Education

What has nutritional therapy got to do with hayfever? A lot, actually. Here’s just one piece: the more histamine is released in response to an allergen, the more cortisol it takes to control the inflammation that histamine initiates. And cortisol raises blood sugars!

So if you have a lot of food and environmental triggers setting off allergic reactions, your blood sugars may be unstable. Imbalanced blood sugars contribute to cravings and fatigue.

While it is part of my work to find and eliminate food triggers, this can be frustrating if you are sensitive to a lot of allergens. You might feel very restricted and wonder what there is left to survive on after you take away all the foods that are causing a histamine response.

NAET treatments are a non-dietary approach to allergy treatment. The acronym stand for Namudripad’s Allergy Elimination Technique, and was developed by Dr. Devi S. Nambudripad, a nurse, chiropractor, acupuncturist, and doctor, who overcame her own debilitating struggle with allergies after combining chiropractic and acupuncture principles to reprogram her body’s response to the allergen.

Although there are 14.000 trained practitioners who use NAET treatments globally, the technique is relatively unknown here locally in Southeast Idaho. Lucky for us that Dr. Wade Davis practices this therapy regularly. It takes less than 15 minutes to clear an allergen, and most treatments remain in effect for life.

While most of us connect allergies to runny nose, sneezing, watery eyes, hives, and itching, here are some other sneaky signs that might indicate that you have a hidden food sensitivity:

• frequent headaches, or migraines
• skin conditions: acne, rosacea, eczema, or other rashes
• dark circles under your eyes
• chronic joint pain
• digestive issues: frequent stomach aches, gas, bloat, constipation, or diarrhea
• intense food cravings, especially if you feel there are certain foods you could NOT live without!
• chronic exhaustion, even if you are sleeping well
• seasonal allergies that last all year long

Finding what you are reacting to can be done in conjunction with NAET treatments, or through testing available in my office.

You feel deprived. Or desperate. Or foggy. Or you’re keyed in to a particular food. Or you need a stimulant.

These different ways of craving sweets can be indicative of why you’re craving. And knowing the reason for your craving will multiply your success for stopping your sugar addiction in its tracks!

Would you feed bananas to a cat, or fish to a monkey? Of course not, so why would you correct an emotional addiction with probiotics, or low blood sugars with social interaction?

Sometimes you crave because your customs, habits, and circumstances induce powerful brain cues. For example, you think about cake on birthdays, hot chocolate when it snows, or millk and cookies on Christmas Eve.

But that’s not the same as the signals your body sends out when it is deficient in amino acids or when you’re dehydrated, or when you need fatty acids. In short, nutrient shortfalls cause cravings completely separate from socio-emotional cues. This category includes lack of fuel from hypoglycemia, and also fuel shortages because of insulin resistance.

Then there’s the rush you get because you are addicted to a food. It’s a literal physiological occurrence. The body’s histamine reaction to a food that you are sensitive to is followed by a dopamine hit and an endorphin release. In a strange twist of nature, you want more of the very food that is harming you!

When your gut bugs talk to your brain, it’s a different sort of craving, born by the microbiome’s need for food. Different strains of yeasts, bacteria, and parasites have different fuel requirements. While certain desirable strains feast on vegetable fiber, other less beneficial strains pig-out on simple sugars.

Lastly, you often crave because you are stressed or tired – or both! In either case, you are trying to run on empty and you need a quick fix.

There are different nutritional answers for each of these scenarios. That’s why I have created a class to guide you through the key characteristics of all five types of craving and the strategies you can employ to overcome them. Join me locally here, or request the introductory price when our online version becomes available.

The 74 trillion cells of your body need fuel to do their work – of seeing, hearing, tasting,  digesting, growing, hugging, loving, and all the other things you do as a human being.

These cells also need raw materials to repair themselves, and to reproduce. When you don’t have enough energy, that’s a sign that your cells are short on fuel.

