sugar

More Wisdom from Steven Horne

Just about everyone likes to enjoy some kind of sweet treat now and then, but there is a hidden danger in consuming too many refined carbohydrates, especially refined sugar. It increases cellular resistance to insulin which causes blood sugar levels to increase. When blood sugar levels get too high one develops metabolic syndrome and may eventually become diabetic and that’s not so sweet.

Despite all attempts to refute the idea that sugar consumption leads to diabetes, the truth is that wherever populations of people abandon traditional diets and start eating more sugar, rates of diabetes dramatically increase. It’s also true that thousands of people have successfully lowered their blood sugar levels by skipping the sugary and starchy foods and returning to a more natural diet.

We need to get the word out that diabetes can not only be prevented, most of the time it can be reversed. It’s an important message, because, according to the latest (2017) statistics about 9.4% of Americans, about 30 million people, have some form of diabetes. About 7 million of these people have undiagnosed diabetes. About 84 million Americans are pre-diabetic, which means they could easily become one of the 1.5 million cases of new diabetes diagnosed each year. Diabetes also remains the 7th leading cause of death in the United States.

But that’s really only the tip of the iceberg. High blood sugar contributes to the development of numerous other health problems. These include heart disease, cancer and neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s, not to mention obesity and the proverbial dental problems with which sugar has long been associated.

The National Diabetes Statistics Report, 2017

An estimated 30.3 million people of all ages—or 9.4% of the U.S. population—had diabetes in 2015

This total included 30.2 million adults aged 18 years or older (12.2% of all U.S. adults), of which 7.2 million (23.8%) were not aware of or did not report having diabetes.
The percentage of adults with diabetes increased with age, reaching a high of 25.2% among those aged 65 years or older.
Compared to non-Hispanic whites, the age-adjusted prevalence of diagnosed and undiagnosed diabetes was higher among Asians, non-Hispanic blacks, and Hispanics during 2011–2014.

Incidence Among Children and Adolescents Data from the SEARCH for Diabetes indicated that:

During 2011–2012, the estimated annual number of newly diagnosed cases in the United States included: » 17,900 children and adolescents younger than age 20 years with type 1 diabetes. » 5,300 children and adolescents age 10 to 19 years with type 2 diabetes.

Is It Possible To Eat Too Much Fruit?

By Markham Heid
June 6, 2018
Time Health

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was, briefly and famously, an ardent fruitarian—meaning he ate a diet composed primarily of fruit, which he believed would cleanse his body of harmful fluids. Just as famously, the actor Ashton Kutcher tried adopting Jobs fruit-centric diet, until he ended up in the hospital with an out-of-whack pancreas.

So is it bad for your health to eat a lot of fruit? Though a famous study from 1980 argued that based on the evolution of human jaws and teeth, our ancient ancestors used to eat a diet dominated by fruit, there’s not a lot of good evidence for or against fruit-heavy diets for modern humans. “There are some people out there who are fruitarians, and from what we can tell they’re perfectly healthy,” says Dr. Robert Lustig, a neuroendocrinologist and professor emeritus of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. (However, full-blown fruitarianism is so restrictive that it has been linked to nutritional deficiencies in some people, and may be unsafe for children and those with certain medical conditions, like diabetes.)

But for healthy adults, experts say that eating lots and lots of fruit is unlikely to get you into trouble, as long as it’s part of a normal diet.

The main concern with overeating fruit is its natural sugar. While fruit is certainly high in the sweet stuff, research has consistently linked whole fruit consumption to a reduced risk for obesity and other metabolic diseases, says Lustig, who is the author of Fat Chance, a book that examines the health risks associated with eating too much processed sugar. Whole fruit also has a few built-it advantages that seem to mitigate any sugar-driven health risks.

For one thing, whole fruit has both soluble and insoluble fiber. Together, these two fibers form a gel-like “latticework” on the inside of the duodenum in the small intestine, he says. That latticework prevents a significant portion of the fruit’s sugar from being absorbed early on during the digestive process. “Like stopping a tsunami wave by building an underwater wall, this gel barrier limits the rate of sugar absorption so that the liver is not overwhelmed,” Lustig explains.

Instead, the sugar and other components of fruit quickly move farther down the small intestine to the jejunum and ileum. While the early part of the digestive tract is largely free of bacteria, these later structures are home to trillions of gut microorganisms. “They ingest and metabolize more of the sugar, so again, even though you consumed it, you don’t absorb it,” he says.

