By Franco Cavaleri BSc Nutraceutical Biochemist Mr IFBB North America 1250 wds
Original post: July 23, 2010
Your meals are far more than a supply of nutritional building blocks. They evoke a hormonal response in the body that ripples out to each of your cells in the form of hormone signals. These signals are influenced by the food types and proportion of fat, carbohydrate and protein in the meal. The long term influence of these impulses moulds how insulin, testosterone, estrogen and the stress hormones, like cortisol function. Your long term health is a reflection of the foods you choose and the meals you compose.
Many of the hormonal and other problems that creep up on us over time develop over decades of less than preferred choices. Much of this damage is reversible but it cannot be untangled in just a week or month. Your body is so amazing it can correct these inefficiencies with less time it took for them to develop. You see, your body fights tooth and nail to prevent your less than healthy choices from causing dis-ease. Illnesses or lack of optimal health is not a sudden occurrence.
However, your body accepts and incorporates your healthy choices with greater ease allowing for health to surface expeditiously if given the right tools. Health will surface even faster if toxicity and interference is removed from the body and avoided in the lifestyle. Patience and persistence with the right program will unravel the tangled mess of misguided hormone activity. . Food plays a monumental role in health and the fibre content it delivers is one big factor. The problem is, the faster our lives get the less fiber we tend to consume.
Fiber, however, is not the only nutritional element that high-fiber foods offer the body. These higher fibre foods are most often in their whole form. Vegetables, fruits and whole grains are major sources. What’s not often considered in the fibre equation is the other important nutrients that typically come with high-fibre diets. High fiber foods tend to have a lower glycemic index resulting in lower strain on insulin. They tend to deliver fewer calories, greater satiety, better vitamin and mineral density, higher antioxidant levels and often healthier fatty acid balances as well. Although fibre delivers its own nutritional value these accompanying nutrients support health in different but synergistic ways.
Fiber acts like a sponge to hold onto toxins and help eliminate them through the increased bulk they help create. Fibre is fermented by specialized friendly bacteria in the healthy digestive tract fueling their existence. The fermentation products include many compounds cells throughout the body rely on such as enterolactones; key vitamins such as some of the B`s and vitamin K; and short chain fatty acids that help maintain healthy gastrointestinal pH. Research shows that some of these compounds reduce the risk of infection by opportunistic pathogens and other byproducts of the gut-friendly bacteria even reduce the risk for some forms of cancer.
Choose to eat processed foods void of sufficient fiber and the body will not get the tools and fuels it needs to sustain health. The specialized compounds produced from soluble fibres in the gut also travel systemically through the blood stream to help regulate cholesterol, antioxidant status, blood vessel regulation, immunity, insulin, brain activity and more. Choose to eat whole fresh foods every day.
Drugs cannot effectively compensate for these missing nutritional factors; they can only serve as temporary crutches that allow us an opportunity to empower self sufficient health. But self sufficient health depends on healthy diet and beyond diet, healthy lifestyle. Whole fresh foods provide the body with the natural tools it needs to maintain health spontaneously.
Choose to eat enough fiber every day. Health authorities indicate that North Americans don’t get enough fibre in their diets and that consumption should exceed 25 grams per day. The ReCleanse recommendation is to strive to consume 35 grams per day and the included ReCleanse Food Guide is designed to get you to this health-supporting fibre intake easily.
Choose organic whenever possible to avoid unnecessary toxicity. Choosing organic reduces the ingestion of pesticides and other chemicals that can burden the endocrine system and the body. Interestingly some of the common pesticides used in agriculture are neurotoxin poisons that have detrimental effects on humans if the doses are high enough. These neurotoxins can have deleterious effects on the brain and peripheral neurons
Organophosphates and organochlorines are common chemicals that might not be used in North America as prolifically as they are in third world countries but much of our produce, coffee and cocoa come from countries where these toxins are used without much regulation. The dreaded organophosphate contributes to insulin strain and even insulin resistance. Another detrimental side-effect of the organophosphate is its estrogenic activity.
Organophosphate pesticides are xenoestrogens. Xenoestrogens are chemical compounds that act like estrogen in our bodies. Xenoestrogens can migrate into our bodies from plastics, petroleum products, our water supply, and in various forms from the food chain. They are common toxic byproducts of industry that tend to find their way into our waterways and the marine foods we harvest from the earth’s waters.
Xenoestrogens can contribute to estrogen dominance and can play a role in fatness and even cancer risks. The implications are even broader for men who obviously function best with a testosterone dominant metabolism. It’s exponentially problematic on the more delicate endocrine systems of our children, especially infants, where they can be influenced developmentally.
If the diet is loaded with xenoestrogens such as the organophposphate and high glycemic index foods, these two factors alone will be major driving forces of fatness, toxin accumulation and less than optimal health. Eliminating these influences improves insulin health, better estrogen to testosterone balance and even mental clarity to produce enormous changes in health in mere weeks. If we make the move to avoid these toxins through choosing healthy foods, we’re one step towards empowering the body to restore health and fitness.
Choose to take action.
STEP 1: Take action by cleaning, detoxifying and eliminating toxicity to help reset health. ReCleanse Herbal Detox is designed to help establish this reset.
STEP 2 Choose the right foods to support your new state of health. The food solution we’ve heard over and over again is to eat fresh, whole, local, organic, nonGMO and balanced. Plating the food selections into a balanced meal is all about proportioning carbohydrate, fat and protein in the meal. This doesn’t have to be difficult at all; and is made so easy by the ReCleanse Food Guide. Toxins assault us from environment, food, metabolic activity and even the stress we impose on ourselves. These non-food sources must consider as well. Avoiding known sources of chemical poisons reduces exposure and this is easily done through the right food selections. But there are always unknowns that must be regularly flushed from our vulnerable cells.
STEP 3: Apply the cleanse on a monthly basis to remove build up and remind the body and mind of the healthy objective. By applying a gentle cleanse on a monthly basis we prevent accumulation of these interfering toxins.
Your daily choices empower your body to maintain health or they limit this natural state from surfacing. ReCleanse Herbal Cleanse has incorporated these detoxification, cleansing and elimination strategies in an easy and enjoyable seven day program. The program includes a Food Guide carefully crafted based on these principles to fit the cleansing model and support the cleaner, leaner state in between monthly herbal cleansing cycles. Choose to empower health. Choose to be hormonally clean and hormonally healthy. Elevate your health with hormonal balance and holistic nutrition. You’re in charge of your choices; take charge!
As seen in Vista Magazine