Nutrition on a cellular level

Maybe you didn’t eat what they needed today, or maybe the supply line has been hijacked. That happens when the membrane around the cell is defective. Every cell is encased by a lipoprotein bi-layer. That’s fancy talk for a two-way window that passes nutrients in and toxins out. It’s made from fatty acids and proteins. For your body to make this bi-layer without appropriate fats would be like weaving a blanket without yarn.

Not only that, fats provide essential building blocks to produce vitamin D when sunlight hits your skin. And dietary fats enable you to absorb vitamins A, D, E, and K from food. So a low-fat diet is a low-vitamin diet! Certainly you can’t expect your cells to work for long without vitamins!

And what about energy production itself – the ATP cycle you learned about in your high school physiology class. You body can use ketones (from protein), glucose, or fatty acids.

Fatty acids are the most efficient way to run the ATP cycle. Ketones are used in extreme situations, but are not the body’s normal fuel choice. Glucose comes from carbohydrates and is the fuel your cells use when under stress. But glucose is like kindling. It burns hot and fast and extinguishes in an instant. It must be replenished constantly. So, fueling on glucose actually creates cravings! The body experiences a drop in blood sugars when the fuel runs out, and you feel exhausted and unsatiated.

Fats however, burn slowly and evenly. They create sustained energy. They tell the body that you feel satiated. They free you from dizziness, brain fog, and mood swings. They take you off the roller coaster and restore your energy.

Eating the Right Kinds of Fats

The big question about fats, then, is not whether to eat them, but rather which ones to eat.   Some fats are definitely damaging. Consuming trans-fats and hydrogenated fats is like putting a pancake in a CD player – it just gums up the works!

Fats should be real! A real food occurs in nature, it is just one ingredient, you know where it comes from, and it works in harmony with your body as it has for thousands of years. Some such real fats include butter, ghee tallow, lard, coconut oil, olive oil, red palm oil, nuts, seeds, and avocadoes. Real oils are expeller-pressed and have not been exposed to high heat or chemicals.

Do not use cottonseed, canola, corn, or soybean oils, as these industrial seed oils are often made from genetically-modified seeds, contain high levels of pesticides, and have been processed with toxic chemicals. Do not use shortening or margarine, as they have been hydrogenated.

Try these five ways to get more healthy fat into your diet:

1. Butter your vegetables. It helps absorb the vitamins they contain.
2. Cook with heat-stable fat that is solid at room temperature, rather than a liquid oil which is susceptible to oxidation at higher temperatures. Throw away your vegetable oil, and save your olive oil for salad dressings.
3. Eat fatty wild-caught fish. It is a substantial source of essential Omega 3 (not made by the body) and DHA and EPA, both of which decrease inflammation in the body, lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of cancer.
4. Eat fatty cuts of pastured, organic meat, because this is where the Omega 3 fatty acids are stored. However, cut the fat off of feedlot and factory-raised meat because toxins are stored in fat, and these animals have been exposed to pesticide-laden grains.
5. Eat pastured eggs. The yolk is almost all fat, and if the hens have been free to eat their natural diet in the sunshine and chase crickets, the amount of essential Omega 3’s can be up to 5 times higher than eggs from factory-raised chickens.

If you could predict your risk of Alzheimer’s Disease with a single marker, would you use that marker to define your lifestyle from now on in order to prevent the disease?

Insulin Resistance may be that marker – the canary in the coal mine, says Amy Berger, author of Alsheimer’s Antidote.

Alzheimer’s Disease is the Result of an Energy Crisis!

The AD brain is a shrunken brain. The axons and dendrites – the fingerlike sending and receiving ends of the neurons – are shrunken. In this condition, signals cannot cross the synaptic gap between two neurons, and messages fail be to be relayed. According to Berger, the atrophied condition is a protective measure by the body to conserve energy when there is a shortage.

But why would there be a an energy shortfall in the brain? Because of Mitochondrial Dysfunction, which is always found in AD, Berger says. Mitochondrial Dysfunction and the resulting energy shortage triggers the neuron shrinkage!

