Healthy Eating 2

Chemicals

Introducing chemicals into your body is something nearly everyone does and most of the time this is unknowingly and they are totally unaware of the consequences and also that many of them have cumulative effects and taking in these chemicals over time is detrimental to your health. Many people use ”products” and by products they mean everything from make up to deodorants and many marketing strategies are now stating a “go to product” which is designed to persuade you to use their products and stick with them. Many women wear more and more make up and some now look so unnatural and more like cartoon characters than women and they think it enhances then when in reality it makes them look fake and they now put layers of make up on and this means more sales. Most people use soaps, shampoos, and deodorants and again the peer pressure is on where people tell other people they smell, well actually we all have a unique smell from our urine and this is why dogs stick their noses in our crutches as they are identifying us from our smells; it cannot be masked by deodorants but people try and they try to outdo each other and spray so much deodorant it can be smelled from the moon. In many cases they cause chemicals to enter through your skin and in others they enter through orifices such as the mouth or nose but many people are unaware it can also enter through your eyes, ears, genitals, or any other bodily orifice.

While some of these products are natural and not bad for you, others are so full of chemicals you can smell them and this is usually with cheaper products as buying the heavy base chemicals to build their product means they are full of chemicals from the outset and you willingly spray then all over your body as you believe spraying them makes you appealing to the opposite sex or it pacifies your workmates. You might as well walk through the sheep dip trough everyday as this would be better than constantly bowing to peer pressure.

Many chemicals enter through food and contrary to popular belief many things claimed to be healthy and good for you actually are not good for you and can often have unknown reactions with other chemicals entering your body and in 99.9% of the time they simply are not known about or are ignored, yet they still have the same reactions and your body suffers. Much of this chemical poisoning comes from people and companies wanting certain foods all year round and the fast food outlets are a prime example of this as they want lettuce, tomatoes, and onions as well as other things they market as healthy and as many of these crops are seasonal they have to be “forced” which means creating artificial growing conditions or they have to be imported from somewhere that product is in season and tomatoes from Spain would be an example. To keep these crops in good condition they are filled with chemicals from when they are planted to virtually when they are cropped and this is called lifecycle cropping as the chemicals promote more and larger crops and they have to remain fresh for several days while they are transported as flying them would be quick but it is expensive and putting hundreds of tonnes on a boat is much cheaper but it takes longer and means more preserving chemicals are added. Any crop grown out of season is forced and this takes heat and artificial light and lots of chemical feeds but you get a lettuce out of season and this often means modified varieties designed to grow out of season; ever wondered why the tasteless Iceberg lettuce is so popular with the fast food outlets.

Any reduction from growing chemicals is good for you and with a little time and effort you may grow some of your own crops and vegetables where you know exactly what is going into it or you can go foraging naturally grown foods such as wild blackberries or raspberries as they grow naturally as does wild garlic and mushrooms; you can smell these, or you can make your own feeds or use commercial feeds which are natural occurring and Tomorite is an example of seaweed extract. If you have a large reduction of growing chemicals for a longer period it allows your body to deal with the toxins and simply growing your salad stuff gives this as you know nothing has gone into your salad crops and nothing is going into your body and if this is from salads all summer long it is a summer break for your body.

Look at your food and particularly where it comes from as this has a bearing and currently many beans come from India and many ground crops such as root vegetables come from China and a carrot is an example of food absorption as carrots are white and they only get their orange colour from the soils they grow in.

Many people are unaware that plastics leach toxins and your tinned foods come in tins lined with anti corrosion linings which emit bisphenol A or bisphenol S and neither are good for you and your expensive Tupperware lunch box may be slowly poisoning you as will most tinned foods and tinned tomatoes are the worst.

I always use glass as glass is easily cleaned and emits no toxins and unlike tins they can be cleaned quickly and cheaply and reused and industry loves tins as they may pay 1p per tin and charge the customer £1 for the tin and they know they are single use and each time they package their product in a tin they make that additional 99p profit so there is an incentive for the food manufacturer or supplier to use tins. Home canning is big business and many people do it and fill them with their home grown produce and the can leaches this bisphenol into their food and all without them knowing it.

