Aside from the health reasons, this can also have catastrophic financial effects as the average total hospital charge for treating dehydration related hospitalization is $7,442 dollars. Sadly, dehydration is also associated with increased mortality rates amongst the elderly, yet it is entirely avoidable.

Why are elderly more at risk?

The elderly face a losing battle against dehydration. Common every day dehydration symptoms are so frequent that we associate them with “old age” and not dehydration. That is the real danger.  Symptoms of dehydration also get misdiagnosed as other diseases and disorders associated with the elderly or old age.

Though the Mayo clinic attempts to warn and educate against this misdiagnosis, public awareness of this basic issue is still very low.

“As you age, your body’s fluid reserve becomes smaller, your ability to conserve water is reduced and your thirst sense becomes less acute.

These problems are compounded by chronic illnesses such as diabetes and dementia, and by the use of certain medications.

Older adults also may have mobility problems that limit their ability to obtain water for themselves.” Mayo Clinic.

The elderly are at a disadvantage when it comes to hydration.

Part of this is our social education, for example; we expect the elderly to be confused at times and when we observe it we chalk it up to “old age”.

We also expect the elderly to get tired easily, so when they act fatigued we again think “old age”.

We are not surprised when an elderly person loses their balance “dizziness” as we automatically assume this comes with old age.

Each of these symptoms just covered are also the basic symptoms of dehydration!

• Confusion
• Fatigue
• Dizziness

And while these symptoms can also be associated with other conditions, one should certainly consult a doctor, why not rule these out by ensuring proper hydration in the first place? This can avoid a lot of unnecessary stress, misery and a costly hospital bill ranging in the thousands.

How to properly hydrate.

Compounding the problem of dehydration is a lot of loosely given advice by people unqualified to do so. I frequently have to deal with people at the receiving end of poor advice. People who have been told to drink vast quantities of water each day, somehow trying to keep up with this advice and literally losing sleep due to the frequency of their bathroom trips.

Drinking large quantities in short periods time will not get you rehydrated. All it will do is place unnecessary strain on your bladder.  When you drink too much water in a short period of time, your body will not assimilate the water, it’s too much at once, so it gets eliminated from the body instead.

Only small amounts of water, taken frequently and gradually over the period of several days will get you properly rehydrated.  That’s what they do in the hospital, and that is why the average hospital stay for dehydration is roughly 4.6 days.

Probably the best advice you can get on rehydration is by Dr. Marrongelle. This is literally the first step each of his patients go onto. Why? Well there are a lot of benefits that go with being properly hydrated, not the least of which is increased healing speed, better energy levels, clarity of mind, focus, reduction of pain, decreased toxins, a better balance within your body, increased circulation, normalization of blood pressure, easier elimination. In short, all symptoms that are caused by dehydration will resolve. If there is an actual illness or disease this can now get properly diagnosed as any symptoms related to dehydration will now be gone.

I highly recommend reading and doing Dr. Marrongelle’s rehydration protocol, It can help anyone at any age dramatically.

The post The Danger of Misdiagnosed Dehydration. appeared first on Double Helix Water.

The predominant nutritional deficiency is the nutrient which is most obviously missing. There can be two reasons for the nutrient being missing:

1. The nutrient is not present in your diet.
2. The nutrient is present in your diet but is not being used by your body due to other deficiencies.

Of these two, the second is the most likely, and quite frankly the only possible candidate. As an example:

Chromium is known to control diabetes — but only in a diet that is complete in all other nutritional elements.  Nutritional elements work hand in hand; they need each other.  To properly look at a nutritional deficiency and its resulting physical condition or disease, one must know that one is looking at a predominant nutritional deficiency.

Once you understand this, you can begin to fix nutrition in order to get well.

A Look at Diabetes as a Whole

Diabetes manifests itself as a blood sugar problem; your blood sugar (glucose) is too high.   Glucose is, however, an important element which determines how much energy you have available.  If one wants to attempt to resolve diabetes one must look at the entire energy production system of the body, not just the end result: glucose!

Per the National Institute of Health, diabetes has attendant risk factors, it puts one in danger of other ailments as listed in the chart below:

As you can see, many issues are listed as “attendant risks” of diabetes. This is of extreme interest to the nutritionist, since one can plot all of these attendant risks as nutritional deficiencies.

When one does so, it becomes clear that a predominant nutritional deficiency of chromium, in diabetes, comes with many underlying deficiencies. This becomes clear when we plot this same chart of conditions with the predominant nutritional deficiency associated with each condition.

Conditions with their Matched Predominant Deficiency

This chart of attendant risks to diabetes (this chart is incomplete and serves only to illustrate to point of predominant nutritional deficiency), clearly shows a host of related nutritional deficiencies.

Nutritional elements do not work by themselves, they work as a whole.

Any known health issue attributed to a specific vitamin or nutritional element is therefore evidence of an underlying general nutritional deficiency.

The rule is, single nutritional deficiencies exist only in theory, not in practice.

The first two nutritional elements, that all other nutritional elements depend upon for proper function, are protein and fatty acids.

