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| Problem Foods in the Western Diet |
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There are several problem foods in the Western diet besides sugar and sugary foods. Among others, they include white flour, saturated and trans fats, meats high in saturated fats, and processed foods that are high in various combinations of such foodstuffs. Two reasons why these foods are problematic is that they’re seriously deficient in vital nutrients, or they cause inflammatory injury to the body, or both. I explored the problem of nutritional deficiencies previously, so let’s look at the subject of inflammatory injuries. There are many examples of things we do to injure our bodies internally. Smoking is a prime example in which repeated micro-injuries are inflicted within the body, especially the lungs. When a smoker quits, those injuries are stopped, and if the injuries have not reached an irreversible stage, the body heals amazingly well. Most people do not realize that unhealthy foods also cause micro-injuries in the body that can eventually result in chronic disease. A top heart surgeon who has done over five thousand coronary artery bypasses says these arteries are inflamed internally, as if they have been rubbed with sandpaper daily. Things like high blood pressure, smoking, high cholesterol, and high blood sugar can all be factors in such arterial inflammation. Whenever one gets any kind of injury, external or internal, the body responds with many cellular and secretory changes in its efforts to heal the injury. These changes are called inflammatory responses. They are characteristic of the intense work the body does to heal any kind of injury. C-reactive protein (CRP) is one measure of such inflammation. With acute injuries, the body’s healing is usually successful, so inflammation subsides fairly quickly. With chronic diseases, the situation is different. Ongoing micro-injuries to the body’s tissues keep the body’s inflammatory processes at work in a never-ending battle. CRP levels are consistently high in arthritis, coronary artery disease, and many others. Underlining the negative impact of problem foods, Dr. John McDougall says that over 75 percent of our chronic diseases are “due to repeated injuries from the fork and spoon.” Though other preventive specialists may not say it so colorfully, most agree that lifestyle is responsible for more than seventy-five percent of our chronic diseases. Unfortunately, much of Western medicine is focused more on treating the symptoms of these diseases than in preventing them in the first place. As a result, Americans pay a high price for medications and treatment for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, and other preventable health problems instead of improving their lifestyles. As Dr. McDougall suggests in his May 2009 newsletter, the solution to much chronic disease is easy to prescribe: “Stop the repeated injuries.” As he also says: “Identifying the source of these injuries is easy. Unhealthy foods and ‘bad habits’ [are] at the root of human maladies. The real challenge is in changing lifelong behaviors.” I agree. The goal in this series of articles is to help people find ways of changing from self-damaging to more beneficial lifelong habits. If improving your health outlook interests you, please stay tuned!
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