Don't Drink Milk

What do you think of when you are told to keep your bones healthy?

I bet you answered “Drink Milk!”

That is how good the marketing arm of the dairy industry is.  They have made everyone in the U.S. a believer in their ad campaign.  In fact, they are even funding the nutritional training of students in our medical schools.  No wonder when patients ask doctors how to prevent osteoporosis, the doctors recommend extra milk!

There has been so much good research and so many reputable studies on the fact that milk is probably the last thing that will keep your bones strong.  Cornell University’s Dr. Colin Campbell states, "The correlation between animal protein [intake] and fracture rates in different societies is as strong as that between lung cancer and smoking."

Countries that have the highest consumption of cow’s milk and other milk products (cheese, yogurt, cottage cheese) also have the highest rates of hip fractures. Those populations that consume the most animal protein, also have the highest levels of calcium excreted in their urine.

Dr. Dean Ornish writes, "The real cause of osteoporosis in this country is not insufficient calcium intake, it's excessive excretion of calcium in the urine. Even calcium supplementation is often not enough to make up for the increased calcium excretion."

When people eat too much animal protein it increases the acid load in the body which allows calcium to be drawn from the bones thus weakening them.  Therefore, the amount of calcium in the urine is increased. This effect has been established for over eighty years.

To minimize your risk of osteoporosis, eat a variety of whole plant foods and avoid animal foods, including dairy.  Eat plenty of beans and leafy vegetables and stay away from refined carbohydrates like plain pastas, white breads, candies and sugary cereals.

To learn more about osteoporosis and to get support with your healthy eating, check out the programs at MelindaCokerCoaching.

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© 2007-2015 Melinda Coker

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: “Melinda Coker, health coach and author of the book, Diet and Cancer: Is There a Connection?, teaches men and women around the world how to develop a healthy lifestyle.”

Arthritis, Inflammation and Leaky Gut

If you've got arthritis, you know how painful it can be.  Approximately half of all people over 65 report having arthritis with symptoms of swelling, limitation of motion, or pain.  The regions of the body most affected are the hands, neck, lower back, hip and shoulder.

There are three types of arthritis with a known cause:

1. Traumatic Arthritis - Joints can be inflamed as a result of an injury, such as from tripping and spraining an ankle.
2. Suppurative or Septic Arthritis – Joints can be infected with bacteria from the blood stream.  This tends to occur in infants and young children.
3. Gouty Arthritis – Uric acid crystals can accumulate in the joints.

Other forms of arthritis are said by doctors to have “no known cause.” Arthritis of “no known cause” can be divided into two broad categories:

1. Degenerative (osteoarthritis) - This is the most common arthritis found in people living in Western civilizations.  It is seen in x-rays of the hands in over 70% of people who are 65 years and older.
2. Inflammatory - This includes juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, lupus, and ankylosing spondylitis (AS). These aggressive diseases affect less than 5% of the people living in the United States today. 

Arthritis just means inflammation of a joint.  Arthritis is not a genetic disease, nor is it an inevitable part of growing older.  Many studies have linked the inflammation of arthritis to our Western diet.

As recently as 1957, no case of rheumatoid arthritis could be found on the continent of Africa.  These once unknown joint diseases have now become common as people have migrated to wealthier nations or moved to the big cities in their native countries.  With these changes people have abandoned their traditional diets of grains and vegetables for meat, dairy products, and highly processed foods.

Although unknown in Africa before 1960, African-Americans now lead in the incidence of lupus in the US.  The mechanisms by which an unhealthy diet causes inflammatory arthritis are complex and poorly understood, but involve our intestine and immune system.

Leaky gut syndrome has been theoretically suspected as a major factor in a wide range of food and chemical sensitivities, arthritis, asthma, headaches, digestive problems of varying seriousness and chronic fatigue.

Our intestinal lining (or gut wall) is a semi-permeable membrane, like a sieve, that allows small molecules (the products of digestion) to pass through, and blocks the larger molecules. These larger molecules then travel through our intestine and are eliminated. When functioning as intended, the gut wall prevents those larger molecules from stimulating food sensitivity and inflammatory reactions.

Infections, toxins (such as drugs, chemotherapy, anti-inflammatory medications) and an unhealthy diet (too high in fat, cholesterol, and animal protein) can compromise the barrier and allow large molecules to pass into the blood.  This condition of increased intestinal permeability is referred to as a "leaky gut."

Patients with inflammatory arthritis have been shown to have inflammation of the intestinal tract resulting in increased permeability.

