It seems I began a journey I didn't even know I was on, in the Spring of 2009. After a 25 year career in the Health and Fitness Industry, a consistent exerciser myself and a vegetarian diet, I believed I was following the path of a long, disease-free life. Symptoms began to creep into my life and it was my awareness of my body that made me pay attention. No one would have considered these symptoms anything abnormal and for a 48 year old woman, would have called them "expected". I knew my body was crying for help and I was deficient in some aspect of my lifestyle.

I began reading everything I could get my hands on pertaining to this phase of aging. Approaching this from a holistic view, patterns began to emerge. I researched the reading list required when studying to become a Nutritional Therapist and the first book I read changed my life. Nora Gedgaudas, in her book "Primal Body-Primal Mind" put all the pieces of the puzzle together. This prompted me to have my cholesterol levels checked even though cholesterol is only an indicator and not a diagnosis of disease. Our misconception of the role of cholesterol in our bodies has us very misguided in our quest for health but is making the pharmaceutical companies very rich. After 20 years on a low-fat, low cholesterol, vegetarian diet, my cholesterol numbers came back in the abnormal range. Particularly shocking, was my HDL's (the supposedly "good" cholesterol) was a low number of 26 (for woman, it should be above 35). Here I was following the ever popular media of the correct way to maintain health and the indicators were pointing to a failure of that goal. Nora Gedgaudas showed me the fallacy of this belief system.

The deficiencies of a vegetarian diet, along with years of strenuous exercise, were leading me to deficiencies in Vitamin B-12, Folic acid, Vitamin D, Zinc and Vitamin C.  It first showed up in my endocrine (these are the messengers of the body directing every function it performs) system but in digging deeper through blood work, showed the extent of the true path I was following. Some of the symptoms showing disruption in the body were:

Achy joints, "head rushes" or light headedness (I liked to blame this on living at 9400' elevation), dull headaches, night sweats (usually associated with menopause but also a symptom of a sluggish liver), dry eyes, insomnia.

Quite the list for someone who was eating from the USDA Food Pyramid (not based on scientific research but on supply of a food souce, particularly carbohydrates), NEVER eating fast food or drinking soda and junk food. I baked my own bread and all our food was made from scratch using organic ingredients with very little packaged foods. So what in the world could be causing the pesky symptoms?

It turns out that a low-fat diet and especially a vegetarian diet causes nutrient deficiencies that lead to organ damage is some form. It may not show up until the aging of our bodies can't repair the damage anymore but it is a life time of small deficiences that cause disease. It can be prevented or repaired USING THE RIGHT FOOD AS MEDICINE. The largest problem in the American diet is our sugar intake and I am not talking about the obvious sugar in candies and desserts. Sugar (in the form of high fructose corn syrup) is in just about all packaged foods in the supermarket. All grain products are broken down to sugar in our bodies and our bodies do not treat a candy bar or a potato any differently in the digestion process. Sugar is so damaging to the body that just about every so called "metabolic syndrome" can be traced back to this one substance that has permeated our food supply. It is no coincidence that diabeties is on the rise. Factory farmed animals are then fed an unnatural diet of grains (instead of their natural diet of grasses) which destoys nutrients like the much needed Omega-3, an essential fatty acids that humans MUST have. It wasn't just because I was lacking meat in my diet that Omega-3 was a problem because the majority of Americans are also lacking it. This is due to the factory farming methods in the meat industry so if you are buying your meat products in a regular grocery store and it is not marked as 100% grass-fed, you, too, are lacking Omega-3's. This is just the tip of the iceburg. If I had followed the "standard medical system" with the above symptoms, I would have been given HRT (hormone replacement therapy) and a statin drug (cholesterol lowering medication) further complicating the underlying problem of a damaged liver! This book is a must read in reclaiming your health!

It takes a certain determination and willingness to take responsibility for one's own well-being. It takes a certain decision to take charge of discovering the answers for one's self. Sometimes (in keeping with human nature), it takes reaching the point where the pain of the problem is worse than the pain of the long-term solution, to arrive at a real lasting change. Health is a choice we all make and a responsibility we ourselves shoulder. No magic pill will ever take the place of a diet and lifestyle that honors our primal physiology. pg.233 Primal Body Primal Mind

Below are excepts from Sugar Blues the health bestseller.

If physicians a hundred thirty years ago had trouble accepting the radical notion that their own dirty hands spread unnecessary disease and suffering, it is a bit much to expect them to connect the whopping rise in sugar consumption with the whopping rise of new diseases.