Along with helping to control the absorption of fruit sugars, the combination of soluble and insoluble fiber in whole fruit also “greases the wheels” of digestion, Lustig says. Your gut signals to your brain that you’re full once the stuff you’ve eaten reaches your ileum. And because fruit fiber helps food molecules reach your ileum sooner, you tend to feel full more quickly after eating fruit than if you’d eaten foods lacking fiber. As a result, “fruit consumption is self-limiting, so the chances you will overeat fruit are relatively low,” he says.

Heavy fruit consumption may come with some downsides. “An excess of whole fruit can give you diarrhea,” says Dr. Adam Drewnowski, director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington. The expense of whole fruit is also not inconsiderable. “People who want affordable fresh fruit are pretty much limited to bananas, oranges, apples, bananas, melon, pineapple,” he adds. Eating lots of berries would cost you a lot more, especially if you prefer organic.

One critical thing to keep in mind: Drinking fruit juice or fruit-based smoothies is not the same as eating whole fruits, and both of those beverages may pose a number of health risks. Some recent evidence, including one 2013 study from Harvard School of Public Health, has linked fruit juice to an increased risk for diabetes. While the evidence tying juiced and blended fruit to health problems is somewhat mixed, Lustig says both of these processes either remove or destroy the stringy bits of insoluble fiber that help limit the rapid absorption of sugar in the small intestine. “A smoothie is probably better than fruit juice or a soda, but you’ll still get a peak of insulin, which contributes to metabolic pathology,” he says.

Some fruits may be better to indulge in than others. Berries, though pricey, have been linked to both improved heart and brain health. And while some online sources give pineapple, bananas, and other so-called “tropical” fruits a bad rap—mostly because they’re higher in sugar than many domestic fruits—Lustig says they also tend to have proportionally high amounts of fiber, and so aren’t inherently dangerous.

There’s only one fruit he says may be worth watching out for: grapes. “Grapes are outliers in terms of their sugar-to-fiber ratio,” he says. “They’re basically little bags of sugar.” While he doesn’t recommend avoiding grapes entirely, they’re not the best fruit to overeat.

If you love whole fruit, there’s little evidence that indulging in it—even a whole lot of it—is bad for your health.

Cancer and Sugar

Comments from Steven Horne, Relating to Cancer & Sugar

Dick attended the IIPA (International Iridology Practitioners Association) symposium in Las Vegas in February. Steven Horne also attended this symposium, both as a speaker and as a member attendee. The following information penned by Steven relates to Dr. Jimenez talk on cancer and its causative and treatment factors. (It appears in three different posts that Steven made relating to cancer, especially making key points on how refined sugar plays a key point in the cancer equation). This info is too important to not share with all of you.

2/20/2016 Facebook Post

Here’s a cool thing I learned at the IIPA Conference today. Dr. Antonio Jimenez from Hope4Cancer Institute spoke on their Seven Key Principles of Cancer Therapy, presenting some amazing data I’ve never heard about cancer before and some amazing new cancer treatments. One of the things he talked about was sugar. Perhaps you’ve heard the statement that “sugar feeds cancer?” That’s because cancer cells are known to greedily gobble up sugar due to their high metabolism. However, he also indicated that cancer cells can live on protein and fat, too.
The truth of the statement is that cancer cells thrive on refined sugar, not the natural sugars found in food. Here’s why. Perhaps you’ve heard that molecules can have a “spin,” dextrorotation and levorotation as in l-tryptophan or l-glutamine or d-ribose. Well apparently cancer cells gobble up sugar that has a dexorotation (I’ll call it a d-spin), whereas natural sugars have an levorotation (or l-spin for short). I’ve always wondered why when I switched from eating refined sugar to eating honey that my energy improved, my mind became clearer, my immune system was strengthened and overall I felt much better when sugar and honey are very chemically similar.
I’ve always suspected that it had to do with the idea that honey was a “live” natural food and refined sugar was somehow a “dead” lifeless food. But knowing that living tissues use l-spin molecules and that synthetic nutrients often have a d-spin, it would make sense that refined sugar becomes a chemical that has lost its life giving l-spin, whereas honey would still retain this. It was a really interesting idea that I’m going to have to investigate further.

2/21/16 Facebook Post

I want to add a comment about yesterday’s post about sugar. It was not meant to imply that refined sugar causes cancer (in and of itself). Dr Antonio Jimenez explained that cancer has multiple causal factors and requires a multifaceted treatment.