Complete protein provides all the amino acids needed to build the structure of any type of cell in the body.  Protein, however, cannot be used in the absence of adequate fatty acids (found in fats and oils).  Proteins and fats need to be available to your body at the same time and you need to have the entire B complex available in order to cover each aspect of digestion.

Fatty acids are also essential to digestion, and they are needed to transport fat-soluble vitamins such as A, D, K, etc.

Fats are needed to promote good stomach flora to aid digestion.  These stomach flora in turn are capable of producing vitamin B if it is lacking from a diet. Lack of fats or healthy oils pretty much guarantees a deficiency of B vitamins.

When attempting to repair a predominant deficiency, this will be impeded by the less visible deficiencies which always exist.

The nutritional deficiency of a single vitamin will never fix when treated by itself — such a deficiency exists only in theory and not in practice.

The entire diet needs to be looked at and changed.  Predominant deficiencies can then be fixed through a temporary increase and supplementation of that predominant deficiency but without taking the rest into account it will fail.  This can give nutrition a “bad name”, the supplement recommended did “not work”.  Most likely the advice was right, but it failed to take into account the body as a whole.  There are roughly 60 major nutrients, they all influence each other, none work alone.

The post Are you taking the right nutritional supplement? appeared first on Double Helix Water.

There are of course hereditary factors. These factors, however, have their roots in diet and nutrition, and are much more rapidly affected by such. Information presented by “trusted resources” such as the CDC and FDA, frequently obfuscates actual causes by altering the sequence of importance of related factors.

This throws lay person, and especially the aspiring student scientist or practitioner, a curve ball. He is now given a false education and trained to “relate” dis-related facts.

I will give you a good example, directly lifted from the CDC website on heart disease, as it is presented today. The CDC website lists causes for heart disease, bullet-pointed in the order shown in the below chart:

Inaccurate chart for causes of heart disease.

The lay person reading this chart and sequence would be left with the impression that diabetes and overweight are at the heart of the matter. This is simply not true. The CDC itself attributes overweight and obesity to diet and nutrition and states: “Genetic changes in human populations occur too slowly to be responsible for the obesity epidemic.” Diabetes is attributed to overweight and obesity as well by the CDC, and these are named as the primary risk factors to diabetes.

The only two factors which are directly related are poor diet, and physical inactivity. The other factors — diabetes, overweight and excessive alcohol use — place one in an “at risk” category and have as their underlying causes “poor diet and physical inactivity.” It is therefore incorrect to include them among the causes, as they are part of a “progression of disease” rather than its source.
A more correct representation of the cause for heart disease, and other health issues, for that matter, would look quite different. It appears as you see in the following chart:

Better chart for causes of heart disease.

This chart, while more correct, is still inaccurate. It omits another vital factor related to disease, that is not overtly attributed to these conditions on CDC websites. The information can, however, be found on their site — if you know where to look.

This factor is toxicity: the presence bio-hostile ingredients in products such as chemical preservatives, artificial sweeteners, coloring agents, drugs, and other biologically hostile additives used to treat or flavor food.

Most accurate chart for causes of heart disease.

If one wanted to, one could add related factors, such as overweight, obesity and diabetes — but to add these to the list would still create a false impression of causation and lead to wrong diagnosis and treatment.

Except in very rare cases, overweight and obesity are a consequence of poor diet.

Why not plot an accurate chart? Current mainline medical approach is “effective disease management,” — not cure.

“Effective Disease management” is a misnomer. It alludes that a condition cannot be remedied and that no cure is available. The afflicted individual thus is convinced that his condition cannot be resolved and therefore ceases to search for a correct solution to his condition. He or she is now stuck with the condition for life.

Inherited Nutritional Deficiencies

When we discuss hereditary conditions, lines can get blurred very quickly. Most people think of hereditary conditions in terms of DNA, or genes. While DNA is one aspect of hereditary condition, it is likely the least important factor in most cases. This fact has gotten lost in our excitement about genetic engineering, cloning, and all the other advanced scientific vistas that open up with the use of DNA.

A correct medical view of hereditary diseases embraces a far wider scope. When discussing or screening for hereditary factors one must look at the following: parental nutrition, inherited deficiency, diet by family habit, current nutrition (we will cover some of the evidence for this later in this article). One could roughly chart these as follows:

When one understands the above related hereditary factors, it becomes obvious that genetics or DNA have a far smaller role than is currently envisioned, in the formation of disease. It doesn’t mean they do not affect a disease or condition, but predisposition to a condition is likely generated through nutritional deficiency, inherited deficiencies, and the prevention of remediation of the condition, through continued bad diet due to existing misconceptions on nutrition in the family environment.

This can become a vicious circle, but it is one that can be broken. And while some people are at a disadvantage in terms of health, due to hereditary reasons, it is likely not locked in due to DNA. It is therefore possible to improve, and possibly resolve, some conditions currently incorrectly attributed to DNA, or Genetics.

