ILOG 3 day Smoothie Challenge – Will You Join Us?
13 Apr 2012 9 Comments
in Diabetes, Diet & Weight loss, God's Green Herbs, Green Living, organic food, recipes, Smoothies & Juices Tags: green smoothie, Green smoothie fast, green smoothies, ILOG, Leaf vegetable, organic food, organic girl, smoothie challenge
It’s unfortunate but we recently discovered high quantities of black and brown colored mold in our home. This is second time we have gone through this and experienced all kinds of health complications because of it. We have been in essence homeless for a month and have moved 3 times since the mold was discovered. I wrote an article that discusses how mold affected us the first time and how it can harm your health; you can check it out by clicking here.
Needless to say we are trucking through with God’s help and we are thankful that it was discovered sooner than later.
With all the madness and stress, I have noticed that I am not sleeping as much and I am having trouble falling into a deep sleep. I am having cravings, experiencing a bit of dry hair and feeling tired more than I should.
I know stress is a nasty enemy and coupled with the effects of being around toxic mold, it can play some not so nice tricks on our health.
Hence the “ILOG (I Love Organic Greens)” Smoothie Challenge that I am about to start in a few days to give my body a jump start at cleansing and strengthening my immune system.
As a family we have embraced the greens in smoothies for almost a decade and we have seen the benefits in our overall health. I have written many articles on delicious green smoothie recipes that I have taught people to make over the years and made for our family.
This is a challenge I am doing with a few friends but you can join in on the fun if you like. The challenge is quite easy to follow as not everyone is used to drinking their salad; so to start off we are going to stick to the basics and leave room for a healthy cheat if needed.
Regardless of how long it takes you to muster up the courage to actually do a 3 day or 5 day or 20 day fast, this marks the beginning of a new journey. And a lot of things can happen in 3 days. There are 3 sunrises and 3 sunsets to witness, laughs to savor and beautiful outdoors to embrace. No matter where you are or what you are doing, you have 3 days; what you will do with them is all up to you, but the sky is the limit.
Don’t be intimidated or think that you have to be some food guru or health expert to do this. All you need is some will and your doctors approval.
And just in case you are wondering, I am not a raw foodie, nor am I a vegetarian. My friends, family and followers in some 185 countries know me as La Chica Organica which means, The Organic Gal. I like to live simply and I try my best to eat a healthy balanced diet which is based on the needs our family has. Eating organic as much as possible is one of my top priorities, I do so to avoid ingesting high levels of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, genetically modified organisms, hydrogenated oils and anything that looks like FrankenFood. I also enjoy making raw food dishes and desserts and I incorporate them in our diet as much as possible.
In other words, we try to keep in real, and by real I mean, “Real Food.” Food that is living and not created in a lab by mad food scientists.
The reason for this is simple. If we put dead foods into our body we will most likely only get dead, lifeless results in the end; like the many sicknesses and diseases that are plaguing our society. In many cases they are the result of a dead food diet. Living foods however are life building foods that aid our body in the healing process.
Living foods are those foods taken directly from creation and consumed usually immediately. Living foods consist of all the vitamins, minerals, enzymes, fiber and antioxidants our bodies need to survive. By giving us these perfect foods God knew He would be helping our bodies deal with cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and many other diseases.
Now for the fun part. Just how do I plan on doing this?
The process is easy. Take a few days to prep by creating a shopping list of your favorite fruits, vegetables, herbs and leafy greens, remembering to choose organic when possible.
During prep days, you should eliminate one to two cooked meals (including animal protein) a day and replace those meals with salads, fruits, smoothies and raw or lightly steamed vegetables. By the last day of your prep time you should not be consuming any animal protein, pre-packaged foods, fast food, junk food, sodas, coffee, or anything that does not grow in the ground or on a tree.
You can keep organic almond milk, coconut milk, rice milk or hemp milk in your diet if you choose to during this time.
I recommend prepping for 3-5 days depending on your schedule.
Starting the “ILOG” Smoothie Challenge
The goal is to drink green smoothies for breakfast lunch and dinner. Fluids allowed in between are filtered water and pure coconut water.