Doctors introduce similar chemicals into your body and currently anti biotics are the current agenda as too many doctors are prescribing them instead of treating you properly and the other are statins and they try to convince you to take them; recently I found one doctors practise saying they automatically prescribe them to everyone over 70 and this should be a cause for concern as you don’t take cough medicine for a broken leg and this is exactly what it happening. I actually challenged a GP who telephoned a friend while I was round there and when I challenged her and asked what medical reason there was for prescribing statins to this individual and she trotted out the “we prescribe them automatically to those over 70” rhetoric and could not give a genuine medical reason for prescribing them so he recorded the conversation and complained and then moved doctors. He actually stated she was drug dealing in his complaint as she had no valid reason for prescribing addictive drugs to patients who didn’t want or need them so it must be a recreational thing and not a medical thing and this is defined as drug dealing, he is still waiting to hear the outcome.
Anti biotics are a different thing and prescribing them is often cheaper than sending someone to hospital and often the placebo effect takes hold and people believe because they are prescribed, and taking anti biotics they must be doing them good, usually with no substantiated medical results to confirm this and this is for good reason. Many different types of anti biotics are based upon penicillin and while there are many different types, it is generally only a few types which are dispensed and amoxillin is an example where many, if not nearly all dentists prescribe it for mouth ulcers and associated conditions as they become familiar with it and most experienced dentists suggest they prescribe it. While amoxillin may be good for mouth ulcers it is also good for so many other things as like penicillin it is a general use drug and is abused as a general use drug and over prescribed and not just by dentists as it is used generally by many medical fields and here is the problem, near enough will do for many doctors instead of finding an exact type of drug to use for the specific medical condition. In reality penicillin may treat an issue and it is cured or is it? Often this is a temporary cure as whatever the real cause of a condition is coming back the penicillin has worn off and cannot fight it so a doctor prescribes it again. Here is the overuse and the patient falls for it and they think because it worked once it will work again and the body says no and begins to build up a resistance to the penicillin and most variants of it to the point it becomes worthless, yet they still prescribe it.

Our local pharmacist is excellent and not simple because he has a good sense of humour it is because he spends time with a potential patient and studies their medical history and the times I have seen him shout NO, NO, NO to a prescription and refuse to issue it on the grounds it will damage a patient’s health is more than I can count. He speaks directly to the patient and explains why he says no and gives them options and he still has the medical black book which shows what drugs shouldn’t go with what drugs and what drugs have a known reaction with other drugs and he often tells them to go back and see the doctor and tells them if necessary he will go with them, and he does. Locally doctors hate him as near enough is not good enough in his book and instead of keeping a patient down he gets them back up and back to health and many people appreciate this, he moved locally and the local trades worked on his new old house for free as everyone was back to fitter than they were before and if he and his family go into a local pub they never buy a drink.

Eating Correctly

Eating correctly is the quickest way to something called good gut health and remember the old saying “you are what you eat” and this is for very good reason and that it is true; and good gut health leads to overall health which includes many conditions doctors would prescribe tablets for, but which you can often improve or cure yourself. I have seen so many people cure their own ailments using diet alone and in all cases the medical profession would prescribe medication which often has other side effects and if you can avoid the medication then take the opportunity to avoid it and never fall into that often fell into trap of thinking medication is a good thing as it isn’t. In many, if not nearly all cases the benefits are called a balance of probability judgement call and a doctor or specialist will weigh up the benefits against any known long term effects. Metformin is often prescribed for type 2 diabetes and a doctor called Dr Michael Mosley; now popular on television along with Professor Roy Taylor actually cured type 2 diabetes as Michael Mosley had it and now he doesn’t and his approach could best be described as holistic. Metformin has many side effects ranging from stomach cramps to sweating to itching, through to diahorrea or the brown rain as it is often called, then it was banned in America but not in Europe or the UK and the reasons for it being banned were significant and well worth researching yourself and you should decide.

Everyone I know who was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes has cured it themselves with diet and good gut health and the same can be said for high blood pressure and many other things and this is always down to diet and the first thing is a significant cut in many things and replacing them with better things; and age seems to have no bearing on this. I always advocate better eating by eating more salads and you don’t omit the meat as one thing bad for you in minimal quantities if easily outweighed by the considerable benefits of other things. Cut out the sauces and dressings as they are often the worst offenders and if you look at their labels in supermarkets then you will see exactly why and my job is not to dictate to you but to make you look for yourselves and you will understand why they are bad for you.