Mitochondrial Dysfunction Means the Generator is Damaged

Inside every cell is a tiny powerhouse, the mitochondria. It is surrounded by two membranes – an inner one and an outer one. These membranes act like bouncers in a bar – they let the good guys in and kick out the bad ones. For a cell, good guys are nutrients and bad guys are waste materials. The nutrients fuel the mitochondria’s process of creating energy. When the bouncer membrane shuts out nutrients, the mitochondrial generator is incapable of providing enough energy.

Well,  the modern diet is beating up the cell membranes around the mitochondria the way a scoundrel might rough up a bouncer. The membranes need proteins for their construction. But unfortunately, proteins are subject to glycation. That’s a condition where proteins become sticky and cross-linked because of chronically excessive glucose in the blood (think high refined carbohydrate consumption.) A glycated mitochondrial membrane can’t accept nutrients into the mitochondria.

Berger warns that the predominant abnormality in AD is a 45% reduction in glucose utilization in the brain, meaning even when the raw materials are available for energy production, they aren’t being consumed. This reduction in fuel consumption can be observed years – even decades – before AD symptoms present themselves!

High Insulin Precedes Glycation Damage

Insulin actually has a protective role of removing glucose from the blood before it can do any damage. The higher your blood sugars go, the more insulin is released to sweep the glucose into the cells. So if mitochondrial membranes are glycated, that means insulin is no longer doing its job! In other words, you have become insulin resistant! See the cascade? Insulin resistance can occur years before blood sugars become chronically elevated, and chronically high blood sugars are damaging the mitochondrial membrane and causing dysfunction. That dysfunction is a pre-cursor to the manifestation of AD.

What if You Could Stop Insulin Resistance?

You can! By eating a nutrient-dense, whole foods diet, properly balanced! Start by eliminating white flour and white sugar. A nutritional therapist can help you fine tune your diet further.

Hypoglycemia: (also called low blood sugar) a lack of the body’s main source of fuel, glucose. Characterized by confusion, heart palpitations, shakiness, and anxiety. There are over 200,000 documented cases per year. But for some, it’s a chronic way of life.

Why Does Hypoglycemia Occur?

In the most common scenario, a non-diabetic individual eats a high-carb meal, which is rapidly converted to glucose. This glucose enters the bloodstream quickly and triggers a surge of insulin to escort it into the cells for energy, into the liver for temorary storage, and into fat tissue for more permanent storage. Picture insulin as a roll of paper towels and blood sugars as a basin of water. The more paper towels you use, the more water you absorb out of the basin, right? So, the more insulin secreted, the lower blood sugars will drop in response.

Google says, “Consuming high-sugar foods or drinks, such as orange juice or regular soda, can treat this condition.” Using the analogy above, sugary foods and beverages will add more water to the basin and will require another roll of paper towels to mop it up, so the cycle continues perpetually. A better preventative treatment would be to avoid eating in a way that causes high levels of glucose to enter the bloodstream to begin with. In other words, eating nutrient-dense whole foods, adequately balanced. That means adequate fats, proteins, and unrefined, unprocessed carbohydrates – like vegetables.

Why is Hypoglycemia Harmful?

Hypoglycemia is the first step in what is now being called the Black Plague of the 21st Century – a pathway toward insulin resistance, Metabolic Syndrome (characterized by weight gain, high blood pressure, and rising triglycerides), pre-diabetes (chronically elevated blood sugars), diabetes (blood sugars over 200 mg/dl), and Alzheimer’s (called Diabetes Type III).

If you don’t want to be on this path, you need to take steps now to reverse your direction.

Know the Signs of Hypoglycemia

• You notice an afternoon slump when you crave, feel lethargic, can’t think, and  get sleepy – otherwise known as the 2 p.m. coma.
• Your food groups seem to be coffee, sweets, and energy drinks – you need stimulants to keep going.
• Your moods change as rapidly as the Idaho weather.
• You wonder if you’re experiencing an earthquake because you’re shaking so much. The hungrier you are, the shakier you get.
• When you can’t bite into food, you bite someone’s head off. Hangry is the word!
• Although no one startled you, and it’s not flu season, you could still faint because you get so light-headed.
• Eating brings such sweet relief! Fasting is out of the question.
• “You’re not you….” You’re:confused, knucklehead, blonde, hot mess, befuddled, klutz….
• You’re as nervous as a June Bug in a henhouse.
• Your vision seems like an unadjusted pair of binoculars.

