histidine, the peptide that emerges from this amino is able to be liberated in the digestive tract of the animal or person consuming the milk. To simplify this, the cows themselves are either called A1 or A2 cows, depending on which beta-casein variant they have.

Devil in the Milk is a monumental study, convincingly laid out, and one that demands our immediate attention. If Woodford is correct, which I have no doubt he is, the effects of drinking milk from A1 cows is a piece of the puzzle that needs to be addressed. Dairy products, when properly produced and treated, have nourished generations of the healthiest humans who ever lived. If we can use this book to convert our cows to A2 cows, then use the principles of properly fed, properly prepared dairy, we will do much to reduce the disease burden in our country and find our way to the robust health that is our birthright. I encourage everyone to read this book and see for themselves.

Dr. Cowan has served as vice president of the Physicians Association for Anthroposophical Medicine and is a founding board member of the Weston A. Price Foundation. He is the principal author of the book, The Fourfold Path to Healing, which was published in 2004 by New Trends Publishing. He writes the “Ask the Doctor” column in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the Foundation’s quarterly magazine, and has lectured throughout the United States and Canada.

Healthy eating, not supplements, is the best way to keep the good bacteria in your gut healthy, says a dietitian and researcher. As with vitamins, it’s best to get the bacteria you need from healthy food rather than taking often expensive and potentially ineffective supplements, says Gail Cresci, Medical College of Georgia, dietitian and researcher. She equates the good bacterium in your gastrointestinal tract to another living being inside that helps keeps you healthy.”If you do good by your bacteria, they will do good by you,” Ms. Cresci says.

There is even mounting evidence that a healthy gut microbiota helps maintain a healthy weight. Studies have shown, for example, that when bacteria from a genetically fat mouse are placed in a lean germ-free mouse, it gains weight without changing its food intake.

Unfortunately poor diets are hurting the bacteria in many of us and the overuse of antibiotics is taking its toll as well, particularly the common, broad-spectrum antibiotics that wipe out anything in their path, good and bad bacteria included.

Cresci cites inadequate fiber and excess unhealthful fats as contributing to the problem, and states that a good daily diet has adequate high-quality protein, fiber, healthy fats and fresh fruits and vegetables.

Sources:
ScienceDaily October 22, 2009
2009 Food & Nutrition Conference & Expo, Denver, CO, October 17-20, 2009

Although this is beneficial information, I do not entirely agree. There are some great supplements out there that are really pure and that offer more than just on species or strand of good bacteria.

Primal defense is one of those, the high concentration is great for your gut and will help build the tree of life in your gut. Couple this with the right diet of mostly raw, clean, naturally fermented and organic foods you will encourage growth of the good bacteria and not adding into your gut bad and dead bacteria

Some of the best food that pack a high good bacteria punch are:
Natto
Miso
Kimchee
Tempeh
Kefir
Yogurt
Olives
Sauerkraut
Pickles
Kombucha
Raw Apple Cider Vinegar

It is important to note that traditionally fermented foods are not the equivalent of the same foods in commercially processed form. The best way to ensure you’re consuming the real thing is to prepare your own fermented foods at home, and Sally Fallon‚Äôs cookbook Nourishing Traditions is an excellent guide on how to do this.

Eat well and your body will restore itself to it’s natural weight with great side effects of feeling more energetic, a super immune system, better skin, etc. The list is longer than I have time to type it.

By Jo Robinson

Most cartons of milk in the supermarket show a picture of cows contentedly grazing on grass. Unfortunately, 85 to 95 percent of the cows in the United States are now being raised in confinement, not on pasture. The only grass they eat comes in the form of hay, and the ground that they stand on is a blend of dirt and manure.

The reason for confining our cows in feedlots and feeding them grain rather than grass is that they produce more milk‚ especially when injected with bi-weekly hormones. Today’s grainfed cows produce three times as much milk as the old family cow of days gone by.

With the current emphasis on quantity, the quality of our milk has suffered. One of the biggest losses has been in its CLA content. CLA or “conjugated linoleic acid” is a type of fat that may prove to be one of our most potent cancer fighters. Milk from a pastured cow can have five times as much CLA as a grainfed animal. To date, most of the proof of the health benefits of CLA has come from test tube or animal studies. But a few recent human studies have produced encouraging results. For example, French researchers compared CLA levels in the breast tissues of 360 women. The women with the most CLA in their tissue (and thus the most CLA in their diets) had a 74 percent lower risk of breast cancer than the women with the least CLA.(Bougnoux et al, Inform, 10:S43, 1999.) If an American woman were to switch from grainfed to grassfed dairy products, she would have levels of CLA similar to those with the lowest risk of cancer. Got CLA milk?

