The American diet is so severely deficient in nutrients, it's a wonder we're all still standing. Not only do we consume more saturated animal fat and fried foods than any other country in the world, the average Yankee takes in over 10 pounds of white, refined sugar every year. And if that isn't bad enough, we now have the Zone diet that's erroneously telling us that carbohydrates are the real bad guys -- not exactly the kind of news you want to hear if you're a vegetarian. I know it must be a difficult battle for all the truth-seekers out there who are constantly trying to settle in to the kind of comfortable lifestyle that doesn't always require the counting of calories, fats, carbohydrates and proteins to stay healthy.
Whether big business is conscious of it or not, it is slowly destroying mother earth, and we as individuals should be doing whatever we can to stop it. For instance, let's take the animals some of us like to eat. Are you aware of how these helpless life-forms are abused before being slaughtered? Are you aware of how they're shot with half of all the antibiotics manufactured in the United States? Are you aware that all the cancer-causing chemicals that farmers use here and abroad, including PCB's and DDT, actually get inside the crops we eat? Are you aware that these same chemicals get into the water we drink and into the fish that live in them? And are you aware that they build up in the bodies of animals whose feed has been grown using these chemicals? Believe me, these chemicals are biological poisons as adept at slowly damaging our cells and organs as they are at killing insects, and most people now have 2 to 7 parts per billion (ppb) of DDT in their blood and about 2 to 5 ppb of PCB's. These are frightening statistics.
It wasn't that long ago that the FDA Total Diet Study found that some beef had more than 49 pesticide residues, representing 9 different pesticide formulations. Pretty scary, huh? I don't know about you, but I'm tired of our farm lands being sprayed with dioxin which is among the most potent of all carcinogenic substances studied by the EPA (it's 480,000 times stronger than DDT), and our soils being stripped of all their nutrients. Even some disposable baby diapers have traces of dioxin in them.
I bet if we rolled up all of our diseases into a big ball, we'd find that over 50% of them were directly associated with America's intoxicating contaminates. So, how do we protect ourselves? How can we shield ourselves from these outrageous attacks on humanity that are essentially motivated by greed? Well, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, essential fatty acids, and herbs have certainly been there for us in the past, but now, the damage is becoming far greater. We're now seeing a large rise in auto-immune diseases, and we truly need to go into battle with stronger weapons.
According to a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), an estimated 40% of Americans have turned away from the traditional use of drugs and are now searching for alternative products to treat their medical problems. Hooray! I'm happy to say the reasons most given for this change are (1) too toxic, (2) too expensive, and (3) too unreliable.
Of course, the good ol' FDA, recognizing the growing trend of people looking elsewhere for cures and good health, began stepping up their enforcement efforts to control or eliminate any products that made "off label" drug claims -- their position being that any product that professes to provide any type of healing benefit is technically a drug. Well, the multi-billion-dollar nutritional industry spoke out (actually they cried out) in protest, and the subsequent stand-off between the nutritional industry and government culminated in the 1994 passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, otherwise known as the Hatch-Harkins Bill, named after its sponsors. This new law (aka the DSHEA law) created an entirely new category of products called "nutraceuticals" -- natural food products that carry what were once considered illegal label claims. In general, the criteria for qualifying as a nutraceutical will be scientific studies showing safety, stability, and proven effects.
Essential monosaccharides aid in the body's cell to cell communication, and are necessary for absolute maximum health. Saccaharides, by the way, are the good sugars found in the body. In fact, for people with diabetes, these 8 monosaccharides are a must. I guess you could say in the 80's we had essential amino acids, but in the 2,000's we're going to have essential monosaccharides.
Scientists now know there is a language of cellular communication within the body's molecular structure, and in order for the body to work at its optimum, that structure must have all the letters of its "alphabet" in place if the cells of the body are going to communicate properly with each other. If not, the language of the cells gets garbled and proper communication begins to break down. Further, scientists have found that when saccharides bond with proteins they become what's known as "glycoproteins" (glyco meaning sugar and protein meaning amino acids) whose carbohydrate content is significant, ranging from 1% to over 85% by weight.
In as much as scientific knowledge concerning the importance of glycoproteins in cell to cell communication is relatively new, proteins, which are made up of various combinations of amino acids, were originally thought to be the primary communication molecules of the body. In fact, what we know as The Biotech Revolution began as an attempt to create new drugs based on proteins. However, we are finally beginning to realize that the structural simplicity of the protein molecule limits the number of possible configurations it can make in combination with other molecules, the bottom line being that the body performs many more functions than those that can be attributed to the molecular configurations possible with proteins.
