Testing is a great tool to see where we are in regards to health.
The most effective tool is a test we can do ourselves. It is called the oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT). The OGTT is the gold standard for checking for diabetes or pre-diabetes. Unfortunately, it not a test administered in yearly physical health screenings. When was the last time you went to a doctor and he had you take the OGTT?
By administering the test ourselves, we find our fasting blood sugar level (which in reality can misdiagnose diabetes which is the test given in a yearly physical check-up). But then check again after 2 hours of drinking 75 grams of carbohydrates. Ideally we want to be under 120 at the 1 hour mark. At the 2 hour mark, between 140-199 is pre-diabetes and over 200 is diabetes.
Testing gives us the picture of how our health is doing. By catching diabetes early, we can take measures to assure that the trend of diabetes is reversed.
How many times per day should we engage in exercise?
I figure 5 times per day. For those of you who get exhausted from watching football 10 hours on a Sunday, going from couch to refrig, and repetitively lifting arm to mouth, only four.
The first exercise comes when waking up in the morning and taking an early walk. After each meal, a 15 minute exercise helps the insulin and glucose to enter the cells. And then a longer exercise engaging in a favorite sport or a visit to the gym running a few miles and doing weights.
You might ask, how do I fit my job into all this? That's the point. It's time to quit your job. Don't allow something as trivial as making a living get in the way of a trim healthy body.
Do you think restaurants care about your health? You're smiling, right? You know restaurants don't give a shit about your health. Fact is, most people don't give a shit about their health. Or, they might think they do, but their actions speak something different.
All restaurants are unhealthy. There's not a restaurant I could walk in, and say, "I can eat anything I want here, it's all healthy". Even The Soup Plantation: The salad dressings are loaded with fat and salt. The breads are refined, loaded with salt. The soups too, excessive salt.
This is the reality of our toxic surroundings. We all think this is good for us and it's the exact opposite. Sure, we might get a little gastro reflux when we eat at these places, but we think it's generally OK. It takes years for our bodies to break down from this incessant bombardment we subject our systems to.
Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, IBD, MS, GERD, hemorrhoids, diverticulosis, gall stones, appendix problems. All of these are caused by the western diet. What's the western diet? Look at what you eat. That's the western diet. Meat, milk, eggs, cheese, bread--that kind of shit.
All of these diseases can be reversed or avoided by doing only one thing: eating only foods that contain fiber. Eat a high fiber diet, avoid all the problems you see around you. All of them.
Obesity should not even exist. It should be rare to see someone obese. But in US it's actually become abnormal to be of normal weight. What we see around us we think as normal. It's not.
So by doing that one thing, eating a high fiber diet, you're restricting other things that help lead to this crisis we're in. No meat, oil, salt, sugar, dairy.
Yeah, you virtually have to be a monk in today's age to make it happen. But instead of whining, look at the big picture and study people like T L Cleave, Hugh Trowell, Denis Burkitt, Dr McDougall et al. This shit ain't no joke. If you got problems, get your ass in gear and you take control. Learn! And start eating properly.
Follow the herd if you want. Do the Adkin's, South Beach, Paleo diets if you really think that's the way to health. Or do some research, be honest with yourself, and realize where health originates and take the steps to make it happen.
BTW, you might now have relatively good heath. Possibly only one or two symptoms, or even none. But these diseases have an incubation period of many years. Eating the western diet will cause western disease. You can't escape the biological laws of cause and effect.
In learning about nutrition oftern the conversation is about early man. I always found it a curiousity, but really I thought, who gives a shit, these guys rarely lasted beyond 20-30 years.
Now I see why it's so important to study early man. If you believe in evolution and that we evolved from millions and millions of years, it then makes sense. Man, through millenia evolved a certain diet for survival. And contrary to what many believe, it was a WFPB whole foods plant based diet.
Just as we can see the effects of smoking or alcohol, we experience daily the effects of the wrong kinds of food. We were not designed to eat the diet we eat. Just about every chronic disease we suffer is due to our diet. A diet of refined grains and restaurant foods. We eat a diet high in salt, oil and refined sugar. Daily we eat enough salt that could supply our bodies for a month. And we do this day in and day out ad nauseam. We actually believe oil is healthy for us. We do realize refined carbohydrates are bad for us, but still eat bread, cookies, cakes etc.
Chronic diseases that could be avoided: auto immune diseases such as lupus, MS. Associated heart dieseases including deep vain thrombosis, vericose veins, high blood pressure, heart attacks. The other piping system including diverticulosis, diverticulitis, crohn's disease, colitis, hemorrhoids, hiatal hernia.
All these diseases are caused by the western diet. If we started to eat a WFPB diet, these problems would likely disappear. But to eat a WFPB diet after being addicted to our Western Diet is herculean. I believe it's one of the most difficult achievments one can do in life.
