I had dinner with my Dad tonight.  good man.  We talked alot about nutrition during the time we spent.  My dad is currently under my supervision for fitness and weight loss which is really cool because I never could convince him to totally come on board with the things I have been telling him.

So, after we spoke I decided I would write everything out that we were talking about so he could read it.  I know I didn't get to cover all of the details of our topic of conversation while we ate.   I really want to make sure he has all of the information.  It's very important to me that he has this information so he can more wisely guide his life.  now that I have his attention, I figure this is a good time to tell him what's up because I care about him.  I must care about you too.  I figured maybe I had created enough clout with this stuff that I could convince you to think differently about somethings too.

So let me see if I have this right.  People's bodies are always being damaged by our behaviors, some worse than others, environmental factors and through the natural process of human life.  This causes damage to our cells and tissues but our bodies, when healthy are able to repair fixable cells and remove damaged cells as wells as toxins and allergens via the immune system.  When we are babies, our immune systems are weak and need exposure to the world to develop strength.  For the most, we develop immunity to many common causes of disease.  These were the diseases which originally caused us to get an illness.  Today we have wiped most of those out of existence.  Yet we are more ill than ever.

We are having a healthcare issue because of one thing and one thing only.  People are sicker than ever.  We are awaiting the babyboomers, the largest and soon becoming oldest population to reap it.  They are being prescribed medicines to "fix" problems which are not truly the causes.  This in turn allows the causes of the problems to continue.  Am I just bitching and complaining, No!  My parents are babyboomers and so are many of yours.  One day I will be someones Dad and I want to be able to tell them what's really going on!  Just like my Dad did for me.  I am going to have to live through a time period when we have a pandemic of chronic disease.  Healthcare expenditures are expected to double which is already more than the military spends each year.

What are these things that are causing us to get sick when we should have developed the immunity to avoid acquiring diseases from yesteryear in a civilization that was uncleanly and unsanitary.  The streets today are clean but the human body is not.  The worst part, to me, is yet to come.

The illnesses we get today are of two categories chronic behavioral and chronic reproductive.  When I say chronic, I mean they do not occur until after the 5th but possibly the fourth decade of life? Why is that?  Do all older people suffer from these illnesses.  No, it is still only a small percentage of the population who continue to become ill and stress system.  I agree, the population has grown but the illnesses are different than they used to be even less than 50 years ago when many of these babyboomers were born.  They are also different and similar among people in the U.S. and other countries liek the U.S. around the world.

When I say behavioral I mean there is a great behavioral component to these illnesses.  These illnesses require improper behaviors that create enough damage in the body to create dysfunction at least on the cellular level.   Unfortunately some of the behaviors are known and people are very aware of the risk they are taking when engaging in the behaviors.  Other detrimental behaviors are occurring in the most dangerous environment ever.  the one which isn't acutely or immediately dangerous.  The one that is being promoted in which ingesting certain food products that are actually borderline toxic or poisonous to our systems when done in excess over time.   The problem is that we don't know what these things are and what excess is.  These behaviors primarily stress our detoxification organs such as the liver and kidneys, as well as are filtering organs such as the skin and lungs.  Digestive organs, such as the colon and pancreas also take tons of stress from trying to handle ingesting so many foods and substances that are harmful.  When have you ever heard of heart cancer?   Blood cancers are usually found when people are young.

When I say reproductive, I mean sex organs.  Many of the diseases of these organs, especially cancers, we experience today are secondary to dysfunctioned reproductive organs.  Breast cancer is rampant in our society and women do not get it til middle age.  Women also suffer from cervical and ovarian cancers at an alarming rate.  Men are also seeing low testosterone on the rise and prostate cancer like never before.  Many of the foods we eat are loaded with chemicals and toxic levels of natural food products.  There are more wheat, corn and soy consumed in this country without knowing it is aggravating.  Many of these chemicals and foods cause elevated levels of sex hormones, primarily estrogen manifesting different issues in each gender.  People really don't know how much of certain things they are eating.  they also don't know what it does to their body.  nor are they taught to.

