Naturopathyworks.com
Choose your foods like your life depends on them.
August 2004 newsletter

Book Review

Nicholas Perricone MD's
The Perricone Prescription

Dr. Perricone applies basic whole food principles to his field of dermatology. The subtitle to his book, The Perricone Prescription, "A physician's 28-day program for total body and face rejuvenation," is a big promise, but the many before and after photos of the people in his book seem to deliver good results on that promise. Dr. Perricone's own research has shown that not only a whole food diet, but primarily sugar avoidance, is key to avoiding inflammation and thus pre-mature aging.

Dr. Perricone's first dietary intervention is adding water to the diet. Fighting off his patient's misconceptions about water causing bloating, boredom with water, and busy schedules that make it easy to forget drinking water, The Perricone Prescription makes 8-10 glasses of water per day a non-negotiable hurdle that the ambitious patient must cross in order to achieve success. If you doubt the importance of water to wrinkle-free skin, Dr. Perricone invites you to place a grape next to a raisin. The hydration of cells on the microscopic level clearly has macroscopic effects, and water is the only substance up to doing that essential job.

The Perricone diet is a good whole food diet, with an appropriate balance of Omega-3 to Omega-6 fatty acids. On the 3-day diet, the meats consist of equivalent portions of salmon and poultry, with the balance of the meals being mostly whole fruits and vegetables with some grains.

Besides basic whole food advice, Dr. Perricone offers various nutritional strategies, which he has had success with over the years, for specific skin conditions. It is a relief to see that there is a dermatologist who actually attempts to heal skin naturally, without simply throwing hormone-disrupting corticosteroids at every skin type.

nwnwnwnwnwnwnwnwnwnwnw

Sugar cravings and candida: breaking the cycle

Yeasts, such as candida, feed on sugar. Women with recurrent vaginal yeast infections may begin to feel as if candida is a permanent fixture of their bodies, and indeed we can carry it with us all our lives. That does not mean, however, that candida has to be in control of your life. John Parks Trowbridge, MD and Morton Walker, authors of The Yeast Syndrome, are medical mavericks in their diagnosis and treatment of yeast complications that their conventional medical colleagues insisted could not exist, because they had never been taught about them. Yet time has shown Trowbridge, Walker, and other health professionals who have worked with candida patients to have accurately identified a very toxic and ubiquitous pathogen in the common Candida albicans, along with the many havoc-wreaking antibodies that it generates.

Trowbridge and Walker have found patients mostly improving completely in about ten days. But very tenacious cases may need up to three years before completely recovery of symptoms. Naturopathic physicians at the Southwest Naturopathic Medical Center in Scottsdale, AZ have developed an eating plan that deprives candida of its fuel of choice: sugar. This eating plan allows all whole foods with the following exceptions: no melons, mushrooms or cheeses. All fruits are to be avoided for the first two weeks, and then just one fresh fruit per day is allowed. Of course, no sugar or other refined carbohydrates in any form can be eaten if one wants success. The duration of this diet corresponds to the severity of the symptoms, and is generally followed for as long as the patient continues to have symptoms.

Breaking the cycle

The hard part of this diet for someone with a heavy candida load is eliminating sugar, since the candida in the body is screaming for sugar. Here are some of the strongest tools in naturopathic medicine for eliminating sugar cravings:

• Glutamine powder. This is available from supplement stores, and may be stirred into hot or iced tea or water. Dr. Kenneth Proefrock, NMD, recommends 400 mg of L-glutamine before meals.
• Fenugreek (or Trigonella) has been shown clinically to reduce blood sugar and insulin swings as well as blood fats in diabetics. Their insulin sensitivity also improved, which satisfied their bodies' metabolic needs without excessive sugars and carbohydrates. Most of the relevant clinical trials averaged 25 gms. of fenugreek powder. [1]
• Chromium. Double-blind, placebo-controlled trials have proven that chromium significantly reduces sugar cravings. The studies used 400 to 600 micrograms/day. [2]
• DHA fish oil, B- complex, magnesium and zinc may also increase insulin sensitivity.