In my case I plan on making a 32 ounce green smoothie every morning, afternoon and evening. Each smoothie should always have 1 or 2 fruits and 2 or more greens or if you can tolerate straight greens then you do not need to use any fruits.
A great starter smoothie is something I like to call my BanKalBoost. Are you ready for this complicated recipe?
1 banana, 5 large frozen strawberries or just a handfull, ½ cup of raw spinach, 1-2 leafs of kale and 1.5 cups of water, almond milk or rice milk. Place your bananas in first with liquid, blend. Then place in greens and blend. Lastly add in your frozen strawberries and blendy blendy then get ready for the green mustache. For an extra punch try adding in a few snips of cilantro or parsley and blend.
They key is variety as to not get bored from the same old green smoothie every day for 3 days. Pears, mangoes, apples, bananas, strawberries, grapes, romaine lettuce, clover sprouts, collard greens, chard, cilantro, parsley and mixed blends of salad greens work well for this challenge.
I personally also take a dose of pro-biotics in the morning before heading out to work to aid in digestion and keep my gut flora healthy.
So if you think you are up to the challenge then you can pretty much get started anytime, but be sure to write about your experience and post it here under the comments section.
For those friends of La Chica Organica that need an extra push, we can set you up under the ILOG Coaching which will prepare you with shopping lists, recipes, fun tips, resources and encouragement for your 3 day journey. To get more information please drop me a line by clicking here. We are aiming at starting our ILOG Smoothie Challenge by Thursday of next week so if you need to sign up for coaching please do so by Monday.
Hope you can join me and raise your green glass, sport your green mustache and say along with me “I Love Organic Greens.”
Oh and just in case you can’t do the challenge right now, don’t feel bad. Check out these awesome fruit and green smoothie recipes below you can make anytime, anywhere.
Most amazing Green Smoothie Ever
Help your Digestion with this Delicious Cost Effective Smoothie
5 Fabulous Healthy Easy to make Smoothies/Juices
Another Great Green Smoothie Recipe that Supports the Immune System & Digestion
More Delicious Signature Green Smoothies by La Chica Organica
Lots of Love – May the Green be with you!
LCO
As a disclaimer I must say that should you choose to do any type of fast you are responsible for your well-being not La Chica Organica. This post and ideas expressed here are not to be taken as medical or health advice. I strongly recommend you consult with a licensed health professional before changing your diet or fasting.
Also if LCO has blessed you with helpful tips or you have a testimonial to share, please feel free to post a comment or contact us here.
At La Chica Organica we are not paid for all of the free resources we offer here, so if at any time you are lead to bless us with a gift or scholarship to continue offering wholesome teachings and wellness education, please just drop us a line by contacting us here.
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Is sugar Toxic?
05 Apr 2012 1 Comment
in Diabetes, Diet & Weight loss, Health News, Heart Health, Organic Living Video's, Toxic Food Ingredients/Additives, Uncategorized Tags: CBS News, heart disease, high fructose corn syrup, Is sugar toxic, Robert Lustig, Sanjay Gupta, sugar and health
(CBS News) If you are what you eat, then what does it mean that the average American consumes 130 pounds of sugar a year? Sanjay Gupta reports on new research showing that beyond weight gain, sugar can take a serious toll on your health, worsening conditions ranging from heart disease to cancer. Some physicians go so far as to call sugar a toxin.
The following script is from “Sugar” which aired on April 1, 2012. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is the correspondent. Denise Schrier Cetta and Sumi Aggarwal, producers.
The chances are good that sugar is a bigger part of your daily diet than you may realize which is why our story tonight is so important. New research coming out of some of America’s most respected institutions is starting to find that sugar, the way many people are eating it today, is a toxin and could be a driving force behind some of this country’s leading killers, including heart disease.
As a result of these findings, an anti-sugar campaign has sprung up, led by Dr. Robert Lustig, a California endocrinologist, who believes the consumption of added sugars has plunged America into a public health crisis.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Is sugar toxic?