Several decades ago a theoretical mathematician, in calculating the number of configurations possible with proteins, found that another "language," yet unknown, had to be responsible for performing most of the communication functions of the body. Today we know that this language is the "language of carbohydrates."
In contrast to the simpler proteins, many more molecular configurations are possible with the more structurally complex carbohydrate molecule, which has two isomeric forms and six binding sites. For example, while only 24 oligopeptide ("oligo" =few) configurations are possible with four peptides (proteins), more than 100,000 different oligodsaccharide configurations are possible with four sugars. So, carbohydrates on the surface of cells make many more cellular "words" possible.
In laymen's terms, each cell's surface carries these carbohydrates or sugars in the form of glycoproteins. Think of them in terms of letters of an alphabet. They come together and spell out their condition. When white blood cells (aka our immune system) float around in the body and come in contact with other cells, they ask the question, "are you guys alright?" Those cells should answer back in the language of glycoprotiens, "Yeah, we're fine." But if those cells are missing any monosacchardies or letters, let's say the letter "e" to spell out "Yeah, we're fine," it could look like this to the white blood cells -- "Yah, w'r fn." Not being able to communicate the appropriate response, the white blood cells can only view these cells as sick cells or foreign invaders and will immediately kill them off. Thus the beginning of an autoimmune disease.
This is why it's so important for us to feed our bodies the best of all natural foods that are wholesome and unrefined. As I mentioned earlier, we haven't been getting these essential sugars because of the breakdown of the environment. And consequently, when we combine the damage being done by all the chemicals used by man today with the lack of nutrients in our soils, we're finding ourselves only getting 2 monosaccharides in our foods as compared to the 8 essentials we need for absolute cell-to-cell communication.
Although autoimmune disorders are regarded as acquired diseases, their causes have not been determined. I do believe, however, that genetic factors play a role, since one family often has sequential generations with the same disease, I also believe that through chemical contamination we're slowly creating generations with mutated cell structures.
In 1996, an organization was founded to help the parents of carbohydrate-deficient glycoprotein syndrome children. CDGS's cause abnormal tissue and organ development affecting the entire body: especially the function of the central and peripheral nervous system. It is one of the causes of Leukodystrophy. Symptoms and severity vary from child to child, although some of the most common characteristics for all types is failure to thrive, mental retardation, microcephaly, cerebellar hypoplasia, visual and/or hearing problems, ataxia, hepatic dysfunction, enlarged liver, enlarged spleen, enlarged kidneys, blood coagulation problems, seizures including infantile spasms, and stroke-like episodes; lethargy, and unresponsiveness. The one suggested treatment now available for CDGS is supportive treatment with glyconutrients here in the United States and Europe.
By this time, you're probably wondering what kinds of carbohydrates you need to eat to protect yourself from all the above maladies. Well, you can either eat a lot (and I mean a lot) of good wholesome natural grains, vegetables and fruits somewhere on a mountain top where the air is free from chemical contaminates, or you can use a daily supplement that will give you the protection you need.
The raw materials that are needed to make glycoprotein molecules all come from plants. The plants capture the sun's energy and then they in turn produce the carbohydrates or the sugars that the human body requires. The sugars found in these plants are vital to us for good health. The body breaks down the plant carbohydrates, restructures them into small saccharides and then uses those saccharides to build the glycoproteins required for accurate cellular communication. Voila, good health!
There are 126 medical schools in the United States and only 7 offer an OPTIONAL course in nutrition. The research available in traditional nutritional text books will tell you that you only need 2 monosaccharides. They will tell you that you need vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats and just 2 sugars -- glucose and galactose. This is not only incorrect, but their information isn't up with today's research. If you want to know what's really going on, pick up the 1996 edition of Harper's Bio Chemistry and you'll see the 8 monosaccharides listed which are commonly found in human glycoproteins, and that are known to be important to the healthy functions of the body.
Most Americans get way too much glucose and consume all the wrong kinds of carbohydrates. The next time you see a TV commercial advocating the use of a candy bar to enhance your creativity or sports ability, shut the damn thing off. It's lying to you and you're buying into their misinformation if you believe them. In fact, food like that will destroy your ability to perform correctly and show up in long-term damage. True complex carbohydrates in a natural state are what we need, and a lot of people don't know the difference. If it's been refined, don't eat it!
There's a chemical war going on in our environment, attacking us every day, and it's contributing to 59 out of our top 60 diseases (free-radical diseases) in America. These toxins effect fertility and the immune system, and none of the conventional drug companies have even come close to addressing the importance of cell-to-cell communication. But now through the DSHEA law, you're going to have an opportunity to nutritionally supplement yourself with incredible cutting-edge products.
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