The terms genetic and hereditary have become synonymous, especially to the lay person. They are not and need to be kept strictly separate. They are two different disciplines entirely. Every health professional should understand hereditary factors; not every health professional needs to understand DNA. DNA is a highly specialized subject and is not the cause of the vast majority of conditions a health professional will face.

A Look at Hereditary Nutritional Deficiency and its Results

One particular study done in the late 1930’s, titled POTTENGERS CATS, a Study in Nutrition tracks the effects of hereditary nutritional deficiency over the course of several generations of cats, as well as the reversal of it. It adequately demonstrates the impact of nutrition-deficient diets on successive generations.

It is very pertinent today, as we are seeing an explosion of disease and health issues since the age of industrialized food created “processed food” which is nutritionally deficient. Likewise, we are seeing a parallel rise in developmental disorders, one example of which is autism, which currently lacks a plausible explanation. DNA does not just corrupt over the period of one or two generations, save for nuclear contamination.

Following are a few tables of several generations of cats that show inherited nutritional deficiency, over generations, and the subsequent reversal over generations. We have focused here on the prevalence of allergies in nutritionally-deficient offspring. Many other health and developmental issues were observed, and by the third generation of nutritionally deficient cats, they were no longer capable of reproducing.

First entirely healthy cats were produced through a diet with complete nutrition by already healthy cats.

Next cats were put on food lacking adequate nutrition. Over two generations the health of the cats suffers dramatically. By the 3rd generation cats stopped reproducing.

Cats were then placed on a nutritionally sufficient diet, and the “inherited” diseases were completely
reversed over two generations.

Nutrition is an important factor in health across generations

As you can see, nutrition or its deficiency drastically affects the state of health and the immune system on the following generation. Many more studies exist which prove this. It is the easiest in the world to replicate.

Of particular note in the study on cats is that by the 3rd generation, virtually all cats were allergic to something. This is alarming as the CDC currently estimates 30-40 percent of people are affected by allergies. Additionally, asthma has been increasing steadily since the 1960s, up to what are now described to epidemic levels. No suitable cause or “reason” for this has been found ….

One study done on allergies found that “farmers’ children suffer less from hay fever and asthma,” and attempted to understand why children who were born on farms, worked on farms, and were more exposed than city children, were much less affected by allergies. The study concluded that “farm children develop a natural immunity, due to exposure.” It had no evidence to back this conclusion, but the study stands. But diets on farms are notably more nutrient-rich than diets in the city … need we say more?

In closing, while DNA and genetics obviously do have a role in illness and disease, it is likely a minor one and only relevant in highly specialized instances, not in general health or in the production of disorders of epidemic proportions.

Nutritional hereditary factors, hereditary diet by education and present diet play a much larger role than previously credited, and these can be adjusted.

William Tucker
VP D&Y Laboratories

The post Are some Genetic Disorders Disguised Nutritional Deficiencies? appeared first on Double Helix Water.

And those who prepare meals for the family, be they moms or dads, husbands or wives, all do their best to make it a nutritious and delicious meal.

I think it is relatively safe to say that no one steps into the kitchen thinking “let me prepare a meal deficient in nutrients to promote poor health.”

But how many of us can answer this one question?

“What is complete nutrition?”

If you stop and think for a second, can you answer that question?

Let’s simplify the question even further:

How many nutritional elements are there?

When you ask yourself that question you are most likely faced with an uncomfortable silence. If you can not answer it confidently, it is highly likely that there is more to know about nutrition. And while you may be preparing nutritious meals, it is also true that you may not.

Well, there are forty or more nutrients required to build good health. Some foods contain most of them, some contain only one. As a general rule, the more processed or refined a food is, the fewer nutrients it contains overall.

Why is complete nutrition not common knowledge? I personally believe the most likely cause lies in false advertising. Every food manufacturer advertises “nutritious meals,” “reinforced with vitamin D” or “rich in protein” and “contains essential fatty acids.” These are all common advertising slogans. Truth be told, such slogans are generally meaningless at best, and at worst are utterly misleading.

Let us take one of these slogans: “rich in protein.” It sure sounds good, and it sounds healthy; that’s part of the reason it’s used in advertising. But does that make it healthy? You’ve just bought the product with the impression you have a healthy meal and are getting a lot of protein.

But let’s take a look at the term protein. “Protein” comes from the Greek word, protos, which means “first.” Proteins are a composition of various amino acids. They are the stuff that every cell in your body is made of.

But protein itself is a very general term. Not all proteins have the complete set of amino acids you need for good health. Proteins contain, and are made from, amino acids, so any combination of amino acids can be called a “protein” even if it lacks the essential amino acids required for good health.

The next deceptive term is “essential proteins.”

There are currently twenty-two commonly-known amino acids. The actual number of amino acids in existence is closer to 200. Twenty-two of them, however, have been classified as the basic building blocks for good health. Out of these twenty-two amino acids, thirteen of them can be produced by your body when it breaks down proteins. Nine of them can not.

The nine amino acids that can not be produced by your body are therefore called “essential amino acids” because they have to be part of your diet. But this doesn’t mean you can ignore the other fourteen. After all, you need something in your food to make them out of.