Dr. Robert Lustig: I believe it is.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Do you ever worry that that’s– it just sounds a little bit over the top?
Dr. Robert Lustig: Sure. All the time. But it’s the truth.
Dr. Robert Lustig is a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco and a pioneer in what is becoming a war against sugar.
Motivated by his own patients — too many sick and obese children – Dr. Lustig has concluded that sugar, more than any other substance, is to blame.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: What are all these various diseases that you say are linked to sugar?
Dr. Robert Lustig: Obesity, type II diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease itself.
Lustig says the American lifestyle is killing us.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: And most of it you say is preventable?
Dr. Robert Lustig: Seventy-five percent of it is preventable.
While Dr. Lustig has published a dozen scientific articles on the evils of sugar, it was his lecture on YouTube, called “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,” that brought his message to the masses.
[YouTube Video: I'm standing here today to recruit you in the war against bad food.]
By “bad food” Dr. Lustig means the obvious things such as table sugar, honey, syrup, sugary drinks and desserts, but also just about every processed food you can imagine, where sugar is often hidden: yogurts and sauces, bread, and even peanut butter. And what about the man-made, often vilified sweetener, high fructose corn syrup?
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Is it worse than just table sugar?
Dr. Robert Lustig: No. ‘Cause it’s the exact same. They are basically equivalent. The problem is they’re both bad. They’re both equally toxic.
Since the 1970s, sugar consumption has gone down nearly 40 percent, but high fructose corn syrup has more than made up the difference. Dr. Lustig says they are both toxic because they both contain fructose — that’s what makes them sweet and irresistible.
Dr. Robert Lustig: We love it. We go out of our way to find it. I think one of the reasons evolutionarily is because there is no food stuff on the planet that has fructose that is poisonous to you. It is all good. So when you taste something that’s sweet, it’s an evolutionary Darwinian signal that this is a safe food.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: We were born this way?
Dr. Robert Lustig: We were born this way.
Central to Dr. Lustig’s theory is that we used to get our fructose mostly in small amounts of fruit — which came loaded with fiber that slows absorption and consumption — after all, who can eat 10 oranges at a time? But as sugar and high fructose corn syrup became cheaper to refine and produce, we started gorging on them. Americans now consume 130 pounds per person a year — that’s a third of a pound every day.
Dr. Lustig believes those sweeteners are helping fuel an increase in the most deadly disease in America: heart disease. For years, he’s been a controversial voice.
[Kimber Stanhope: Here is our oral isotope...]
But now, studies done by Kimber Stanhope, a nutritional biologist at the University of California, Davis are starting to back him up. She’s in the middle of a groundbreaking, five-year study which has already shown strong evidence linking excess high fructose corn syrup consumption to an increase in risk factors for heart disease and stroke. That suggests calories from added sugars are different than calories from other foods.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: The mantra that you hear from most nutritionists is that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie.
Kimber Stanhope: And I think the results of the study showed clearly that is not true.
Stanhope’s conclusions weren’t easy to come by. Nutrition studies are expensive and difficult. Stanhope has paid groups of research subjects to live in this hospital wing for weeks at a time, under a sort of 24-hour lockdown. They undergo scans and blood tests – every calorie they ingest, meticulously weighed and prepared.
Kimber Stanhope: They’re never out of our sight. So we do know that they are consuming exactly what we need them to consume.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: And they’re not sneaking any candy bars on the side.
Kimber Stanhope: Yeah, right, exactly.
For the first few days, participants eat a diet low in added sugars, so baseline blood levels can be measured.
[Research assistant: So remember you guys have to finish all of your Kool-Aid. ]
Then, 25 percent of their calories are replaced with sweetened drinks and Stanhope’s team starts drawing blood every 30 minutes around the clock. And those blood samples? They revealed something disturbing.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: And what are you starting to see?
Kimber Stanhope: We found that the subjects who consumed high fructose corn syrup had increased blood levels of LDL cholesterol and other risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: How quickly did these changes occur?
Kimber Stanhope: Within two weeks.
