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ABOUT HEALTH
t h e 1 4 co m m o n m y t h s t h at p r e v e n t h e a lt h !
The truth is, people need to get healthy before they try to lose weight. In
fact, weight loss is a byproduct of getting healthy and losing weight is not
synonymous with building health. Dieting or reducing calories can be very
stressful on your body, not to mention depriving it of nutrients—the very
thing that is supposed to get you healthy.
“They” have been trying to make obesity out to be a disease for a long time.
This way they can treat it like any illness – with medications. This will take
you even further from health.
What is health? Medically, if your symptoms are all under control (being
treated with drugs) and you don’t have any major diseases, then you are
considered healthy. If your blood tests and hormone levels are normal, then
you are healthy. If you need medications to control a symptom, then you
are not healthy. It’s funny to sometimes hear patients tell me, “I’m healthy,
I just need to lose weight,” as I see a list of eight drugs they are taking to
manage their symptoms. Or people will tell me, “I need to lose weight so I
can get healthy and get off some of these medications.” Actually, it's just the
reverse. It’s really those other health problems that are stopping them from
losing weight.
A good way to measure whether you are healthy is to look at seven health
indicators: energy level (including memory and stress tolerance), sleep
quality, cravings, digestion, inflammation, pain, and menstrual cycle.
STUBBORN
Pain WEIGHT Sleep
Digestion
Inflammation
Cravings
If these seven factors are good, chances are you’re pretty healthy. Find
which ones are problematic, then focus on fixing them— not the weight.
You’ll be pleasantly surprised that your stubborn weight will stop being so
stubborn. Treating the weight problem directly will neglect the deeper
issues. Do you really think you’ll be able to lose weight while battling
fatigue, sleep problems, bloating, and cravings? Good luck. You should look
at the seven health indicators as open applications on your computer that
are slowing your metabolism.
Many body conditions start off as minor and gradually worsen over time.
There are gradients of health conditions and early signs are considered
subclinical (not detected by laboratory tests). In fact, one type of adrenal
dysfunction will not necessarily be detected until 90% of the adrenal gland
has been rendered dysfunctional. In other words, having normal hormone
levels and blood tests doesn’t necessarily mean you’re healthy.
It is not true that 65% of your body is pure water. In fact, no part of your
body is in a pure water state.
Every part of your body contains various types of fluids (blood, urine,
lymph, fluid inside and outside cells). Water is significantly different than
body fluids.
You need to drink water for sure, but to drink too much when you are not
thirst can actually dehydrate you.
You drink pure water and pee urine. Urine is composed of all sorts of
things: electrolytes, minerals, waste products of protein, hormones, acids,
and enzymes.
When you drink water, your body has to recombine electrolytes and many
other body chemicals. Drinking excess water can deplete these other
factors that make water functional in the body.
Urine is basically filtered blood. And yes, we do need water—but the blan-
ket recommendation that everyone needs to drink eight glasses per day is
not valid.
Drink when you are thirsty. Thirst depends on your physical activity; no
two people need the same amount of water. Don’t buy the claim that “your
body doesn’t know when it’s thirsty” or “by the time you are thirsty, it’s too
late.”
There is even a dangerous condition whereby people can die by drinking too
much water—it’s called hyponatremia. This condition indicates too much water
without enough electrolytes (minerals that hydrate). It’s a type of
over-hydration that can cause congestive heart failure and kidney and liver
disease.
Since fat has the most calories, eating fat will put on the most weight. If you
eat more calories than you burn, you gain weight. Since there are 3,500
calories in one pound of fat, all you need to do is burn 3,500 calories more
than you take in and you’ll lose one pound.
Oh, this is beautiful. Have you ever tried this? Has it worked for you?
Here’s the big flaw!
A calorie is a unit of energy in food. All calories are not identical and they
are not treated equally by our bodies’ hormones. Certain types of food
calories trigger fat-burning and others trigger fat-storing. Consuming more
of the calories that trigger fat-burning will cause you to lose weight, not
gain it.
Let’s take a bagel (200 calories) and three eggs (200 calories); both have the
same amount of calories. The bagel affects the fat-making hormones; the
eggs affect the fat-burning hormones.
But…
Fat has the smallest effect on the hormones that make you fat. In fact, fat
does not trigger any hormones that cause fat-storing. Proteins have fewer
calories than fat but actually trigger fat-burning hormones if not consumed
in large amounts. However , carbohydrates, with the same value of calorie
density as proteins, will create the biggest effect on fat-storing hormones,
making you fat. The big fat-making hormone is called insulin.