As you can see, the term “rich in protein” doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Protein containing all the wrong amino acids is still called “protein” while it does not supply you with the nutrients to build good health.

To confuse things even more, there is the term “complete protein.” This sounds like it has everything you need, but it’s only partially true.

A food that has “complete protein” has each of the nine amino acids your body and cells can not produce by themselves. But remember there are thirteen amino acids that it can produce, providing it has the resources to do so, as you need the total of twenty-two amino acids for good health.

Some foods contain protein that have all amino acids, some only a few.

Eggs, for instance, contain complete protein, with all essential amino acids, as well as the “non-essential” amino acids. Other foods lack certain amino acids, and would have to be eaten in combination with one another. Most grains are missing two of the essential amino acids, so even whole-grain bread needs to be eaten with something containing the missing two, if one wants to obtain complete protein.

Another less-known fact is that complete protein is needed at each meal. If you take half the essential amino acids for breakfast, and the other half for lunch, it doesn’t work. They need to be taken at the same time, to form complete proteins in your body.

As you can probably see clearly by now, our food-labeling and advertising practices are misleading and can cause one to think that one is purchasing a healthy meal, when one is not.

There is something to learn and know about nutrition, and as you can see, it’s not something you learn over night. It takes some work.

In the above example I’ve covered only the subject of protein,  I haven’t gone into any real detail. All I have tried to make clear so far is that I think everyone wants to eat healthy, and be healthy, but that in order to know one is eating healthy, one needs to study up on nutrition – even if only a little bit at a time.  Only trough knowing more about nutrition can you improve health with certainty.

And most importantly we need to watch ourselves a little more carefully so we do not let advertising become a source of nutritional information. Advertisement is intended to sell product, not to give health advice.

The post Are Our Meals as Healthy as We Think They Are? appeared first on Double Helix Water.

Just about every day, there is a new news article in every major newspaper’s health section, about the relative health benefit of some food substance or beverage. While these articles are interesting, they tend to lack scientific merit.

It’s hard to say how this has become generally acceptable. I certainly couldn’t tell you why; I can only guess at it. One likely reason is that reporters lack scientific training and discipline, and therefore are unable to qualify studies themselves, but have to rely on what someone else says. After all, most of them studied meda, not science.

In case you think I am exaggerating, I will make my point using only today’s health headlines. At the top of my news feed I find the following statement: “Higher coffee consumption associated with lower risk of death.”

So our basic message for today is “drink more coffee, or you will die sooner;” or perhaps “a pot of coffee a day keeps the undertaker at bay.”

While this makes all us coffee drinkers feel warm and fuzzy, coffee by itself is not a cure for anything in particular. I would say the main health benefit of coffee is to others around us. If we are going to associate it with longer life spans, let’s not be coy: it prevents cardiac arrest in those who attempt to speak with us first thing in the morning. If not for that first cup of coffee, that attempt to talk to us could have been deadly.

Joking aside, let’s take a look at the scientific premise of today’s coffee study. Roughly 20,000 people were surveyed as to their food and coffee habits. After 10 years, 337 of the total participants had passed away due to various reasons.

Of the 337 people who passed away, cause of death was not factored in. So these people could have died due to disease, infection, car accident, old age, violent crime etc.

Based on the old surveys these 337 people had filled out, their coffee consumption was analyzed and tabulated. Cups of coffee consumed was somehow extrapolated as a baseline to longer life.

While they make their calculations and tabulations sound impressive, and they certainly went through a lot of numbers. The only thing that this study proves is that scientific discipline is no longer taught or practiced at the university where the study was done. Neither is it taught or practiced by the Media.

For the study to mean anything, or to have any value other than as an interesting statistic, it would have to prove that lack of coffee consumption was a factor in death. The study did not search for this evidence.

You see, in order to be scientific, the very first thing you have to do is to look for ways to disprove your own studies and conclusions. You have to leave absolutely no question as to whether there may be another source or factor influencing your outcome.

Statistical analysis is useful, but it will only take you so far. What’s wrong with the coffee study is that we can do a statistical analysis of many other factors, and reach different conclusions.

For example, we could have looked at the shoe-size of the participants, and done a mathematical analysis. We would then come out with a number for “likelihood of death based on shoe size.”

Likewise, we could have looked at any other dietary factor and made a similar conclusion, based on any other food item that was consumed by this group:

• How many slices of bread did they consume on average?
• How many potatoes per week?
• How many carrots?
• How many hamburgers?

Or we could have analyzed how many movies they saw. Or how many hours of TV they watched.

Each of these questions would produce a statistical response that could then be “correlated.”

None of the questions, however, would prove that those items were the cause of either good health, or death. And that is exactly what is wrong with this last study.

It is almost comical that a major university lent its name and credence to the study and that it is making international headlines. Yes, I am sure the numbers they ran were correct. But, as stated, we could run those numbers based on shoe size and get a statistical result. It would be mathematically sound, and you wouldn’t be able to argue with the figures. You still would not be able to claim that shoe size had anything to do with health or longer life.