Kimber Stanhope’s study suggests that when a person consumes too much sweet stuff, the liver gets overloaded with fructose and converts some of it into fat. Some of that fat ends up in the bloodstream and helps generate a dangerous kind of cholesterol called small dense LDL. These particles are known to lodge in blood vessels, form plaque and are associated with heart attacks.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Did it surprise you when you first got these results back?
Kimber Stanhope: I would have to say I was surprised because when I saw our data, I started drinking and eating a whole lot less sugar. I would say our data surprised me.
So imagine, for these healthy young people, drinking a sweetened drink might be just as bad for their hearts as the fatty cheeseburgers we’ve all been warned about since the 1970s. That’s when a government commission mandated that we lower fat consumption to try and reduce heart disease.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: So with the best of intentions, they say, “Time to reduce fat in the American diet?”
Dr. Robert Lustig: Exactly. And we did. And guess what? Heart disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and death are skyrocketing.
Dr. Lustig believes that’s primarily because we replaced a lot of that fat with added sugars.
Dr. Robert Lustig: Take the fat out of food, it tastes like cardboard. And the food industry knew that. So they replaced it with sugar.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: This idea that sugar increases this particularly bad LDL, the small dense particles that are associated with heart disease. Do most doctors– do they know this?
Dr. Robert Lustig: No, they do not know this. This is new.
And it turns out, sugar has become a major focus in cancer research too. Lewis Cantley, is looking at the connection.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: If you limit your sugar you decrease your chances of developing cancer?
Lewis Cantley: Absolutely.
Cantley, a Harvard professor and the head of the Beth Israel Deaconess Cancer Center, says when we eat or drink sugar, it causes a sudden spike in the hormone insulin, which can serve as a catalyst to fuel certain types of cancers.
Lewis Cantley: What we’re beginning to learn is that insulin can cause adverse effects in the various tissues. And of particular concern is cancer.
Why? Nearly a third of some common cancers — including breast and colon cancers — have something called insulin receptors on their surface. Insulin binds to these receptors and signals the tumor to start consuming glucose.
Lewis Cantley: This is your body…
Every cell in our body needs glucose to survive. But the trouble is, these cancer cells also use it to grow.
Lewis Cantley: So if you happen to have the tumor that has insulin receptors on it then it will get stimulated to take up the glucose that’s in the bloodstream rather than go into fat or muscle, the glucose goes into the tumor. And the tumor uses it to grow.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: So you’ve just seen that tumor turn blue which is essentially reflective of glucose going into it.
Lewis Cantley: That’s right.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: So these cancers, much in the same way that muscle will say, “Hey, I’d like some of that glucose, the fat says, “I would like some of that glucose,” the cancers have learned how to do this themselves as well?
Lewis Cantley: Yes. So they have evolved the ability to hijack that flow of glucose that’s going by in the bloodstream into the tumor itself.
Lewis Cantley’s research team is working on developing drugs that will cut off the glucose supply to cancer cells and keep them from growing. But until there’s a breakthrough, Cantley’s advice? Don’t eat sugar. And if you must, keep it to a minimum.
Lewis Cantley: In fact– I– you know, I live my life that way. I rarely eat sugar.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: When you see a sugary drink or if I were to offer you one, what– with all that you know, what’s going through your mind?
Lewis Cantley: I probably would turn it down and get a glass of water.
But for most of us, that’s easier said than done…
Eric Stice: It turns out sugar is much more addictive than I think we had sort of realized early on.
Eric Stice, a neuroscientist at the Oregon Research Institute, is using functional MRI scanners to learn how our brains respond to sweetness.
Eric Stice: Sugar activates our brain in a special way. That’s very reminiscent of, you know, drugs like cocaine.
That’s right. Cocaine.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Let’s give it a shot…
I climbed into the MRI scanner to see how my brain would respond. That’s a straw that’s been rigged to deliver a tiny sip of soda into my mouth.
Eric Stice: Stay as still as you can, ok?