Not all of these need be used. It is important when quitting sugar to remember that your body is fighting as hard to overcome these cravings as a heroin addict feels during withdrawal or a smoker trying to quit. (Actually nicotine is the most addictive of the three, and aren't you glad you don't have to quit that)! This also means that the worst part will be the first 48 hours of abstinence. After that, it definitely gets better. The first two weeks will be a little less comfortable than afterward, but the reward for persisting is that after two weeks you will feel healthier in every way than you have ever felt. Those who quit extremely addictive substances say that it is more effective to affirm "I will not eat sugar today," rather than say, "I will never eat sugar again," which is too daunting. Just affirm each day that you will not have sugar that day, which breaks up your job into manageable pieces.

To get through moment-to-moment cravings, you can massage all of both ears, in order to cover the acupuncture points for addiction. Pay particular attention to the tragus, which is the small semi-circle cartilaginous flap of the ear that is toward the cheek. Also, take a few slow, deep breaths. Greater success is likely if you convince your entire household to take a sugar-free plunge with you. That way you can keep temptation out of your house, which is 90% of the battle. Finally, get involved in a new hobby or activity, preferably one that involves the hands, such as art, music, carpentry, gardening, etc. in order to help get through the first two days successfully.

[1] Gupta A. et al. "Effect of Trigonella foenum-graecum (fenugreek) seeds on glycaemic control and insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes mellitus: a double blind placebo-controlled study." J Assoc Physicians India 2001 Nov; 49:1057-61.

[2] 113 patient sample size, National Institutes of Mental Health New Drug Evaluation Unit. June 2, 2004.

nwnwnwnwnwnwnwnwnwnwnw

If you crave this...

Food cravings can seem strong enough to pick you up and carry you straight to the refrigerator or convenience store independent of your will and better judgment. For many women, cravings are especially intense in the week or so before menstruation. But many men, older women, teens and children can have strong cravings too. Let's look at what is behind this intense force. Naturopathic physician Tori Hudson, ND, describes the condition as a mild malnutrition, certainly not with severe overt consequences as say scurvy or rickets. Rather, a great many people on the Standard American Diet (SAD in more ways than one) suffer from a milder malnutrition from eating only depleted, processed foods and not enough whole, nutrient-rich foods.

As a result, we end up craving the vitamins and especially minerals that we lack. But while your body may know that you are missing, say for example magnesium, your conscious mind is not aware of the flavor of magnesium. Instead, because of familiarity, you can reminisce and feel hungry for the flavor of chocolate, which is high in magnesium, and which has earned your fondness because it has supplied the magnesium you needed in the past. The chocolate that your conscious mind desires has its greatest ability to quench those cravings due to chocolate's high magnesium content. Of course, the sugar in commercially prepared chocolate is another desperate need of the body when you have ridden the sugar-insulin roller coaster long enough to plummet to the abyss of hypoglycemia. The food cravings of PMS are due to poor glucose tolerance brought on by diets that are high in refined carbohydrates. Refined sugars deplete the body's supplies of B-vitamins, chromium, magnesium, zinc and manganese, and the resulting deficiencies then manifest as cravings. What adds insult to injury here is that whole sugar cane is actually high in these minerals. In fact, of all known plants, the one with the highest known proportion of chromium is, of all things, sugar cane. Chromium is necessary for insulin function and to modulate blood sugar levels. The refining process strips out the minerals, so that the whole food, which nature put together so wisely, now becomes something that destroys our health, heaves our blood sugar and blood insulin into grotesque chaos, and leaves us craving what the refining process threw away.

This simply adds to the mountain of evidence that nature knew what she was doing when she made whole food. This is not to say that sugar cane or the minimally processed molasses should be consumed. The torture of the huge sugar-insulin assault on your pancreas, liver and brain is really not worth the minerals gained from eating it. Those minerals are available from healthier sources. The bottom line is: the way to win the eating game is to choose the healthiest foods possible in the widest variety available, with respect to your metabolic type. The following table gives the best food options for overcoming various cravings.

nwnwnwnwnwnwnwnwnwnwnw

Write and let us know what you think ch@naturopathyworks.com

Visit us on the web at
www.naturopathyworks.com

nwnwnwnwnwnwnwnwnwnwnw