For scientific studies to mean anything, they need to show more than a casual relationship, and and all other factors need to be ruled out.

Don’t get me wrong, I do love coffee, but i’m not under the impression that I am taking it for good health. I drink it because I like the taste, and because the caffeine in it wakes me up and makes me a friendlier person in the morning. Coffee itself is a poor nutrient relative to other foods and beverages. If you are looking to fix or cure nutritional deficiencies, it’s not going to happen by drinking more coffee. And I know for a fact that every doctor, nutritionist, and health professional would agree with that statement.

The post Misleading Food Studies appeared first on Double Helix Water.

Good health is neither mystical nor unattainable. A proper diet combined with some light daily exercise would do wonders in itself.  A “proper diet” is, however, an unclear concept.  There are  1001 diets and superfoods on the market, each wanting to position themselves as “the best.”

So, why so many diets? Let’s start with the basics.  The word “diet” has become synonymous with “weight loss,” or is associated with a highly-specialized set of food items.  This is not the original meaning;  “Diet” comes from the Greek word “Diata” which means “way of life.” The word used to have a much broader meaning, referring to of the types of foods one generally eats.

For instance, if you primarily eat at Burger King, McDonald’s, or another fast food chain, you are on a fast food diet.  This is the food you normally eat; it is your way of life.

Any diet is only as good as it supplies complete nutrition.  So, to determine whether a diet is good or not, you have to know something about nutrition and how the human body functions. Without knowing something about these two elements, you can not make an informed judgement, you just have to take someone’s word that what they are saying is correct.

The reason there are so many specialized diets around is because many physical conditions are caused by the lack of particular nutritional element. Classic examples of disease brought about are scurvy and beribery. Both of these diseases are nutritional deficiencies that lead to eventual death.  But both are easily avoided or fixed by a change in diet.

Mild forms of these nutritional diseases are common these days, but almost never diagnosed or recognized.   For example, bleeding gums is today referred to as a dental disease, and treated with  a specialized “toothpaste”.  Well bleeding gums is one of the primary symptoms of vitamin C deficiency or scurvy. It is avoided or fixed by adjusting one’s diet to have more vitamin C.

Beribery which has symptoms such as decreased muscle function, particularly in the lower legs, tingling or loss of feeling in the feet and hands, pain and mental confusion, is fixed by adjusting one’s diet to include more vitamin B1.

Likewise every other major vitamin deficiency will produce its own set of symptoms that are very worrisome and look like major diseases. Yet all of them are corrected and fixed by adjusting diet based on the deficiency one has.

In the case of a nutritional deficiency, one would temporarily go onto a special diet to fix the nutritional deficiency.  Once the nutritional deficiency has been repaired, one would then readjust his diet to become more balanced, so as to provide the proper proportion of every nutritional element.

This, by the way, is why some specific diets work wonders for some people, and do nothing for others.  Someone who is ill because he is low on a particular set of vitamins or minerals will most likely feel a lot better if he suddenly begins to eat a lot of vegetables. Why? Well, he is addressing the deficiencies he has.  Someone who has other deficiencies might not notice any difference on that  same diet.  That person needs a diet tailored to what he is missing, in terms of nutrients, in order to get well.

Let’s take a look at the function of nutrition in broad general terms:

The human body requires an exact set of nutrients and vitamins in order to operate. In fact, the term “vitamin” comes from vita (the Latin word for life) and amine, because they were thought to contain amino acids (amino acids are some of the primary building blocks of the human body). So, vitamins are the essential component parts for life.  When they are lacking, the body starts to break down and deteriorate.  This is when aches and pains begin to surface and diseases begin to develop.  Some vitamins are more important than others, but all are needed for good health.

Factually, you should not need any supplemental vitamin tablets.  All vitamins should ideally come from your food.  The standard modern-day TV advertised diet, however, consists largely of processed food.  Processed food of any type contains very few nutrients.  Dog food is generally more nutritious than a meal you purchase at a fast food chain.  I don’t recommend it, but there is a pretty sound logic in science-fiction and post-apocalyptic movies depicting its characters as scavenging for cans of dog or cat food.

Vitamins and minerals have a relationship.  They function within your body to work hand-in-glove with one another.  Taking only one vitamin, because “it’s good for you,” doesn’t usually resolve much, as it needs other vitamins to work effectively.

Some vitamins will not work at all without their partner vitamins.  A rough analogy would be trying to bake a cake with only one ingredient: flour …   Well, you won’t get a cake.  The same goes for building cells in your body.  If you try build a cell with only one ingredient, it won’t work.

The only time a single vitamin or mineral does produce a startling result, is when it’s the only missing ingredient, and you have supplied the final piece to a puzzle.  This is where you get a magic recovery using only that one vitamin – but this is a specialized case.

This factor (the one missing ingredient or vitamin) is how you get cult following and fanatical dietists, claiming that only one food is right for human subsistence. These people may swear by a particular diet, as it worked for them and brought on a miraculous recovery.  They did the “juiced carrot” diet and got well …  now they eat only carrots, and look like carrots, and swear by their carrot diet. I have met such people, and I’m sure you have as well.  So, what happened here?