If you take a stance on healthy eating you have something to work to and if you eat sensibly throughout the week and eat unhealthily over the weekend you change the balance to 5 : 2 meaning 5 days are healthy eating and 2 days are fairly free and this type of ratio allows your body time to recover. In many instances it would mean cutting out all the rubbish and replacing it with better foods so avoid the crisps in your snap and avoid the fast food outlets as their healthy option is not healthy and cutting out the biscuits and other snacks will quickly see a difference.
Removing bodily toxins is essential and Epsom salts are a godsend as they absorb many bodily toxins and you add a spoonful to a glass of water and drink it followed by a hot bath with ½ a cupful in will draw the toxins out of your skins pores and you will have a basic detox, if you do this weekly you will quickly see a difference.

Quick case study! 59 year old man who worked 7 days per week in a physical job had a blood clot and even though he was seemingly physically fit and got a lot of exercise he still got a blood clot contrary to what the medical profession would have you believe. Lifestyle played a large part as he had sandwiches usually filled with meats coated in sauces and he had the highly processed spreads on his bread because he incorrectly assumed they were better for him, WRONG. He consumed an average 6 cans of pop per day and two or three days per week he frequented a take away and supplemented his sandwiches with more rubbish and we worked through this.

He was diagnosed with high blood pressure of over 200 and his blood sugars were well within the high range for diabetes and according to the medical experts he shouldn’t have these conditions, but he did and his doctor wanted him on a cocktail of medication and he said no due to the shock so he went home and spoke to his wife who spoke to me.
His bread had about the highest amount of sugars that most breads have and this was coated with an expensive and highly processed spread which was also bad for him and he had processed meats usually with various sauces spread on his meat and it was supplemented by a couple of chocolate biscuits and three cans of pop which were the normal full of sugar variety. I suggested a seeded batch bread as it had about the lowest amount of sugars in it and this was covered with Lurpak butter and the meats were left over from real joints of meat from his dinner and not the heavily processed meats you buy in packets; the pop was replaced with filtered tap water with a slice of lemon in it. She made him desserts using old glass desert pots and she found caps which fitted them and put a dollop of Greek yogurt into the pot which was topped with either chopped fruits in season or cacao nibs and the lot was drizzled with a teaspoon of honey and she put a stainless steel spoon in to eat it with and two weeks later he returned to his doctors and his blood pressure had dropped to around 155 and his blood sugars had nearly halved. My other half took his wife shopping and showed her how to read labels which opened her eyes to many realities and some were very surprising especially how much sugar they add to processed meats and there is little difference in the sugars in white and brown bread and just how many foods portrayed as healthy were not and actually detrimental to your health.

She formulated a food strategy and said if he is doing it then so am I and she worked through a series of options and adopted the attitude of “we will try it” and she did, the 5 days of eating correctly saw 2 salad days and these had meat or fish on them and only one dressing and his choice was coleslaw or beetroot salad and 2 days of stir fried vegetables with meat or fish added in and the final day was kebab day. Instead of the standard donner kebab they went for the steak or chicken as they used pieces of real meat and instead of the chips they had salad, with this improved she said no chilli sauce as this was bought in and highly processed and they both liked mint yogurt so she grew mint and some was cut and chopped up and added to some Greek yogurt and they both preferred it to chilli sauce and now they kept Kebab night and had modified it to improve it and suit their taste and health.

Weekends were free days and Saturday was fish and chip night and he loved salt and vinegar or salt and mint sauce on his meal and this was modified and this was no salt and the vinegar was swapped to apple cider vinegar to introduce this and again she modified it by adding it to chopped mint and made her variant of mint sauce which was now apple cider mint sauce.

In two months his blood pressure was down to around 140 and he dropped from being diabetic to what is called pre diabetic and he did it solely without medication and he even surprised himself and his doctor who was totally gobsmacked as his blood pressure and blood sugars were dropping but more slowly now and his gut was disappearing.