What to do about "leaky gut?"

In scientific studies, fasting has been shown to decrease intestinal permeability, thus making the gut "less leaky."  This may be one of the reasons fasting has been shown to dramatically benefit patients with rheumatoid arthritis.  When patients return after the fast to a diet with dairy products, the gut becomes more permeable and the arthritis returns.  An unhealthy diet containing dairy and other animal products causes inflammation of the intestinal surfaces and thereby increases the passage of dietary and/or bacterial antigens (foreign proteins).

Some components of the rich American diet are known to impair the function of the immune system.  Vegetable oils (both the omega-3 and the omega-6 variety) are particularly strong suppressors of the immune system.  Low-fat diets have been shown to retard the development of autoimmune diseases, similar to lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, in experimental animals. Those vegan diets that have failed to help arthritis patients have been high in vegetable oils, which are known to damage intestinal integrity.

The importance of the overall diet cannot be overemphasized.  Proper foods such as whole starches, vegetables and fruits, keep the intestinal barriers strong and the immune system in a fighting condition. In addition to being free of animal products, the diet must be low in fat of all kinds - vegetable oil (even olive oil, corn, safflower, and flaxseed oil) and animal fat.  When it comes to blaming individual foods, dairy products seem to be the most troublesome foods, causing the most common and severe reactions.  Many reports indicate grains, such as corn and wheat can also aggravate the symptoms.  The truth seems to be almost any food can cause trouble, but few people react to vegetable foods.

The immune suppressing quality of oils (for example, fish oil and primrose oil) has been used to suppress the pain and inflammation of arthritis, but like too many drug therapies the ultimate outcome may not be best for the patient.  Suppression of the immune system prevents it from doing its work of removing invading foreign proteins.

One dangerous paradox in arthritis treatment is that the drugs most commonly used to treat arthritis are toxins to the intestinal barrier.  All commonly used nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (like Advil, Motrin, Naprosyn, etc.), apart from aspirin and nabumetone (Relafen), are associated with increased intestinal permeability in man. While reversible in the short term, it may take months to improve the barrier following prolonged use.

What won't change in either form of arthritis with a change of diet, is the permanent destruction, stiffness and deformity which has already happened through years of disease.

If you suffer from arthritis (either degenerative or inflammatory), try changing your diet for at least two  weeks.  Eat only whole starches (sweet potatoes, brown rice), vegetables (green and yellow) and fruits (except citrus).  Water is your beverage.

After 2 weeks, you should be feeling much better.  At that point you can add in grains and citrus.  If you start to have symptoms again, eliminate those and add them back in one at a time to see if you can decide which food(s) cause the adverse reaction.

Stop taking any nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and if necessary, replace with aspirin or nabumetone (Relafen).

If you try this "anti-arthritis" diet, write a comment and let me know how it worked for you.

Can We Save Our Husbands?

This is an "all-American breakfast" that we love, but it can kill us.  We've got to start thinking about our health and that certainly doesn't just mean we have to start running or going to the gym.  It means that we need to change the way we eat.
 
I'm on a crusade to "save our husbands."  In the past year I have personally known four men who have suddenly died.  No warning... they just keeled over and died.  What a heartbreaking scenario for their wives and their children as well as their friends.  Is there a way that we can "up the odds" of keeping our husbands alive and well?
 
I think there is.
 
Too often, the first symptom of heart disease is a fatal heart attack.  Of course, this can happen to women as well as men, so I want us to use our "bully pulpit" as the caretakers of our families to make sure we all remain free of heart disease.

There is a preponderance of evidence that a simple change of diet can actually prevent and even REVERSE heart disease.  A recent CNN documentary by Dr. Sanjay Gupta, The Last Heart Attack, showed how we can accomplish that goal.

The first step towards health would be to exchange the breakfast pictured above to one of oatmeal or shredded wheat with a nondairy milk.  Then start eating starches (beans, rice, corn, or potatoes) without added fat or butter, as your main dish for each meal.  Add fruits and vegetables and you are suddenly eating for health and not for heart disease.

Let me know how you do!

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© 2007-2015 Melinda Coker

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: “Melinda Coker, health coach and author of the book, Diet and Cancer: Is There a Connection?, teaches men and women around the world how to develop a healthy lifestyle.”

Decide To Be Healthy

Do you want to be healthy? Do you want to live a life that is full of energy and free of disease? I think we all want that, but are we willing to do what it takes to get it?