These people were only ill due to a missing nutrient that carrots (or whatever their “specialized” diet was) supplied.  So they got well.  Instead of realizing that they added a missing nutrient, they now worship carrots, and drop the remaining parts of their diet which were beneficial.  They won’t stay well for long. The human body needs a full range of nutrients, minerals, amino acids, etc.  It needs to be supplied with all of the building blocks – not just a few of them.

Similarly, there are people that get well because their “specialized diet” prevents them from eating the toxic food they were eating before.  Here, you see an improvement because they essentially stopped poisoning themselves on a daily basis.

The raw vegetable diet is an example of this. For instance lets look at a person whose normal habit is to eat fast food with zero nutritional value and to drink half a gallon of Coke (or other sugary soda) every day.  He is unhappy with his weight, is fatigued, and has a host of chronic issues. He switches to eating raw vegetables only.  All of a sudden his body feels a lot better – a million times better!  Conclusion: “Raw vegetables are the only way to go from now on. Anyone who eats cooked food is a heathen and needs to be burned at the stake, like a steak …. ”

No, not so fast.

In comparison to the earlier fast-food and sugar-soda diet, this new diet of raw vegetables makes his body feel like it has entered the gates of heaven and found ambrosia (food from the gods).  He naturally feels better as he is no longer poisoning himself on a daily basis with sodas and fast food.  And as an added bonus, he is now getting at least partial nutrition and has made a giant improvement in his diet and lifestyle.

The Internet and Facebook are full of the latest “tips and tricks” as to how to avoid one particular malady by eating a specific fruit or vegetable every day.  Each of these food items is probably healthy in its own right.  There is, however, no single food item on earth that provides every nutrient necessary to good health.  Yes, you could survive on a single food for a while – years maybe.  But doing so would take its toll on your health, because you would not be obtaining full nutrition.

The key thing to understand about diet and nutrition is as follows:

• Nutrition consists of a complete package, including all of the nutrients, vitamins, minerals, proteins, etc. that the body needs.
• Ideally, nutrition is obtained through one’s food.  It is now, and always will be, the best way to get ones vitamins and minerals
• Supplements are only needed when the diet is insufficient or where the nutritional content of food is lacking (usually due to factory farming, chemical fertilization, or mass processing of food).

By understanding the above 3 points, and taking some time to learn about nutrition, one can set oneself and one’s family up for far better health.

The post What Makes a Good Diet? appeared first on Double Helix Water.

For instance, many people believe that disease and illness are brought about by some mysterious unknown (or unavoidable) cause, and that it is just a matter of “luck” – or, bad luck. Luck may be a factor, but it certainly isn’t the overriding factor.

Next in line is the virus or bacteria theory: “everyone knows” that disease and illness are caused by bacteria and viruses. But this is not entirely true. While they certainly  have their role in disease or illness. They are not, by themselves, the sole “cause of disease.”

I know. This flies right into the teeth of the mainstream concept of health. But note carefully that I am not saying they don’t play a role in bad health. I am stating that they are not the sole causes. And, by the way, we are not making some wild new statement over here, or speaking strictly from the viewpoint of natural or integrative health. We are taking this information directly from clinical studies done by one of the great pioneers of modern medicine, Dr. Hanse Seyle, who, in his time, was Professor and Director of the Institute of Experimental Medicine and Surgery at the University of Montreal, and authored over 32 books and over 1500 technical articles on modern medicine.

Now, many will probably want to argue the germ theory: “that all diseases are caused by bacteria or viruses.” And everyone is entitled to is point of view. But let me lay out some solid arguments and examples which demonstrate that there is much more at play than just the germ theory.

Everyone carries germs within their body. But not everyone is affected by them. When the flu is going around, just about everyone gets exposed to those germs, but not everyone gets the flu. Since not everyone gets the flu, it is quite apparent that germs can not be the only factor.

E. coli bacteria: the media loves to publish stories about E. coli infections. Well I have news for you, everybody has E. coli in their body; it’s part of your digestive and immune system. Without E. coli bacteria you would probably die. Yet it sometimes gets out of control and becomes a disease.

The entire theory of vaccination would fall to pieces if bacteria and viruses were the only causes of disease and illness. Vaccinations do not get rid of bacteria, nor do they prevent future invasions of bacteria in your body. Vaccines are meant to make you immune, meaning that your body will successfully fight the germs or viruses. The whole theory of vaccinations is only that they train your body to recognize harmful germs and to be prepared to deal with them when they invade.

A list of examples of bacteria and viruses which can cause a disease, but are also beneficial (or are usually harmless) could fill a book by itself. So let’s make a more accurate statement here.

Bacteria and viruses that are out of control, even normally beneficial ones, are a cause of disease and illness.

This would probably be the most accurate statement you could make in regards to the germ theory. Out of control germs, whether they are good or bad, are what cause disease. This is not a radical view, or a fact believed by only a few fringe scientists. The most mainstream of scientists know this to be true. Louis Pasteur, considered one of the three founders of bacteriology, who first made the germ theory widely known, later adjusted his view on germs to the above concept. But for some reason, only his early “discoveries” remain popular, and his later adjustment of these discoveries based on continuing research didn’t make it into the textbooks.