Insulin: A hormone made by the pancreas that lowers the sugar in the
blood. Insulin stores fat; in the presence of small amounts, fat-burning is
turned off.
Different carbohydrates have different sweetness (sugar) levels. Obviously,
candy and celery are both carbohydrates, but non-sweet vegetables will
not trigger insulin production . So, it’s the sugar concentration or how fast
a carbohydrate turns into sugar that determines whether it turns into fat.
And many carbohydrates can turn into sugar fast, including breads,
pastas, cereals, crackers, bagels, and pancakes.
Bread and salad are also carbohydrates, but bread has very few nutrients
while the other has tons. Instead of counting calories, count the nutrients
in calories. Just counting calories can reduce the very nutrients that get
you healthy.
I have had lots and lots of patients come to my clinic attempting to lose
weight by doing massive amounts of exercise, but they get very few
results. It’s depressing to put out all that effort and barely see any change
after months of exercise.
Here’s how it works: During exercise, most of the initial calories you burn
will be stored sugar calories. Your body stores sugar in your muscles and
liver. Stored sugar is the body’s preferred fuel when you exercise.
When do you burn fat?
Fat burning occurs 14-48 hours after you exercise, when you are in deep
sleep. That is when fat-burning hormones are active. In fact, if you weigh
yourself before and after a good night’s sleep, versus only when you wake
up, you’ll see the greatest change in weight.
In the graph below, you’ll notice that growth hormone (a main fat-burning
hormone) kicks in starting at 10:30 p.m.
The benefit of exercise occurs in the recovery part (after 14-48 hours).
Exercise is really a type of stress that causes your body to use fat in its
recovery process. During the recovery process, your body uses fat as
energy fuel. This has to be a delicate balance of the right amount, intensity,
and recovery of exercise. Each person needs his or her own unique
combination based on fitness level, recovery strength, and sleep quality.
Recovery is mostly ignored by most people trying to exercise to lose weight.
Instead, they focus on burning calories through more exercise. In fact,
some people get up at 4:00 a.m. to go to the gym, not realizing that most fat
burning occurs in sleep – oops!
If you are not sleeping, or are tired all the time, exercise will not be
effective. In fact, studies have shown that exercising when you are not
sleeping well (getting five hours of sleep or less) can increase your chances
of suffering a heart attack.
It’s best to adjust the intensity of your workouts based on your energy and
sleep levels. The less sleep a person gets and the more tired a person is, the
less intense the exercise should be – walk, don’t run, if you are not sleeping
well or are tired. It takes high-quality sleep and energy to recover and see
results from high-intensity exercise, especially to change body fat. This is
even truer as you age due to loss of fat-burning hormones.
The fact is that our body can turn proteins and even fats into energy. It
does not have to rely on carbohydrates for its energy. The more important
reason we need “certain” carbohydrates (veggies) is that they provide
vitamins and minerals, not energy. In fact, many carbohydrates will make
you tired if you eat them (refined sugars).
We are told to consume "whole" grains instead of refined grains. The whole
grains you get at the store are still severely refined, made from flour that is
usually stale (old). Unless you grind your own grains and consume them
within six days, much of the nutritional value is destroyed. The key factor
is when the grains were made into flour.
The most misunderstood fact about insulin is that it takes only very tiny
amounts of insulin to block fat-burning. This is especially true as you age
or if your metabolism is already slow. In the presence of small amounts of
insulin, the body will not burn fat. Insulin is the dominant
counter-hormone to fat-burning. In some cases, even very small amounts of
refined carbohydrates (wine, juice, or even a bagel) can bump you out of
fat-burning for 48 hours. You can be exercising and eating extremely
healthily—and that tiny amount of refined carbohydrate will nullify all of
your effort! Yikes!
It is very dangerous to have high blood sugar, especially for your eyes,
brain, and nerves. You can eventually go blind, get brain atrophy
(shrinkage), or develop a condition called peripheral neuropathy, whereby
the nerves in your hands and feet start to tingle and burn, then go numb.
In 25+ years of practice working personally with more than 40,000 people,
I have concluded that the majority of “lazy” people are not lazy. The real
problem is that they are just tired or exhausted, lacking vitality and
get-up-and-go energy.
This is not laziness; this is fatigue. If they had the energy they would do
something. Others label them as “lazy.” This is an incorrect diagnosis. They
should focus on fixing their sleep patterns, which would reestablish good
energy.
Most people are not procrastinators either. They just do not see results
easily.