One of the things we must do is to learn how to be healthy. Healthy, energetic people have learned what it takes to be healthy. Learn those skills, practice them, and you will be healthy and fit, too.

Being healthy calls for making many unconventional choices. If you can surround yourself with other healthy, fit people it will make it easier to make those hard choices. Becoming healthy and maintaining that health and fitness is a day-in, day-out endeavor. You may not make healthy choices 100% of the time, but the healthier you become, the easier and more automatic healthy choices will become.

Eat a plant-based, whole food diet as much as you can. Before buying foods that come in packages, learn to read the ingredient list. Don’t buy foods with lots of added fats and sugars or with a long list of ingredients you don’t even recognize.

Learn to drink water or herbal teas. Regular and diet soft drinks acidify your body, decay your teeth and leach minerals like calcium out of your bones. Fruit juices and other sweetened drinks stimulate a pro-inflammatory insulin response.

You must take responsibility for your own well-being and your own daily choices. Don’t rely on doctors to save you from heart attacks with fancy surgery or from diabetes with insulin or from cancer with toxic chemotherapy and radiation treatments. It is your body. Take care of it.

Sign up to receive new blog posts directly to your inbox.  Just fill in your name and e-mail address in the gray box to the left and hit the "submit" button. You will then get an e-mail asking you to confirm your e-mail address.  Once you do that, you will be signed up to receive new blog posts.

© 2007-2015 Melinda Coker

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: “Melinda Coker, health coach and author of the book, Diet and Cancer: Is There a Connection?, teaches men and women around the world how to develop a healthy lifestyle.”

My New Book

For the past eighteen months I have been diligently working on a book. I had three very good friends who were diagnosed with cancer within months of each other and that got me started thinking about the randomness of the disease. When my beloved standard poodle was diagnosed with bladder cancer, I started researching ways to help him. After all, he was my responsibility and he depended on me for everything. I found that much more research had been done for people with cancer rather than for dogs, and, at some point during all of that upheaval, I decided to try to write down and organize the information I had found.

The more you write, the more you learn and then you have to write some more. During all the writing and then the grueling editing process I just kept going. After my dog and two of my friends died, I knew that I had to actually bring this book to fruition. I couldn't give up. When all the writing and editing was done and it was time to put the book out for publication, I went into panic mode for a few days as I realized that once the book was published I would be open for criticism. However, if we never do anything for which we might be criticized we are probably doing nothing. At least I DID SOMETHING, and actually, I truly hope that this book might save some lives. I realize the book won't save lives, but maybe it will give some guidance to people who are interested in saving their own life. You can order the book Diet and Cancer: Is There a Connection?at AMAZON.

Calcium

How do you get your calcium if you are a vegan? You have to be a bit more creative and use vegetables, beans and seeds rather than just drinking a glass of milk.

Kale, turnip greens, collard greens, bok choy, mustard greens, Swiss chard, lettuces, rhubarb, spinach, dandelion greens, artichokes, broccoli and other dark green vegetables are all excellent sources of calcium.

Almonds contain more calcium than other nuts. Most beans are fair sources of calcium, as is soy milk and tofu. Some fruits with good calcium levels include figs, papaya and raisins. Sesame seeds and tahini are very high in calcium.

Other non-dairy sources of calcium include raw parsley, sun-dried tomatoes, raw Spanish peanuts, corn, wheat, brown rice,oats and pumpkin seeds. Quinoa (pronounced keen-wah) is a grain that contains as much calcium as an entire quart of milk.

The U.S. daily recommended intake of calcium is between 800mg and 1,200mg. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends only 400-500 milligrams of daily calcium. If you eat one cup of beans, four tablespoons of tahini and five figs you will have gotten over 500 mg of calcium.

Non-dairy sources of calcium are usually good sources of fiber, folic acid, magnesium, potassium and even protein. Plant-based proteins are more alkaline than animal proteins. Meat and milk are very acidic sources of protein and actually cause the body to leech calcium from the bones in order to neutralize the acid.

To Lose Weight

1. Eat a large raw green vegetable salad for one meal every day with a nonfat dressing.
2. Eat whole grains, beans, starches and vegetables for your second meal every day.
3. Eat as much fresh fruit as you want.
4. Avoid ALL oils, butter, and cheeses.
5. Minimize nuts, seeds, avocados and olives.
6. Avoid processed foods and sugar.

This simple six-step plan for weight loss was proposed by John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, and Dr. Joel Fuhrman. Give it a try and let me know if it works for you.