After easing so many stir fry’s he started to become bored and his wife began making her own and her imagination ran wild and she made many varieties and some were very nice and she began to chargrill vegetables and again meat or fish was added to them to make a meal. He began looking seriously at other aspects and the major one was overeating which is easily explained, if you over eat your body processes the foods to provide your energy and surplus food is turned into fat and stored as body fat and the location varies between the sexes; generally men put this on as a gut often called a beer gut while women generally store it in their backsides, thighs, and arms.
I liken this to a car and if you have a diesel car which does 50 miles per gallon and you have a 500 mile journey then you need 10 gallons of diesel to undertake the journey and no more, if you have a 20 gallon fuel tank and it is ¼ full then you already have 5 gallons and if you add another 10 gallons then you have 15 gallons which is 5 gallons more than you need, and you have 5 gallons more weight for the car to pull.

In human terms it means you only fuel your body with the fuel you need and if you add more fuel it gets turned into fat and stored until it is needed and if you persistently over fuel you are adding more fat reserves and at a specific point you reach obesity levels and you cannot burn this fat effectively and if it takes you 10 years to reach this stage it will take another 10 years to get rid of it. Once you reach this stage you are effectively addicted to eating and generally this needs to be quick foods which are normally snack foods and sandwiches as they are quick and easy to prepare and most are not good for your health.

Controlling Your Food

In the real world there is only ever one way to control your food and that is to produce it yourself and while this may be fine for seasonal foods such as vegetables but what about livestock as many people cannot rear cows, pigs, sheep or other large beasts as they don’t have the land or resources but they may rear poultry such as chicken for their eggs and possibly their meat. Any home produced animal reared for food needs slaughtering and butchering and storing and for most people this would be a problem and for commercial producers they use a slaughterhouse as these have the capabilities to slaughter a beast and remove anything which needs removing and disposing of it if necessary.

Realistically we have to accept that most people cannot do this and we also have to accept that most meats are sold as live animals at auctions and their price is based upon their weight and the incentive to maximise profits is to maximise an animals weight. To do this they embark upon a process called “fattening” which is where a beast is literally fattened up by increasing its weight before it goes to market and most beasts are fattened up using a huge number of chemical steroids to increase their weight, it also compromises your health and this is where decisive action is needed.

When it comes to removing the rubbish from your food it is a case of every little helps generally and if you can eat things not containing chemicals for a few days it allows your body to recover and if you can significantly minimise these chemicals it means your body isn’t fighting so many of them and stress is takes off, or reduced in your digestive system so it really is a win win situation. Many people still eat seasonally and this is the first point of call as to get these chemically free or reduced foods you need to produce it which involves planting it and tending it, you become its Mother and Father and protect it from the weather and other animals looking for a free feast at your expense as this removes the chemicals. To do this you need the right conditions and this often means a heated greenhouse as the heat is needed to germinate the seeds and to nurture the young plants so you need the greenhouse and heat and both cost money; you buy a greenhouse without fully researching it and you get a glass greenhouse in an aluminium frame and this is mistake number one as glass conducts heat away and aluminium is one of the best conductors of heat and a combination of both mean you spend more money on heat as so much is being wasted. Now your first dilemma, do you buy a cheap greenhouse and it ending up costing you a fortune in heating or do you spend more money on a more thermally efficient greenhouse and save it on fuel in the longer term and recent world events suggest buying the more expensive greenhouse works out the cheapest in the longer term.
You may think this way as so many do but there is a third option and that is to build your own greenhouse and use recycled timber to do it and if you insulate and double skin the lower solid section you can effectively conserve the heat you have and save on heating costs. You can take this further and replace the aluminium with a better insulation material such as wood and if you slot the uprights and roof you can replace the sheets of glass with more thermally efficient twin skinned polycarbonate sheets which may lose a little light transmission but gain much more thermal efficiency and save you a lot of money on heating. You can still take this further and you lay concrete footings you can insulate the ground by laying insulating batts which are what you lay before pouring your concrete floor on them and this helps prevent heat being transferred into the ground; then you can add thermal mass which is large pieces of masonry which absorb the heat of the day and release it slowly during the colder periods. Unless you have a deep bore geothermal system like mine you will have to spend some money on heating somewhere down the line as seeds need germinating in winter and young plants need the heat to survive and flourish so you need to choose this heating system very carefully as what may be free today may disappear tomorrow.
You have options and these need exploring and exploiting and if we assume a fuel is burned and this maybe wood or coal you need a boiler and if this is stood on a concrete slab and has a masonry wall built around it you have a wood burner to provide heat and you have created thermal mass to essentially harvest that heat and gather it while the fire is burning and once the fire goes out the stored heat is released over hours. It is this heating and cooling differential which may be an issue as you need to avoid a very quick heating to a high temperature and then the fire going out and the temperature dropping equally as quickly as this can also destroy your plants. What you really need is a gentle heat from your fire for as long as possible and ideally for several hours and when your fire goes out it needs the thermal mass to gently release its heat so the temperature differential is minimised and your crops grow.