If these sound familiar, please contact me to get some help before your health gets worse!

Since sugar isn’t helping you get healthier, can you replace it with a non-calorie sweetener? Let’s look at the pros and cons:

Benefits

Artificial sweeteners, known by such names as Sweet One, NutraSweet, Equal, Sweet ‘n Low, Sugar Twin, Splenda and Truvia, do have one marked advantage over white sugar: they don’t add calories to your diet.

For Diabetes control, they are also purportedly acceptable because they are not carbohydrate, so they can’t spike blood sugars.

Possible Detrimental Affects

The controversy that has been raging for more than 50 years is whether they are actually safe in the quantities that they are being consumed. There is also the question of whether users actually reduce their caloric intake or whether they compensate for the reduced calories by eating more of something else. There is concern that artificial sweeteners retrain the tastebuds to require even sweeter foods, thus causing addictions. Finally, some of these artificial sweeteners are suspected of creating impaired glucose tolerance, which is considered to be a pre-diabetic state.

Beyond The Tip of the Iceberg

Perhaps the question to ask is not whether artificial sweeteners are acceptable, but why you need any sweetener at all. Sure, a treat is nice. But do you have to eat something man-made and refined in order to fill that desire? Can you satiate your craving with a natural food?

If you can’t answer affirmatively to that last question, then it’s time to ask, “What imbalance is driving your sugar-tooth?”

• Cravings can be caused by emotional or social cues. In that case, feed your human need for connection rather than your stomach.
• Hunger for sweets can be a sign of deficiency. Are you running on an empty tank? Would a nutrient-dense meal or snack, a drink of water, an increase in protein, a mineral supplement, or a boost of essential fatty acids fill the need better?
• Food sensitivities trigger the release of histamines and endorphins, giving you a rush. You then want more of the triggering food because of your chemical reaction to it. Avoidance and finding enjoyable activities is a better answer than continuing to indulge.
• “Yeasties and beasties” in your gut live on simple sugars. If you have an overgrowth, you might interpret their signals as hunger. The answer isn’t to eat, but to starve them out with whole foods that feed your probiotics instead.

The next time you are reaching for either sugar or Sugar Twin, ask yourself what would help you feel more whole, alive, and balanced. Need help working through those cravings? We now offer in-home classes to change your reliance on sweeteners.

My sis used to say, “First you grow up, then you grow out, then you grow funny things.” Neither of us knew back then that the changes we were noticing about human bodies as they age were in fact because of epidemic blood sugar imbalances caused by the standard American diet.

What is Insulin Resistance and why is it harmful?

Remember when you were a child and you were told over and over again to do your chores? The more you were asked, the more you tuned out your mother’s voice. Eventually, it caught up to you though, because your dad would come home and give you an unpleasant consequence.

Something similar happens inside your body. Insulin is the mother hen, trying to get sugar (glucose) cleaned up from the blood stream when there’s too much of it strewn around. Insulin asks all the cells to use some for immediate energy, or in the case of muscle and liver cells, to store it. After a while, it’s as if the cells get tired of hearing from insulin, so they don’t respond any more.

This is dangerous, because glucose builds up in the blood, leading to serious medical conditions.

What symptoms might you notice if you are becoming insulin resistant?

• Growing more irritable, especially between meals
• Growing hungrier, less able to be satiated
• Growing more dependent on carbs to satisfy cravings
• Growing increasingly tired
• Growing a greater number of large pores on the face
• Growing excess hair on face and arms (females)
• Growing small, soft skin protrusions (skin tags)
• Growing heavier around the middle
• Growing more confused, unable to think clearly or remember all that you used to
• Growing larger over all, with an inability to shed the weight
• Growing discomfort because of water retention, especially around the ankles
• Growing dark, velvety patches of skin in the folds and creases of the body, as if you haven’t washed there

acanthosis nigricans – darkened areas of skin

What signs might a health practitioner detect if you are insulin resistant?