So, if we take this adjusted statement of germ theory, and apply it to disease, it becomes obvious that there are other factors we need to look at in order to explain or tackle disease and health. The theory of eradicating all germs to get rid of disease does not work to make you healthy, and doing so would kill you on the spot.

You actually need most of the germs in your body, in order to stay alive, and you can not live without them.

To get closer to good health and at the resolution of disease and illness, you must ask and answer the following questions:

• What mechanism does your body use to keep germs and viruses under control?
• How do they get out of control?
• What do you need to do to get them back under control?

If you know the answer to the first question, you now have a starting point in terms of what needs to be fixed in order to get well. Now, this can all get very complicated and intricate. Your body consists of so many basic parts, that entirely separate medical professions deal with different parts of the body.

We are sticking with fundamental core systems here, which underlie all of these parts. The most basic answer is of course the immune system. But that is such an abstract concept, it is like answering the question, “where do you live”, with “in a house.” Thank you, Captain Obvious…. Everyone knows they have an immune system. Virtually no one knows what it is.

The immune system is a combination of many parts that work together: your glands, your stomach (digestive system), your nervous system, your organs, and parts of your brain. Even the bones in your body are part of it. Yes, bones are not just good for walking or posture. Bones manufacture blood. But all of these systems have one thing in common:

Each and every one of them requires the basic resources to function and operate properly.

If they do not have the needed ingredients to operate, they break down. They all work together to produce good health, and each of them requires a specific set of ingredients to function, or to function well. If they run out of a certain ingredient, they stop performing their function. When they stop performing their function, germs (good or bad) go out of control, and you get illness or disease.

The ingredients these different systems need are called, as a whole, “nutrition.” So here we have another one of the foundations of health: nutrition. Everyone has heard of nutrition, and most people “know about nutrition”. The truth is, very few people really do know even the basics of nutrition.

General nutrition knowledge is about as advanced as “make sure you eat some veggies every day,” “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” or “be sure to get your proteins….” Nothing wrong with these statements – but it’s like trying to pass an engineering exam by walking in, stating that a house needs walls and doors, and expecting to pass.

I dare say that if you ask the question, “What is the most important nutrient?” most people will get it wrong. How do you even establish what the most important nutrient is? The answer to that question is both simple and brutal:

How long can you survive with the total lack of a particular nutrient? Or, “What is the length of time it takes before your body dies due to a lack of a particular nutrient?”

The answer to that question establishes the order of importance of nutrients. It does not say you can do without the “less important” nutrients. All we are implying here is that health fades quickly or slowly, depending on the importance of the nutrient that is deficient in your diet.

Another part of nutrition would consist of what not to put in your body. This is the subject of toxins and poisons. Here, the question is the reverse: how much time does it take before a body dies if it ingests a particular poison. Or, how much of a toxin or poison can a person ingest before the body dies?

To recap the important fundamentals quickly:

• Germs out of control are a cause of disease
• The immune system serves to control germs
• The immune system needs proper ingredients to do its job
• Some ingredients support the immune system
• Some ingredients inhibit the immune system

By putting these in correct sequence, one can establish the most important factors of good health. When you look at it that way, the most basic foundation of good health becomes as follows:

• Correct nutrition enables the immune system and the body to function properly
• Lack of complete nutrition weakens the body’s defense systems against illness or disease
• Toxins and poisons, are ingredients that impair or prevent the immune system and the body from functioning properly
• A breakdown of immune system and body functions allow germs, bacteria, and viruses to go out of control and to produce disease.

This is the most basic breakdown of the progression of disease and illness. Each of these sections could be explored and explained in great detail. Each could have books written on them. But that is the field of doctors and practitioners. Right now, we are just trying to get the concept of how good health is lost, and how to reverse it.

The post How is Health Lost and Regained? appeared first on Double Helix Water.

Every food giant advertises its “delicious meals” and “high-quality food items” so that you, the consumer, will choose to buy its brand.  And, true to their word, some of their food tastes pretty good.

But with the globalization and centralization of food, new problems arise. How do you keep food fresh long enough to:

• Be harvested
• Be transported to the factory
• Be processed
• Be packaged
• Be transported to the store,
• Be stocked
• Be sold
• Arrive in your kitchen,
• Be placed in your cupboard or fridge
• And wait for you to cook and eat it

As you can see, it could take months at times before you eat the food that you bought.  But food in its natural state tends to go off within a few days. And when we spend our hard-earned money buying food, we complain bitterly if it has gone off or is spoiled.  When we complain about a brand, its profits go down, and that is not a good place to be in, for a business.  

The brilliant solution to food spoilage is of course the use of preservatives – but this is where you get a conflict of interest.

Nutrition, energy and health all center around an essential biological process called digestion.

To give you a really basic explanation of digestion, consider the following:

Digestion is the process of food being broken down and spoiled by bacteria inside your stomach.