How are fruits and veggies paired in the same category when they are not even close to the same thing nor does our body process them in a similar way?  I now know, because of this and many other reasons, the food guide pyramid was not set up based up on health or these would have easily been considered separate categories.  I had a friend tell me once that he did not have to eat veggies because he ate enough fruit everyday.  This was one time that I truly realized something was wrong in society.  My friend is highly intelligent and a pretty informed person.  Unfortunately you have to be careful of which information you consume!

Is this normal?  I don't think so.  Especially when we can study the past.  Our diets have changed more in the past 50-60 years than they ever had in human history.  People are less active and eat more than ever.  Have you ever eaten pancakes or french toast for breakfast to feel the sudden crash or potential need to vomit during increased physical activity such as exercise?  It doesn't happen after you eat veggies, meats, fruits, nuts, seeds, and small amounts of dairy.   We were designed to work and be active.  Especially during the day.  Eating food that causes us to be unable to be physically active after wards and appropriately functional is counterproductive to everything.

Today we eat all day long and eat the wrong foods.  We sit around barely able to have enough energy to get through the day.  Why is this?  A large meal during the day was historically in the evening time after a hard days work in any time period previously except for the current one.  Today the average person eats at least three square meals during any given day and grazes snacking on foods in between which more often than not are loaded with carbohydrates.   Eating meals heavy in carbohydrates preceding physical activity is tremendously detrimental to our health and our energy levels, ultimately causing us to gain body fat and get sicker over time.   There is nothing wrong with large people who are not expanding.  However, expanding waist lines are abundant today and cannot be removed when we talk about the health and performance of our society.  Eating large meals causes our insulin to raise above normal levels.  Exposure to high levels of insulin is detrimental to humans.  Certain foods do cause this to happen more than others. Overeating or eating too many servings of anything will cause our bodies to divert attention from allowing us to feel energized and alert to being sluggish and fatigued.

Ingestion of carbohydrates, especially simple and processed, causes our insulin to increase.  The types of carbohydrates consumed by our society causes our insulin to spike, hyperinsulinemia.  Not the normal spike.  Insulin levels always increase following a meal but certain foods cause it to spike abnormally high.  When insulin spikes abnormally high several things occur.  First we get rebound hypoglycemia, low blood sugar, which causes fatigue, decreased mental alertness, and lower levels of energy.  Second our livers increase production of triglycerides which are carried on our LDL(bad) cholesterol.  During periods of inactivity, our muscles are resistant to insulin.  this is why exercise is important.  Particularly resistance or high intensity exercise.  Low intensity exercise is good for the heart, i.e. cardio as I have mentioned previously.  The former causes the muscles to crave nutrition and they in turn become more sensitive insulin causing a lowered sensitivity to our fat.  Careful we can still not overeat, rule # 1.  We can eat a little more if we are active however because the negative sequelae, that I am going to speak of next, are less likely to ensue.

The triglycerides are transported to the fat tissue for storage.  It is harder to release energy from our fat tissue once it is stored there.  Blood tests will then show high triglycerides and high LDL cholesterol.  Our current answer, pills?  Now that we have stored energy in the fat and we are starving and fatigued because our blood sugar is low, we will crave food, and be likely to overeat.  this is also one of the reasons why diets often fail.  People retain body fat even when they aren't eating as much.  Our muscles start to burn their own sugar stores before the body turns to fat.  This in turn causes hunger.  People are getting hungrier and hungrier as they deplete themselves from food during the day.  Being more physically active during the day when the muscles are a bit hungry for blood sugar pushes the body to begin to target the fat cells for our energy.  As we begin to exercise, if our muscles are a bit starved, we should begin to consume more carbohydrates to help refuel our muscles.  A topic for another day.

Our red blood cells also carry blood glucose after digesting a carbohydrate rich meal.  This is very counterproductive because our red blood cells are our main transport of oxygen.  Look up HBA1C for anyone concerned more on this topic.  Any person with Diabetes will know this number.  The doctors test it to make sure it doesn't get out of control.  Why?  Elevated HBA1C indicates that red blood cells are carrying to much blood sugar and too little oxygen.  In turn, we do not get enough oxygen to our tissues.  Over time this really begins to be counter productive to healing and repair as well as living, especially with any energy.  I know I want as much oxygen to my tissues as possible.  Yes, this is a double whammy for smokers.