• High number of fat cells within the liver (Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver)
• High fasting blood sugar, fasting glucose, and/or A1C test
• High number of cysts on enlarged ovaries (Poly-Cystic Ovarian Syndrome)
• High amount of uric acid deposited in the joints (gout)
• High blood pressure, cholesterol, and triglycerides
• High likelihood of irregular or ceased menstruation

What is the first thing you should do if you are concerned about insulin resistance?

My sis used to also say is that it’s better to keep up than to catch up. If you don’t allow the junk to accumulate, you don’t need a crew of clutter-busters to set things to rights. So you’ve got to drastically cut those foods that are dumping glucose in the bloodstream. Then you won’t need the insulin surge to correct it.

For one day, calculate your macronutrient ratios.

1. Using food labels or nutritiondata.self.com for foods without a label, record all the grams of carbohydrate, fat, and protein that you eat in a 24-hour period.
2. Multiply the total grams of carbohydrate by 4 to get the number of carb calories you ate. Do the same for protein. For fat calories, multiply by 9.
3. Total your calories for the day by adding carb calories, protein calories and fat calories together.
4. Now for the ratios. Divide the carb calories by the total calories. Do the same for protein calories and fat calories. For example, if I ate 1000 calories from carbohydrates and my total calories for the day was 1800, I would compute 1000/1800. The answer is .55, so 55% of my calories came from carbs.

On the next day, limit yourself to a maximum of 40% of your calories from carbohydrate, since that is what converts to glucose. You will have to very attentive to eating healthy protein and fat – from unrefined, natural sources. Aim to get most of your carbohydrates from vegetables.

Insulin resistance takes time to correct. You may need the help of a practitioner to recommend sugar-regulating supplements and organ support until you can get your metabolism normalized. You may also need to tweak those macronutrient ratios to a percentage that’s right for your body. Contact me for a quiz you can take to determine if you have the right macronutrient ratio for your individual physiology.

After a recent speaking engagement where I confessed my prior carb addiction, I had a gentleman ask me, “Did you just eat lots of pasta, or something?”

I think noodles are universally equated with carb-loading – maybe a kickback from high school training days when the coach said you had to eat spaghetti the night before an event so you would have plenty of fuel for the race.

But what really constitutes carb loading?

Does it just mean lots of bread and pasta? I was carb-loading when I:

• added 3 fruits to the morning smoothie.
• fixed whole wheat waffles and pancakes to provide a “healthy” start to the day.
• poured a bowl of cereal and put skim milk on it.
• cooked a vegetarian dinner of beans and rice.
• ate my vegetables without butter to avoid “clogging my arteries.”
• baked cake with applesauce to stay on a low-fat diet.
• had a sandwich and a piece of fruit for lunch, with a cookie or chips as a treat.
• drank juice with my breakfast.

Carbohydrates include all fruits, all sweeteners, all legumes, and all grains.

Carbohydrates are not bad!

Honey is a whole food, as are lentils, oranges, and oats. I believe in real food.

The problem is two-fold:

First, we eat carbohydrates alone, without the moderating effect of fats and proteins to slow their rush into the bloodstream. Imagine trying to sit on a 3-legged stool like this:

We need balance!

Second, we eat carbohydrates refined – with many of the nutrients removed.

A beet is sweet. Of it’s 7.8 grams, 5.5 grams of that is sugar. That’s why beets are used to manufacture sugar. But the intact whole beet also contains the Vitamin A, folate, and magnesium needed to metabolize the sugar. It has fiber to slow the entry of glucose into the bloodstream. Strip those away, and you have an emergency to lower your blood sugar. Plus, your body goes into a deficit to process the sugar molecules.

So What’s a Body to Do?