If they try to lose weight over and over and over again and fail and fail and
fail, I guarantee it will become harder and harder to jump in and keep
trying. They will put it off because they lack the confidence to get results.
They develop an attitude of “might as well eat what I enjoy, because I don’t
see change even if I eat well.”
Results depend on fixing the root problem. In myth #1, you received some
insight into the real cause of your weight problem. If you have the wrong
information about calories, exercise, and hormones, you’ll never solve the
problem.
Most people are not procrastinators either. They just do not see results
easily.
All health symptoms have root causes. Things don’t just happen for no
reason.
Are these really diseases that we have to treat directly? Our current
healthcare system is designed to “manage” symptoms. We have become
overspecialized, which keeps all the parts of your body treated separately
without connecting the dots and taking a holistic view.
There’s a theory floating around that says synthetic vitamins are the same
as natural vitamins.
Ascorbigen
Bioflavonoid (Phytonutrient) Complex
Most people do not know that 99% of all vitamins sold to them are mainly
synthetic. There are only a few companies that sell natural, or better yet,
whole food vitamin complexes.
With natural whole food vitamins, you will see listed the actual food
ingredients on the label.
With synthetic vitamins, you will only see chemical forms and synthetic
vitamins listed on the label. You may also see that each part of the vitamin
comes in whole numbers, like 50mg of B1, 50 mg of B3, and in higher
potencies. In nature, a vitamin never comes in high potencies, nor does it
come in whole exact numbers.
Balancing carbohydrates, proteins, and fats may or may not get you close
to the amount of nutrients you need daily.
The purpose of food is to provide you with the nutrients your body
requires. Instead of trying to balance your carbohydrates, proteins, and
fats, more important is to look for the vitamins, minerals, essential fats, and
amino acids in those macronutrients. A common nutrient that is usually
missing in our food supply is the trace mineral. Trace minerals are needed
only in small amounts but they are necessary.
Many people do not know the body’s daily nutritional requirements. You
may know of recommend dietary allowances (RDAs). Another unit of
measure is the dietary reference intake (DRI). Then there is another called
daily values (DVs), which are listed on the food labels of every food you eat.
This will tell you the percentage of a given nutrient in a product.
I don’t think many people pay attention to this, but it’s a good idea to start
looking at labels. You’ll be surprised at how low in nutrition your foods
really are.
This tells the percentage of a given nutrient. If a product says “Vitamin C –
5%,” then the product provides 5% of the vitamin C that you need in a given
day. The most common nutrient in short supply for people is potassium. Our
body needs roughly 4,700 mg of potassium each day. What foods do you
think have high potassium?
Bananas?
Yes, but bananas only provide 400 mg. It takes eating almost 12 bananas
each day to get the required amount of potassium – wow!
Avocados provide around 800 mgs per avocado. But still you would need to
eat almost 6 each day. I think the easiest way to get potassium is through
big salads. Depending on the type, you would need 7-10 cups a day to get
your daily potassium. A few big salads per day and you’re good. At
restaurants, you normally get your main course and a side salad that is
maybe 1 cup – not even close.
Potassium
To fulfill 4,700 milligrams of potassium, you would have to consume :
Vitamin A Requirements
I created a free online assessment to help you find out your dietary nutrient
levels. This project took me more than two years to create and it’s finally
complete. Anyone can go to the site, fill out the form, and see what they are
missing. Don’t worry, there’s no sales pitch. Check it out.
http://www.drberg.com/healthy-diet
Did you know that 75% of all the cholesterol in your body is made by your
body? If cholesterol is so bad, why then does your body make it?
Your body creates 2,000+ mg of cholesterol every day. One egg has 185 mg
of cholesterol; you would have to consume more than 10 eggs to equal the
amount of cholesterol your own body makes. Actually, cholesterol has
important purposes.
Butter and egg yolks can increase cholesterol, but only the good
cholesterol. The “reducing cholesterol reduces heart disease” myth has
been disseminated since the 1950s.
One of the largest studies on cholesterol, called the Framingham Heart
Study, led to the relative risk factors which are listed on the cholesterol test
results you get from your doctor. In a thumbnail sketch, the study
demonstrated that people with high cholesterol were at higher risk than
people with low cholesterol. However, if you actually read the study, you
will see some serious fudging of numbers. Following is what the study
misrepresented.
Ancel Keys, a scientist who popularized the low-fat diet, fudged research
data. In studying the relationship between countries that consume
high-cholesterol diets and coronary heart disease, Keys cherry-picked the
countries that showed a connection but left out the countries that did not.
Of the 22 countries he examined , he left out 15.