Your digestive system isolates the nutrients for use, and once it has finished extracting those nutrients, it gets rid of the crap (literally).

Just think it through.  Not trying to be crass here, but food gone off smells terrible.  Well, there is a reason air fresheners in restrooms are popular.  The same process is at work internally.

What is important to understand here is that the process of digesting is really the process of spoiling food: breaking it down, or making it “go off.”  If this can not occur, then you can not extract the nutrients out of the food you eat.

But food manufacturers need to keep food fresh as long as possible. If they do not, we complain, and their profit goes down.

So they add preservatives that prevent or slow food from decaying or breaking down.  Well, that is the exact opposite of what your digestive system is trying to achieve.  Your digestive system wants to break the food down.  If it receives foods that are difficult to break down, it can not extract the nutrients.  If nutrients can not be extracted from foods, your health suffers.

This, of course, is a basic explanation.  The subject of food preservation is a lot more involved. There are natural ways of preserving foods, which actually aid digestion. But these methods are not generally used by large-scale food industry.  It is much easier and cheaper to use artificial preservatives – and that is where the conflict of interests lies, between the food industry, and you.

Artificial preservatives work entirely differently than natural methods of food preservation.  They simply prevent food from being decayed – indefinitely. This is why we see so many cases of indigestion and stomach problems these days.

Did you know that some artificial preservatives use the same base material used to make lethal injections for executions in Nazi Germany?

Of course, many studies are used to proclaim that these preservatives are safe.  After all, they wouldn’t be approved by the FDA for use otherwise, right?

The truth of the matter is that there are no studies proving they are safe. All they say are “this small amount will not kill you”.  There are only studies saying they have “not noticed a detrimental effect with this small dosage.”  Well just because you did not notice a detrimental effect right away is absolutely no proof there isn’t one over long term use.

But, purely from a logical or scientific viewpoint, one can ask this one question:  

Is an ingredient, which counteracts or inhibits the natural digestive process of your body, beneficial, or detrimental?

Well we certainly know it is beneficial to the manufacturer and food stores. But it likely isn’t beneficial to you.

The post The Food Industry and its Conflicts of Interest appeared first on Double Helix Water.

Calorie counting is probably the worst possible system that exists for maintaining weight or good health.  Why?

Calorie counting, as a system for the selection of foods in the diet, completely omits the recognition of nutritional elements. Using the calorie counting system only, can literally kill you.

Health is obtained through nutritional elements.  The calorie system does not take nutritional content of food into account.  It can thus give the false perception that one is eating healthy. Toxic sludge could be assigned a calorie count, and in this way could be made to sound like the “healthy choice”.  (In fact, this is a regular practice.)

Prime example, there is not one valuable nutritional element in Coca Cola.  Any doctor will agree with you on that.  The only truthful advertising by Coca Cola is “Coca Cola Zero” – as in, zero nutritional value.  But many people who are dying to lose weight would think this is a healthier option – after all, it has no calories.

According to the calorie-counting logic, an orange has about 45 calories, while Coca Cola Zero has none.  So Coca Cola Zero now “looks” like the better option.  Yet an orange is full of nutrition that helps the body.  Coca Cola Zero contains zero useful ingredients, other than water, and it contains harmful ingredients that will set one back in one’s health and weight-loss goals.

On the other end of the spectrum, the web is full of articles on “the latest and most incredible super-nutrient,” the “magical supplement,” the “one food item you need to eat every day in order to maintain good health.”  And while there is truth to most of those statements, plenty of people alive today are doing well without access to Goji berries, coconut oil, avocados, or whatever superfood is part of the latest marketing effort. All of these examples are foods I eat due to their health benefits, so I am certainly not saying they aren’t valuable.  But different societies and peoples have different foods available to them at different times of year.  Where we can err is in thinking that good health can only be obtained if we include a specific food item in our diet, or that we can ignore other aspects of our diet as long as we are consuming one specific item.

So, what is the most important nutrient? How do you objectively decide what is the most important? And what is an ideal diet?

Well, the truth is that modern science has not yet established the “ideal diet.”  Yes, there are many movements regarding what a good diet consists of, but no real consensus.  There certainly is hot debate between the different factions: Vegan, Vegetarian, Paleo, Raw Food, and so on.

So let’s take a look at the subject of nutrition.  Let us put a few facts in place that everyone can agree on no, matter what dietary position they choose to take.

The ideal diet would contain all required nutrients including a complete set of vitamins and minerals needed for good health, for the building and maintenance of bodies, and for the production of energy.

That would be the best possible scenario for good health, don’t you agree?.  

Another important factor would be that the diet would not include things harmful to one’s health.

These two points give one the essential starting point to evaluate what one eats.  One can formulate two simple questions about any food item in order to determine its relative value.

Does it contain real nutrients the body needs? And is it free from things that are harmful or damaging to these nutrients, or to one’s body?

The answer to these two questions will allow you to judge how good or bad something is for a body.

This is entirely different than the calorie counting system.  These two questions should be the starting point for determining good health.

More about this subject in next week’s article.

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