• Substitute an avocado for some of the fruits in the smoothie, then add collagen powder. Use full-fat greek yogurt in place of milk or water.
• Try almond or coconut flour in place of half the whole grain flour in your pancake recipe. Add chia seeds and top with coconut cream.
• Skip the cold cereal. Cook steel cut oats in a crock-pot overnight and serve with butter and nuts.
• Add a heaping scoop of unrefined red palm oil to your bean dishes, along with a pinch or five of dried crayfish, like the Africans do.
• Dress your vegetables with butter, olive oil, or even homemade mayonnnaise.
• Use coconut oil in your baked goods, and sweeten with beets, dates or bananas. Mix in sour cream to make cake moist, and beaten egg whites for a fluffy product that adds protein.
• Bag the sandwich and enjoy soups simmered with bone broth, assorted vegetables, and the protein of your choice. Boil a batch on your day off and portion into smaller container for easy grab-and-go.
• Complement any meal with crudites, cottage cheese, and a dash of seasoning.
• Instead of cookies, blend  avocado and fresh fruit for a quick pudding or avocado and frozen fruit for a flavorful ice cream.
• Drink water. Eat food. Fruit is food, not beverage.

How do you know when your love affair with sweets is betraying you? Check your answers in these 3 categories:

Food Addictions

1. Are there any foods you feel you just couldn’t give up?
2. Do you frequently experience rashes, congestion, wheezing, itchiness, or other allergic symptoms?
3. Do you feel withdrawal symptoms if you try to cut back amounts of favorite foods?
4. Do you have compulsions to eat, even when you’re not hungry?
5. Do you experience guilt over your eating behaviors?

Blood Sugar Instability

1. Do you feel tired after eating?
2. Is that spare tire around your middle growing, or resistant to weight-loss efforts?
3. Do you crave carbs?
4. Do you have high triglycerides or low HDL cholesterol?
5. Do you have experience irritability, shakiness, the jitters, or headache with fasting or skipped meals?

System Toxicity

• Do you have a general feeling of malaise?
• Do you have frequent or chronic sinus infections?
• Do you regularly experience digestive complaints, such as bloating, gas, reflux, or irritable bowel?
• Do you have unexplained joint or muscle pain?
• Are you plagued by moodiness, brain fog, or memory issues?

If you answered yes to more than 3 questions, your body may be telling your it’s on sugar overload. It may be warning you of imminent pre-diabetes, heart disease, immune dysfunction, hormone imbalance, and other chronic health challenges that can be reversed with simple dietary changes. I can help you feel free again. Breaking a sugar addiction isn’t so much about will power as it is about physiology. Nutritional Therapy can show you the path to change your life.

If you were standing in a room with 9 other people, chances are that one of them would be diabetic. Two, maybe even three of them would be pre-diabetic. The tragedy is that most people don’t know their blood sugars are unstable until damage has been done and a doctor puts them on medication. But luckily, Type II diabetes can usually be remediated with diet and lifestyle changes. Check these warning signs of diabetes:

You might be diabetic if…

• You know the whereabouts of every public restroom in town.
• You feel as parched as sage brush.
• You’re patting yourself on the back for losing weight (when you haven’t done anything).
• Carb cravings hound you like a stalker.
• You sometimes feel as shaky as seismograph.
• You prefer sleep to sex.
• You could win an audition for Oscar the Grouch.
• You just scheduled your optician to check your vision.
• That tingly feeling in your hands and feet isn’t love.
• You’ve had a Urinary Tract Infection or a yeast infection more times than you’ve seen a movie this year.

If any of these fit, you should request an A1C, also called HbA1c, blood test from a doctor.* This test gives information about your average levels of blood sugar over the past 3 months. A score between 5.7 and 6.4 is considered pre-diabetic. Anything higher than 6.5 signifies diabetes.

If you are concerned about your blood sugars, and are ready to make changes, I can work with you to reduce your A1C reading. ReStart Classes are also helpful.

*Some walk-in labs allow you to order your own lab tests without a doctor’s requisition. There are also drugstore kits available to test your own levels at home.