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How to Destroy Your Health in Eight Easy Steps

Deep down, you know everything I am going to tell you, but it's never a bad thing to reiterate important stuff. So, here we go:

1) Eat a lot of sugar: That sweet stuff is sugar no matter what color it is. Brown or rapadura or raw organic cane is just sugar wrapped up in a pretty and healthy-sounding package so you'll buy it, but it's still sugar and it's still bad for you. I recommend that you give up ALL sugar. Sugars raise your blood sugar causing your pancreas to produce insulin to bring it back down, the body's wise way of preventing a coma and death.

Sugar causes hypoglycemia, Candida, poor circulation, excessive thirst, excessive hunger, excessive urination (By the way, the last three are all symptoms of diabetes.), constipation, gas, allergies, skin problems, high blood pressure, irregular heart rhythm, depression, high LDL cholesterol and shortness of breath. What else? It can impair the structure of DNA, weaken your eyesight and contribute to osteoporosis. Sugar makes your blood sticky and gives you heart attacks, and lastly, sugar FEEDS cancer.

Sugar is an addiction. It's certainly not easy to give up, but the sooner you make the decision to become a non-sugar eater, the happier and healthier you will be. Remember the Three Day Rule: It takes three possibly miserable days to eliminate any physiological craving from anything, so just suck it up and start your three day sugar purgatory now.

2) Eat lots of bread and pasta: Sugar just isn't the white stuff, it also includes all refined products like white bread, white pasta, white flour, white rice and in short any grain with the bran removed. When the bran is removed it becomes a "fast" sugar which causes the same rise in blood sugar and insulin as white sugar.

Brown breads with bran, brown pastas, brown rice are different. They are actually good for you in moderation, meaning not every day, but on occasion. Sourdough is also good for you because the sugars in the starch have been eaten by the fermentation process. I think that the sprouted grain breads and tortillas are your best bet and even gluten-intolerants can experiment to see if they react to the sprouted products. I am gluten intolerant and I can eat the sprouted products in moderation, or a couple times a week. But, remember, excessive grain consumption of any kind will make you fat.

3) Drink lots of coffee and alcohol: Guess what? They are part of the sugar family, too. Because both caffeinated drinks and alcohol will raise your blood sugar. A cup of something caffeinated in the morning is not going to kill you or even shorten your life, but, please, no more than one a day.

Green tea contains caffeine, but seems to release it slowly into the blood, so it's not as dangerous. Alcohol is a really fast sugar. It's the same as eating a bowl of sugar but in addition, the alcohol will make you absorb the sugar even faster. Not so good, because you will have a quick rise in glucose then insulin, which is trying to save you from life as a vegetable. Like the French, if you are going to drink something, have a small glass of red wine with dinner. The sugars will release much slower with food.

4) Drink Fruit Juices: Straight juices with all the fructose therein are not the best thing in the world for you. First of all, the fructose will raise triglyceride levels. Secondly, it's a fast sugar. I don't care what anyone says, undiluted juice of any kind is not healthy for you or your children. I recommend you not keep any kind of fruit juice in the house. It's just not necessary.

6) Use Artificial Sweeteners: They are truly a tempting and dangerous gift from Satan. Don't even think about it! They cause cancer, brain tumors, damage your liver and nervous system and make you stupid. Read labels and don't buy ANYTHING with aspartame, sucralose (Splenda), saccharine (pink packet), cyclamate or acesulfame-k. Anything with "light" or "diet" will contain one or more of these substances. If you have a choice at the coffee bar between these and sugar, choose sugar.

7) Eat a lot of trans fats: Trans fats have an eternal and immortal shelf-life, sort of like cancer cells. Together with sugars, trans fats are the main cause of the dramatic increase of diseases like diabetes high blood pressure, cholesterol problems, heart disease, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, Candida, allergies, AHDH, depression and chronic fatigue syndrome.

Trans fats are alien to the body. When encountering a molecule of trans fats, your body goes "What, tha'"?, scratches it's head and puts what it considers to be the dangerous not-me clutter into a cell of the heart or kidney or it may even dump it into the mixed-message cell that is beginning to mutate into something you don't want. Read labels. Avoid anything that says trans fats, hydrogenated or partial hydrogenates, and be sure to add more fish oil and good omega-6's like black current and evening primrose.

If you order anything that's fried in a restaurant it is probably made with trans fats. MacDonald's French fries have 56 grams of trans fats per small order. Taco Bell 's tortillas are trans fat fried. All deep fried foods- chips, onion rings, donuts, most fast foods and commercial baked goods like cookies, pies, cakes, rolls and muffins - are all garbage cans filled with trans fats, cleverly disguised as food.

The next oils I am going to talk about are considered to be "good fats": But, even though they are in the good category, I would prefer that you go easy on some of them, like the heavy-duty saturated fats. Nothing wrong with eating a steak every once in awhile, but if you are a flesh eater, stick to the lighter meats like good organic chicken, wild caught salmon etc.

Go easy on the polyunsaturated fats like corn, soybean, safflower, sunflower and cottonseed oils. Too much of these omega-6's can overwhelm the star power of both your omega-3's and your monounsaturates.

Monounsaturated fats are very good for you: That's EVOO, olives, nut oils and butters, nuts and avocados.

Omega-3's are probably the top fats: Eat a lot of these as they will add years to your life, reduce the risk of heart attack and prevent arthritis, depression, exercise cramps and menstrual cramps. They are bountiful in fatty fish like salmon, sardines and herring. Flaxseeds and walnuts also contain omega-3's, but beware: Some of us have trouble converting the omega-3's of flax into usable sources in the body. How might you know this? In all of its elegant wisdom, your body will try to expel your allergen and you might get a rash like I did. Or gas. Or, you just won't feel right.

8) Eat a lot of white tofu and drink soy milk: (Here she goes again.) SOY IS NOT GOOD FOR YOU! For one thing, the phytic acid in it can block the absorption of your very important minerals, like iron, magnesium and calcium. Feeding babies soy formula is akin to medical malpractice. However, fermented soy, like miso, tempeh and soy sauce are fine to eat. (Read my News called Soy Redux if you want more of an in depth.)

For Your Interest and Edification

"The combined profits for the ten drug companies in the Fortune 500 (35.9 billion) were more than the profits for all of the other 490 businesses put together (33.7 billion). Over the past two decades, the pharmaceutical industry has moved very far from its original purpose of discovering and producing useful new drugs. Now primarily a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, this industry uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the U.S. Congress, the FDA, academic medical centers and the medial profession itself." Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine.

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