As always this comes down to money and you decide to build your own greenhouse from recycled materials and use wooden pallets and you rebate them with half lap joints which are cheaply and easily made and allow expanding glues to be used to bond them together for air tight installations of the lower part of your greenhouse. You can treat the boards before installation and fill the cavity with insulation and this can be basic Rockwool or recycled polystyrene fillings or packing and your lower part is insulated and will not leak heat quickly and if you rebate your uprights and roof joists you can fit double wall polycarbonate sheets and silicone or putty them in and seal them and their joints. You now have an insulated greenhouse and space to grow your seeds or nurture your seedlings.

Size and style of greenhouse are essential and if you lack space the traditional apex roof greenhouse is out, even better is losing the ridge at the top of the roof as this is another area which traditionally loses heat and if you have a brick or masonry outbuilding you can install a lean to greenhouse and actually have thermal mass built in. If you are careful you can install a log burner at one end and run the chimney flue right across the masonry wall and exit it at the other end of your greenhouse and give yourself maximum heat from the longer flue and heat the entire wall up to give you more heat output for longer and a lean to greenhouse is easier to design and build and often cheaper as it has less air leaks.

In reality many people cannot afford to buy, or have the necessary skills to build a greenhouse or they don’t intend growing enough food to justify the expense and this throws up another dilemma and this is how they begin growing with such low temperatures and to understand this we go back in time before there were greenhouses. People used to stand glass panels over their crops and overlap them so they minimised heat losses and during the day the infra red rays from what little sun there was heated the air up inside the glass and this remained warm for hours after the sun went down and while this might not work in the middle of winter it allowed them to plant earlier and to grow later into the season and to produce more crops and this additional cropping paid dividends when they had crops others couldn’t grow and they didn’t need heat.

Many additional ideas are spawned from this and the miniature greenhouse is another example and if you build your own salad bar and grow most of your salad crops you can bend wires and install them in your salad bar and run cling film around it you have your very own miniature greenhouse. If you have tubs you can bend wires or install canes and cover this with cling film and again you have a miniature greenhouse and if you have 5 tubs you can have 5 greenhouses and you can take this further if you stand your tubs on blocks of wood as they are semi insulators which will provide additional insulation from heat being conducted into the ground.
If you have a salad bar or tubs and pots you can insulate them and for a salad bar you can double skin it and fill the cavity with insulation; and for pots or tubs you can get rolls of polystyrene which can be wrapped around them and taped or glued into position and you have insulated pots and if you don’t like the cling film then use a heavy duty bag such as a builders sand bag as these are 20-25Kg bags of a reasonable size and are strong.

If you have the garden space you can dedicate some of it to growing your crops and you can swap some of your flowers for cauliflowers and you plant your allocated space to maximise its efficiency to maximise your crop yields and you can grow a lot of food in a small space and this idea can be taken to another level with the 1 tonne bag growing system and even with one square meter you can grow a lot of crops.

Reality is a given and unless you are 20 and fit I would suggest starting any gardening in a small way and if you build your own salad bar and insulate it for form wires or canes and cover it with cling film and create your own small greenhouse complete with micro climate, you have started gardening in a small way and you learn and remember every failure is also a lesson. This teaches you vital lessons such as what and when to plant, what you need to stage plant and what crops you can grow and when you harvest them as every beginner will over plant and have 50 lettuce come up within a week and throw many away and this is a waste of time and money; you will learn to work out what you eat and how much you eat and the moral is simple, only grow what you eat and only grow what you eat a lot of. If you are cutting the potatoes, pasta, and rice from your diet to a minimal level then why grow potatoes as economically it would be a waste of money growing them when the few you will use are bought cheaply and the space you occupy growing them could be better used growing a crop you actually use a lot of such as carrots and you could grow a lot more carrots in the same space and get something you actually eat. Begin small and build up to a level you are comfortable with and remember if you winter dig it is very physical and can be soul destroying if you are not used to it and possibly force you to give up gardening and your foods which are good for you and your health.