Milk from pastured cows also contains an ideal ratio of essential fatty acids or EFAs. There are two families of EFAs‚ omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids. Studies suggest that if your diet contains roughly equal amounts of these two fats, you will have a lower risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disorders, allergies, obesity, diabetes, dementia, and various other mental disorders.[1]

Take a few moments to study the chart below showing EFA levels in milk from cows fed varying amounts of grass and grain.[2] The green bars represent omega-3 fatty acids in the milk, and the yellow bars represent omega-6 fatty acids. As you can see, when a cow is raised on pasture (represented by the two bars on the far left), her milk has an ideal ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids. Take away one third of the grass and replace it with grain or other supplements (represented by the two bars in the middle) and the omega-3 fatty acid content of the milk goes down while the omega-6 fatty acid content goes up, upsetting an essential balance. Replace two-thirds of the pasture with a grain-based diet (illustrated by the two bars on the far right) and the milk will have a very top-heavy ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids, a ratio that has been linked with an increased risk of a wide vatiety of conditions, including obesity, diabetes, depression, and cancer. Much of the milk you buy in the supermarket has an even more lopsided ratio than the final set of measuerments because they get no pasture whatsoever.

Milk from pastured cows offers additional health benefits. (I’m beginning to sound like a TV infomercial: “But wait! There’s more!”) Besides giving you five times more CLA and an ideal balance of EFAs, grassfed milk is higher in beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E. This vitamin bonus comes, in part, from the fact that fresh pasture has more of these nutrients than grain or hay. (When grass is dried and turned into hay, it loses a significant amount of its vitamin content.) These extra helpings of vitamins are then transferred to the cow’s milk.

There’s another factor involved as well. A grazing cow produces less milk than a cow fed a grain-based diet. This turns out to be a bane for the farmer but a blessing for the consumer. The less milk a cow produces, the more vitamins in her milk.[3] This is because a cow has a set amount of vitamins to transfer to her milk, and if she’s bred, fed, and injected to be a Super Producer, her milk has fewer vitamins per glass. It’s a watered down version of the real thing.

Oh, I almost forgot the best part of all. Dairy products from grassfed cows taste delicious, and they have a bright yellow color that is visible proof of their bonus supply of carotenes. Serve cheese or butter from a grass-based dairy, and everyone will notice the difference. Also, your cookies and cakes will have that rich buttery color that hasn’t been seen since Grandma’s day. (You do bake, don’t you?)

So where can you find milk from pastured cows? All of the dairies listed on www.eatwild.com keep their cows outdoors on grass whenever possible. Some farmers supplement the cows with small amounts of grain. If so, their listing will detail the type and amount. To find a local producer, go to our list of grass-fed suppliers (link) and click on your state. We also have a special section devoted to farmers who feed their cows 100 percent forage-based diets.

Can you find grass-fed milk in the supermarkets? Unfortunately, an organic label is no guarantee that the cows are raised outdoors on grass. If the label does not mention pasture-feeding, you can assume that the cows were raised in confinement and fed a high-grain diet supplemented with hay. Two large organic brands make a point of contracting with grass-based dairy farmers‚ Organic Valley, a national brand, and Natural by Nature, which is sold in select stores around. (Go to their website to find a local distributor. http://www.natural-by-nature.com)

Jo Robinson is a New York Times bestselling writer. She is the author or coauthor of 11 nationally published books including Pasture Perfect, which is a comprehensive overview of the benefits of choosing products from pasture-raised animals, and The Omega Diet (with Dr. Artemis Simopoulos) that describes an omega-3 enriched Mediterranean diet that may be the healthiest eating program of all. To order her books or learn more about grassfed products, visit http://eatwild.com.

[1] For more information about essential fatty acid balance, read The Omega Diet, a book I co-authored with internationally acclaimed fatty acid expert, Dr. Artemis Simopoulos. The Omega Diet has 24 pages of pertinent scientific references.

[2] The data comes from: Dhiman, T. R., G. R. Anand, et al. (1999). “Conjugated linoleic acid content of milk from cows fed different diets.” J Dairy Sci 82(10): 2146-56.

[3] Jensen, S. K., A. K. Johannsen, et al. (1999). “Quantitative secretion and maximal secretion capacity of retinol, beta-carotene and alpha-tocopherol into cows’ milk.” J Dairy Res 66(4): 511-22.

I wanted to follow up the blog from Monday and say that there are some effects from detoxing that you should be aware of. Anytime you are doing a cleanse or a detox diet you should know that your body will push out toxins that are built up from years of storage. This happens because your body does not recognize certain things to be an immediate nutrition source or not a nutrition source at all. Things like:
-Pollutants from water and air
-Heavy metals
-Prescription or over the counter drugs
-Alcohol
-Toxins absorbed through the skin from moisturizers and soaps

That’s just to list a few, but no matter what, most of these toxins will be pushed out during a cleanse. Please note that if you have years of toxins built up then you will need to detox or cleanse in more ways than one and probably periodically for the rest of your life. That is why it’s a good idea to maintain the 3rd phase of the Makers Diet. It will keep you eating cleaner more easily digestible foods.

Some things to look out for are:
-Built up mucus pushed out through your nose or maybe a cough
-Acne, shouldn’t last long and your skin will be healthier by the end of the 40 days
-Extra tired, especially the night after a full fast
-Quicker or slower moving stole depending on your current movements, and they will very
-Excessive sweating, mainly on fast days if you are working out
-You will have a lot more energy
-Your muscles will recover faster

There are many of other reasons and they will vary from person to person. One thing is for sure, you will feel the effects and likely see them too. Whether in weight loss or muscle definition I have found this to be the answer for most body types out there including my own.

Happy cleansing!