Just as it hit my tongue, the scanner detected increased blood rushing to certain regions of my brain. In these images, the yellow areas show that my reward region is responding to the sweet taste. Dopamine – a chemical that controls the brain’s pleasure center – is being released, just as it would in response to drugs or alcohol.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: So dopamine is released. That sort of makes me feel good. I’m experiencing some pleasure from having this Coke.
Eric Stice: Right, that euphoric effect.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: So far be it for people to realize this ’cause sugar is everywhere, but you’re saying this is one of the most addictive substances possibly that we have?
Eric Stice: It certainly is very good at firing the reward regions in our brain.
Eric Stice says by scanning hundreds of volunteers, he’s learned that people who frequently drink sodas or eat ice cream or other sweet foods may be building up a tolerance, much like drug users do. As strange as it sounds, that means the more you eat, the less you feel the reward. The result: you eat more than ever.
Eric Stice: If you overeat these on a regular basis it causes changes in the brain that basically it blunts your reward region response to the food, so then you eat more and more to achieve the same satisfaction you felt originally.
With all this new science emerging, we wanted to hear from the sugar industry, so we visited Jim Simon, who’s on the board of the Sugar Association, at a sugar cane farm in Louisiana.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Would it surprise you that almost every scientist that we talked to in researching this story told us they are eliminating all added sugars. They’re getting rid of it because they’re concerned about the health impacts.
Jim Simon: To say that the American consuming public is going to completely omit, eliminate, sweeteners out of their diet I don’t think gets us there.
Simon cautions that eliminating sugar wrongly vilifies one food, rather than working towards the long-term solution of reducing calories and exercising.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: You know, a lot of people, Jim, are saying that sugar is different. That it is bad for your heart and is causing a lot of the problems we’re talking about. It is addictive and in some cases might even fuel cancers. What would you – I mean you’ve looked at this. You must have looked at some of these studies. What do you say about that?
Jim Simon: The science is not completely clear here.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: But some of that’s, but some of these studies exist. I mean, what is a consumer, what are they to make of all that?
Jim Simon: Well, I would say to them, that they’ve got to approach, their diet in balance.
Dr. Robert Lustig agrees — we need a balanced diet — but his idea of balance is a drastic reduction in sugar consumption. To that end he co-authored an American Heart Association report recommending men should consume no more than 150 calories of added sugars a day. And women, just 100 calories. That’s less than the amount in just one can of soda.
Dr. Robert Lustig: Ultimately this is a public health crisis. And when it’s a public health crisis, you have to do big things and you have to do them across the board. Tobacco and alcohol are perfect examples. We have made a conscious choice that we’re not going to get rid of them, but we are going to limit their consumption. I think sugar belongs in this exact same wastebasket.
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Reversing Diabetes Naturally – Is There Hope?
12 Sep 2011 4 Comments
in Baby & Child Health, Diabetes, organic food, Organic Living Video's, Toxic Food Ingredients/Additives Tags: Blood sugar, cure diabetes, Diabetes mellitus, Diabetes mellitus type 2, insulin, raw for 30 days, reverse diabetes
Before you do anything, please watch this 9 minute trailer below from the documentary film called Raw for 30 Days. It’s a remarkable piece of work that follows six people with diabetes and their recovery, I highly recommend you view it before reading on. Plus towards the end of this trailer you will hear the surprised reaction of a conventional doctor who followed up with his patient now cured from diabetes.
We all seem to know someone who has diabetes. But lately it seems as if I am hearing more and more about it. So just what is diabetes?
The two types of diabetes are type 1 and type 2. Both cause blood sugar levels to become higher than normal but do so in different ways.
Type 1 diabetes (formerly called insulin-dependent diabetes or juvenile diabetes) occurs when the immune system attacks and destroys the insulin producing Beta cells of the pancreas that produce insulin. There are many environmental factors that have contributed to the rapid growth of this disorder. Healthy lifestyle factors play an enormous role in preventing and treating this form of diabetes.
