Your home as a health center, what does that mean?

I will be writing a group of articles over the next several months that I believe (through much research) to be some of the most benificial things to improve you and your families health and wellness.

Gods word gives us a wealth of information on living a healthy life. God constantly reminded His people to pass down to the next generation all that He has done. Health and wellness was included, but we have not done a good job passing this knowledge down. Therefore, we have lost alot of wisdom in healthy living and many other areas as well.

The first subject I would like to talk about is a big one. This happens to be something that really needs to be limited. When some of you hear what it is you might instantly say,“I cant stop using that.” I would like to challenge you to read on. There is hope and it can be conquered. By eliminating this one thing, you will notice a substancial change in you and your families’ health.

A very familiar word to us is sugar. We all love it in some form and most are addicted to it. I could write pages and pages of information on the subject of sugar and our diets. I will only be hitting some of the key points and hope that this will encourage you to look deeper into this subject. Sugar is relativly new to civilization. Its wide spread use was not until the early 1900’s. (That is also when cancer and heart diseas skyrocketted.) The greeks ,who seem to have a word for everything,had no word for sugar. The Bible has no word for sugar as we know it today.

Why is it so bad for me? First , we eat it in excess. We now have a per year sugar intake of 175lb per man woman and child. The two reasons sugar is more dangerous than poison or narcotics is this:

1. It is considered a foood and eaten in massive quantities.
2. The effects of sugar start at a very young age either thru baby formula or even through the mothers milk, if the mother is on a high sugar intake diet. After the refining process is done sugar is a foriegn chemical to our bodies.
   
   Here are the main names refined sugar comes in, and a list of the effects on the human body.

All from medical journals.

Sugar
Sucrose
Dextrose
Corn suryup
High fructose corn suryup
Beet sugar
Raw sugar
Frutose (fructose is only natural when found in fresh fruits)
Molases
Turbinado
Sucanat
Florida crystals
Concentrated fruit juice
Rapadura
Malted grain syrups

h3. The Effects of Sugar on the Human Body

• Suppress the immune system (1 can of soda supresses immune response for 6hrs.)
• Interferes with absorbtion of calcium and magnesium Chromium and copper deficiencies Sugar can cause a rapid rise of adrenline, hyperactivity, anxiety, difficulty concentrating (All not good for homeschooling)
• Sugar can cause a rise intotal cholesterol and a decrease in good cholesterol
• Sugar feeds cancer cells and is connected to cyst, ovaries, prostate, rectum, pancreas, lung, gallbladder, and stomach cancer.
• Weakens eyesight. Sugar causes many problems with gastrointestinal tract
• Sugar can cause your saliva to become acidic, promoting tooth decay. Sugar can cause autoimmune diseases such as arthritis, asthma, multiple sclerosis. Sugar promotes the uncontroled growth of candida (yeast infection)
• Gallstones
• Hemorrhoids
• Diabetes
• Sugar lowers your vitamin e levels
• Sugar can cause toxemia during pregnancy
• Sugar lowers the ability of enzymes to function
• Sugar can cause food alergies
• Sugar can interfear with protien absorption
• Sugar can effect learning capacity
• Increased risk of alzheimers disease
  
  These are but a few of the things in our body that sugar negatively effects. The list goes on and on. You might be asking is there any good news? The good news is we can still enjoy sweets by learning how to use natural sweetners.

This is a list of good sweetners.

• Raw Honey (in moderation)
• Stevia (does not raise blood sugar at all, but can be hard to bake with)
• Date Sugar
• Dehydrated Cane Juice (in moderation) It still has minerals intack and is absorbed slower than processed sugar.
• Maple Syrup (grade b in moderation)

In our family stevia is the primary sweetner. It has taken some practice learning what kind and how much to use. The brand that we like we use is KAL. I will be giving recipes using stevia in a later post. I believe if you could do only one thing, to better your overall health, it would be to get off of sugar.

Todd Vincent

Posted by Chris Hogan on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 at 13:39 PM