What the post was about was a puzzle I’ve been trying to solve for decades. During the time of my life that I completely stayed away from refined sugar, I want to add a comment about yesterday’s post about sugar. It was not meant to imply that refined sugar causes cancer (in and of itself). Dr. Antonio I felt better than I did at any other time of my life. My mind was clearer, my energy was better and I had a “kick ass” immune system. We were making cookies, cakes and even ice cream with natural honey and whole grains during this time, so I was still enjoying some sweets.
Chemists told me that there was almost no chemical difference between honey and refined sugar. They are 99% identical. I had no explanation for why refined sugar seemed to zap my energy and dull my thought processes when I accidentally ate some. I just knew that it did.
At that time I started believing that refined sugar was really a drug of sorts. Highly addictive and highly harmful to human health. But, I could not explain why natural sugars seemed to satisfy a craving for something sweet, while refined sugar seemed to make you want more and more of it.
I gradually allowed some refined sugar to creep back into my diet, mostly in the form of what I call “health food store junk food.” I think I allowed myself to be deluded into thinking that “organic refined sugar” was somehow less harmful than other refined sugar. Since I allowed this to happen my health, energy and mental clarity have not been as good as it was before.
I was trying to cut back on all sugars, but I was excusing myself in eating some of the health food store treats with refined sugars in them, but this made me realize that I needed to trust my own experience. (We all get so trained into trusting the “experts” while denying our own subjective experience, don’t we?)

So, I realized I need to go back to what I did before. No refined sugar, period. I’m going to go back to making my own treats at home using raw, natural honey, maple syrup and other natural sugars and avoid refined sugar (even the “organic” kind) for what I believe it is, a dead, lifeless, chemical that acts like an addictive drug. I don’t have all the “science” to prove this, but I’m thinking that refined sugar not only contributes to the environment of cancer and diabetes, but that it also causes the wrong kind of gut microflora to grow in your intestines.
One of the things the doctor said was that there is a testing procedure for cancer (and I don’t remember what procedure he said it was) where they give a dexo or d-rotating sugar to people and it causes all the cancer cells to “light up” because they absorb this form of sugar and the normal cells don’t. He said there needs to be more research on this. Something I said in my previous post also.

But, here’s the main point of what I’m writing. I’m going to get completely off of all refined sugars (like I did before) and see what happens. If the same thing happens as happened to me before, my energy, mental clarity and overall health should improve. I also expect that I’m going to go through massive withdrawals (similar to getting off of any drug) for a couple of weeks (as I did before).
As I’ve told people in the past, if you don’t believe sugar is a drug, just try to give it up cold turkey. When I gave up sugar, I developed great compassion for people who are trying to quit smoking or give up drinking or drugs. Breaking an addiction is never easy. But, I think all you have to do to prove whether this is true or not is to try the same experiment I tried over 30 years ago. Stop eating refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup and all foods containing either of them and only use raw, unfiltered, natural honey for 30 days as a sweetener.

Do not use cheap, runny honey as some of this “honey” is actually flavored high fructose corn syrup. Good honey will crystalize to a creamy, white or amber color and will be completely smooth. Also, try to find unfiltered honey so that you get some of the pollen in it. If you want some recipes for making some natural sweets for yourself during this transition period, check out the recipes on the modern herbal medicine website:http://www.modernherbaleducation.com/…/articles/recipes.html

2/21/2016 Facebook Post

Before I head back to my last day at the IIPA Conference, I just wanted to share a couple more interesting things I learned about cancer yesterday.

First, cancer cells “recruit” nearby healthy cells and turn them into cancer cells. In other words, they trigger neighboring cells to make the epigenetic changes that revert them to a primitive metabolism.

Second, cancer cells are highly intelligent and adaptive. They hide themselves from the immune system. They can adapt to many different types of diets and can also adapt to many of the therapies medicine uses to try to kill them.

Third, this clinic uses seven different therapies, which are: 1. nontoxic cytolytic and cytostatic therapies, 2. enhancing immune function, 3. full spectrum nutrition (which includes dietary rotation), 4. detoxification, 5. eliminating microbes and pathogens, 6. oxygen therapy (cancer cells thrive in a low oxygen environment, as do many infections), and 7. spiritual and emotional healing work (which he stressed is a very important part of the therapy).

Fourth, he said that almost all cancer patients have a low body temperature (95-97 degrees), which suggests that overall metabolism and energy production are down in the cancer patient which may be why the cells are mutating to survive.

Fifth, One of the therapies they use is a medically proven therapy from Europe that involves a virus that is non-pathologic to healthy human cells, but infects cancer cells (attaching to the markers they use to hide themselves from the immune system). This virus not only destroys cancer cells, it also makes them visible to the immune system. Makes you wonder why this therapy isn’t available in the United States. It’s called Rigvir virotherapy.

Lastly, they also use a compound called PNC-27, which is discussed in the following Ted Talk: http://pnc27.com/home/home-ted-talk/

Needless to say, I learned a lot yesterday.