Traditional Oriental Medicine has aways insisted the mind and body are not separate. What we call disease and illness are merely symptoms that the entire body is out of kilter. To make a man whole again, he has only to eat whole foods.

Obesity is not a disease. It is a symptom, a sign, a warning that your body is out of order. Many overweight people are undernourished. Eating less can aggravate this condition unless one is concerned with the quality of the food instead of the quantity.

The simple but long (4-5 hours) glucose tolerance test should be a part of ALL initial medical tests especially for all kids with apparent issues; ie:obesity. Then we can avoid shit like this:

GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of antidepressant drugs (Paxil) is being sued by the State of New York for fraud. What's the accusation? The drug company withheld the results of negative studies and distorted study data in order to get the drug prescribed to children.

In 1940, Dr. John Tintera suggests "it is ridiculous to talk of kinds of allergies when there is but one kind, which is adrenal glands impaired... by sugar. Allergists had a great racket going for themselves... until someone says's "none of this matters, take them off sugar, and keep them off it."

The only thing ailing most people is the result of consuming sugar!

In 1924, a year after the discoverer of Insulin was awarded a Nobel Prize a professor of medicine discovered the cure for low blood glucose or hyperinsulinism (also commonly and misleadingly called low blood sugar). Patients must give up refined sugar, candy, coffee, and soft drinks. These items had caused the troubles... it was a do-it-yourself proposition and the disease establishment would not have it!

"... ever food contains varing amounts of substances from which the body benefits...". If that statement is accepted as accurate, it follows that sugar is not a food.

In 1973, a U.S. senate committee used the word antinutrient to describe sugar.

The most manufactured drug and principal food of mankind for only a few hundred years... sugar.

Combining a sandwich with a soda is enough to turn your stomach into a still.

"Why must we accept as normal what we find in a race of sick and weakened human beings?" Dr Herbert M. Shelton asks. "Must we always take it for granted that the present eating practices of civilized men are normal?"

Mixing proteins with sugar, broken down become non-usable substances.

The conscientious objector to sugar is alone, moving through the day like a drunk navigating a minefield.

In parenting today punishment means the cola, or candy, or cookie is taken away or withheld. On good behaviour should this poison be given back to them? ... or should our actions be questioned.

Sugar consumption is related to physical degeneration on a global scale...

95% of serotonin is produced in the human gut. Sugar disrupts the body's ability to produce serotonin, the brain and body's happy-feeling chemical. Today more and more people are being diagnosed with Depression. This is how some people manifest their sugar-caused disease, a reduced production of serotonin. When it becomes important enough for you to find out the cause of your disease demand a glucose tolerance test first before accepting any drug...OR the do-it-yourself method is to stop all sugar consumption for a year.  Being sugar-free for a few weeks alone might blow you away... along with the symptoms of your disease.  You will be sugar-free and drug-free... and medical bill free.

Both coronary disease and diabetes have a common cause: white sugar and white flour. Are we, with our sugar industry programed eating habits, setting ourselves up for one of these conditions?

Sugar depresses the immune system, hinders calcium and magnesium absorption, exhausts the body's chromium supplies, and causes the body to start stealing minerals from bones and teeth. Sugar stimulates the pancreas to produce insulin which is needed to metabolize sugar. The pancreas wears out from sugar consumption over load, and most likely, runs out of the minerals it needs to produce hormones, and diabetes is the result. We are now seeing an epidemic of obesity and diabetes in our nations' children. It is ironic that we are both obese and starving.

Nobody but us can stop ourselves from digging a grave with our teeth.

With the sweet taste of sugar comes it's bitter sweet ending. Sometimes sickly lasting a lifetime... until we kick it. Kick the sugar curse. Sorry to be sooo brutal. Learning sugars history and hidden/hard to find medical testing results from it's consumption blew us away.

Much of today's environmental degradation is out of our control. What goes in our mouth IS within our control. We personally can stop the food conglomerates from putting garbage in our food. This we need to celebrate! Research and practice creating your Sugar-Free Zone!

The Hidden Story of "Big Sugar"

If you are looking to be brought up to date:

"...gluttony and sloth are merely consequences of the true cause of the epidemic, Lustig says. Food was just as abundant before obesity’s ascendance. The problem is the increase in sugar consumption. Sugar drives both fat storage and makes the brain think it is hungry, setting up a “vicious cycle,” according to Robert Lustig, MD, a UCSF pediatric neuroendocrinologist.