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Thursday, January 29, 2009

So, when & where did it all go wrong?

No, I'm not talking about Demand Five! I'm talking about us, modern man & woman. We have improved hygiene, clean water & food, modern medicine, anti-biotics, anti-virals etc. We should be enjoying good health and vitality into our nineties. We're not, though. Degenerative diseases like Type 2 Diabetes, Coronary Heart Disease, Cancer, Dementia, IBS etc are afflicting increasing numbers of people (including youngsters) and are even starting to reduce our longevity statistics. Why?

On one side of the fence are the anti-animal fat brigade who claim that animal fats are the cause of all our health problems and that we should all be eating more vegetable fats and reducing our cholesterol.

On the other side of the fence are the anti-carb brigade who claim that carbohydrates are the cause of all our health problems and that we should all be eating less carbohydrates and increasing our fat consumption.

I'm sure you can guess where I am. I have the splinters to prove it!

In 1911, hydrogenated vegetable oil (Crisco) entered the marketplace. So, in 1911, fat turned bad! See The rise and fall of Crisco.

Interestingly, rates of Coronary Heart Disease started to rise from 1920, 9 years later. Co-incidence?

Our genes may have not changed much in the last few hundred thousand years, but our lifestyles certainly have. We now live mostly sedentary lives (which makes our muscles less sensitive to insulin). We now live and work mostly indoors (which makes us deficient in Vitamin D).

We now don't eat much oily fish. Our vegetables contain much less omega-3 fat than they used to (to make them stay fresh for longer). Our meat now contains much more omega-6 and much less omega-3 fat than it used to (due to feeding animals on grains). These changes make us deficient in omega-3 fat (which makes our muscles less sensitive to insulin).

We now eat loads of refined carbohydrate (which causes unstable blood glucose & insulin levels) and loads of processed foods (which makes us deficient in Magnesium and fibre/fiber).

As a result of all of the above changes, we have many modern diseases. We can't blame it on one factor only. So, what can we do? Here's one suggestion....



























Good health!

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