The other form of diabetes (Type 2) is one that sneaks up on you slowly, taking many years to develop into full-blown diabetes. Type 2 diabetes (formerly called non-insulin-dependent diabetes) is different. Unlike someone with type 1 diabetes, a person with type 2 diabetes still produces insulin but the body doesn’t respond to it normally. Glucose is less able to enter the cells and do its job of supplying energy (this is called insulin resistance). This causes the blood sugar level to rise, making the pancreas produce even more insulin. Eventually, the pancreas can wear out from working overtime to produce extra insulin and may no longer be able to produce enough insulin to keep blood sugar levels normal.
According to Dr. Bruce Fife ND, “Diabetes is all about sugar — the sugar in our bodies known as blood sugar or blood glucose. Every cell in our bodies must have a constant source of glucose in order to fuel metabolism. Our cells use glucose to power processes such as growth and repair. When we eat a meal the digestive system converts much of our food into glucose, which is released into the bloodstream. The hormone insulin, which is secreted by the pancreas gland, moves glucose from the blood and funnels it into the cells so it can be used as fuel. If the cells are unable to get adequate amounts of glucose, they can literally starve to death. As they do, tissues and organs begin to degenerate. This is what happens in diabetes.”
Diabetes was noted as far back as Ancient Greece. The name comes from two Greek words meaning the siphon and to run through, which describes the diabetic symptom of excess urine. Diabetes is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, where over twenty-three million, almost eight percent of the population, have been diagnosed with the disorder.
The number of cases of diabetes doubled from 1990 to 2005 and is expected to double again by 2050. Side effects of diabetes include kidney disease, congestive heart failure, stroke, blindness and hearing loss.
But most troubling is the number of children who will develop diabetes. Statics say that 1 out of 3 children born after 2000 will develop diabetes. Those are pretty sad statistics.
But the story does not have to end here. As you saw in the video above, there is hope for people suffering from diabetes.
Lately I have received several comments and questions from LCO followers around the world concerning fruits, vegetables and herbs.
It’s important to note that Vegetable juices do not raise insulin levels like fruit juices do. The only exception to this is carrot and or beet juice which are similar in makeup to fruit juice and can raise insulin levels. As a rule of thumb root vegetables such as carrots and beets tend to be higher in sugar content than leafy greens. You may try a juice with wheat/barley grass, celery, cucumber cabbage and half of an apple, one sm carrot and 1/4 of a small beet to make it palatable at first then cut out the carrot and apple. Another great option, aloe vera juice (containing 80% aloe gel) helps lower blood sugar levels in people with Type 2 diabetes.
There are also certain herbs that have been used by diabetics:
Ginkgo biloba is used by herbalists to treat the side effects of diabetes, particularly by increasing blood flow to the limbs and the eyes. Because of Ginkgo’s effect on blood vessels, it is used to prevent diabetic retinopathy. Research has also confirmed Ginkgo’s effect on depression in diabetes and non-diabetes sufferers. The active ingredient is called ginkgo flavoglycoside, and the daily dosage is 0 to 80 mg three times a day to treat diabetes symptoms.
Bilberry is also of the commonly used herbs to treat diabetes. Also known as European Blueberry (Vaccinium myrtillus). The leaves of this plant have been shown to lower blood sugar. Traditional usage was a few handfuls of leaves in three to four cups of water simmered for a half hour. A few cups of Bilberry tea lower blood sugar. Extracts of Bilberry are now available and a dosage is between 80 to 160 mg three times a day to treat diabetes.
For more information on treating diabetes naturally please check out the following resources below:
Articles:
1. http://www.naturalnews.com/032221_resveratrol_diabetes.html
3. http://www.naturalnews.com/009333.html
Books to Read:
http://www.amazon.com/There-Cure-Diabetes-21-Day-Program/dp/1556436912
http://www.amazon.com/30-Day-Diabetes-Miracle-Overcoming-Rebuilding/dp/0399534768/ref=pd_sim_b_4
Oh and if you have not subscribed yet, you can do so at the top right hand corner of this page. Subscription is free and allows you to get LCO’s articles in your email inbox.
Below is another clip for the Raw for 30 days documentary.
Until next time, may God richly bless you and yours.
LCO
Sources:
http://www.worldhealth.net/news/one_in_three_us_children_born_in_2000_wi/
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