If elevated blood sugar and insulin levels increases our cholesterol, triglycerides and causes damage to our tissues, why do we treat these problems with pills.  People are addicted.  Eating releases dopamine, the feel good neurotransmitter in the brain.  We are designed to need to eat and our bodies reward us when we do. You guessed it.  When we over eat we increase secretion of dopamine creating a greater connection to overeating.  Humans love pleasure and avoid pain.   Too much of any pleasure often leads to pain, or ultimately us becoming in a state of pathology or sickness.

That isn't it!  Elevated insulin levels also increases pressure on the kidneys secondary to the reabsorption of sodium and subsequently fluids.  This causes increased production of uric acid.  This uric acid spills into the blood leading to gout.  Gout has not been common for long.  It's prevalence increased during the time when England began to trade for sugar increasing the imports nearly 100 times near the beginning of the 1800's.  Doctor's new back then gout was associated with too much sugar and diabetes.  Gout is primarily urine that spills into the blood stream, yes.  It smells like urine when drained from a joint.  Nasty!

High blood pressure puts stress on our hearts.  Insulin also causes an increased stiffness to our arterial walls. This in turn leads to heart disease.  How do we fix this?  current answer pills.  Doesn't sound like pills get to the cause of this problem.  It only perpetuates it further.  Which is why I am writing this.  my Dad needs to know this stuff.  You need to know it too.  This is all preventable.  Facing the worst healthcare, or simply, health crisis in history and people are still not being empowered to make better decisions.

Finally, this all causes cancer as well.  Cells, tissues, and reproductive organs are unable to repair themselves.  Insulin causes tissues to grow, it is anabolic.  Excessive insulin production also causes damage to our pancreas.  The nerves do not receive an adequate oxygen supply and cannot transmit the appropriate messages to and from our organs.  This is marked in individuals with poorly controlled Diabetes.  Many people with diabetes often experience skin related nervous system issues such as loss of sensation to the fingers and the toes because they are the farthest away from our hearts.  The deep blood supply to all of our tissues and organs is effected.  The the nerves and the blood supply to the pancreas is also effected causing even further dysfunction and regulation of our sugar and insulin.  Our immune systems are also stressed because the widespread damage is relentless and taxing.  Our immunity to disease is impaired.  We are truly in a pathological state of being.  The nerves in the brain can no longer repair themselves and plaques begin to buildup.  Cells which are damaged and mutated begin to proliferate.  These cells were once easily cleaned up by an appropriately functioning and healthy brain and immune system.  these cells grow and grow until they become tumors.  If caught early enough, many cancers can be treated.  However, many cancers, especially those of the organs mentioned previously are caused by the behaviors mentioned previously and the cause of the problem continues and the person experiences one illness after another.  One pill after another, until they are barely human and being supported entirely by the medical system.

It doesn't have to be this way.  We are facing times like no other when it comes to health.    The system is set up to keep people less unhealthy not healthy.  You have to take it into your own hands if you want to be healthy.  It takes a wellness based mind set in order to be healthy.  We have to care.  We have to make an effort.  Wellness is from the neck up and health is from the neck down.  Deciding to change your beliefs and your behaviors is often difficult.  It starts with having the proper information.

We can no longer live in the dark ages as scavengers with little or no concern for how we eat, what we put into our bodies and where it came from.  Scavengers do this.  Humans are not scavengers.  We are hunters, predators, gatherers and farmers.  We never let someone else do our thinking for us when it came to nourishment in the past.  We always made our own choices.  Every time we make a bad choice today, we are voting to keep the system the way it is.  The Revolution will happen.  This Revolution doesn't require guns, bombs, death and destruction.  It just requires that we change what we believe and how we view our actions regarding nourishment.   This will be an information intensive Revolution.  With awareness we shall prevail!  All we need to do is have a better sense of human!  Stay human!

Thank you and thanks Dad for giving me the tools to think differently about everything and a desire to help others.

Lyneil Mitchell, DPT

Once again I know this once long.  I hope you made it to the end.  This makes my social media director crazy.  I can't help it.  I had to get this out to all of you and my family.  Thanks again!