The real problem is “over-cooking” meat. They also found that marinating
meats in olive oil, garlic, and lemon juice can cut down the effect of
“heterocyclic amines” by 90%.
We’ve been eating red meat for thousands of years. Yes, red meat can be
more difficult to digest as you get older, and consuming large amounts of
red meat can stress the liver, but red meat is not the cause of cancer.
The problem with all meats, whether red, white, or any color, has to do with
how the animal is treated and processed. Cows that graze on pesticide-free
grass and consume actual grass instead of grains—especially genetically
modified (GMO) grains—are totally healthy. The big problem is that most
animals raised for consumption are fed grains (soy and corn) that are
genetically modified. GMO grains do have a link to cancer.
It’s recommended that women drink one glass of wine each night and men
drink two. Some studies have indicated a positive link between drinking
wine and cardiovascular health. Residents of Italy, France, and Spain, for
example, drink wine and have lower rates of cardiovascular problems. This
is not, however, why they might be healthier. Their food is much higher in
nutrients that American food.
However, thinking that wine will improve heart function due to having
high anti-oxidant levels…it’s just not true. The problem with wine is the
alcohol. Alcohol is a solvent that damages the liver; it’s a drug. If you want
antioxidants, eat grapes.
Yes, chocolate has antioxidants, but it also has sugar, which nullifies any
benefits.
Antioxidants are not the part that makes you healthy!
Antioxidants are the protective factor for vitamin complexes and plants.
The purpose of anti-oxidants is not necessarily to give your body health
benefits; rather, they function to protect the plant and the vitamin from
being oxidized, or destroyed. Antioxidants are in the orange peel of the
orange and the eggshell of the egg.
Take vitamin C, for example. Some people incorrectly assume that ascorbic
acid is vitamin C and then take large doses. Ascorbic acid is merely the
antioxidant part that protects the other parts of the vitamin C complex; it
gives you no benefit in itself. The active and health-benefiting part of
vitamin C is not the antioxidant part but the complex parts inside that
include bioflavonoids (phytonutrient), the P-factor, K-factor, J-factor, and
an enzyme made from copper called tyrosinase (copper enzyme).
Ascorbigen
Bioflavonoid (Phytonutrient) Complex
You have heard on the news that "new clinical studies" demonstrate an
increase in risk for cancer when taking antioxidants. However, what they
fail to mention is that the so-called antioxidants used in these studies were
synthetic antioxidants, which are not even remotely close to what is in
nature.
Myth #13:
You Need To Alkalize Your Body
When people tell me they need to alkalize the body because they are too
acidic, I always ask them: What part of your body is too acidic?
The acid-alkaline or pH scale goes from 0-14, with 7 being neutral. Anything
higher than 7 is alkaline and anything lower than 7 is acid.
Every single part of your body has a different pH (acid-alkaline level). See
below:
Saliva 7 – 7.5
Esophagus 6–7
Stomach 1–3
Gallbladder 5 – 6.5
Small Intestine 7 – 8.5
Large Intestine 5.5 – 6.0
Lymph 7.4
Blood 7.35 – 7.45
Urine 6 – 6.5
Friendly bacteria in your digestive system make acids to kill bad bacteria.
They are called acidophilus bacteria.
Notice how acidic your stomach is—between 1 and 3. If you alkaline your
stomach, you destroy any chance of digesting foods and absorbing
minerals. This is why it’s dangerous to randomly alkalize. If you check the
pH of your saliva or urine and it tests excessively acidic, realize that it could
be compensating for other parts of your body having excessive alkalinity.
Drinking highly alkaline water can also throw your entire body into chaos.
The other interesting point is about stress. Stress activates high levels of
cortisol, which causes a loss of acids through the urine. This is why your
urine could show excessive acidity. But what is happening to the rest of
your body? It’s becoming excessively alkaline, especially in your blood and
stomach.
Your kidneys and adrenal glands control the pH of your body. Eating
healthily will allow your body to adjust to whatever pH it needs.
Belly fat is a different type of fat. It’s called visceral fat and most of it
surrounds the organs in your mid-section. The word visceral means
“organs.”
Two hormones are responsible for belly fat. One is called cortisol and the
other is called insulin.
To keep insulin down, you’ll need to avoid sugar – all sugar. This includes
making sure all hidden sugars are eliminated, including those in flavored
or vanilla yogurt, juice, and alcohol. The worse your metabolism is, the
more you have to eliminate any and all sweets because even very tiny
amounts can nullify lots of your good work.
www.DrBerg.com