The Newsy Neighbbour Magazine
August Issue 118
Article Provided By: Derek Henry
http://healingthebody.ca/habits-that-will-cause-premature-ageing-disease-and-death/#gs.jEiEyW8
**Note: we looked up the difference between "Ageing" and "Aging" and apparently "Ageing" is actually correct in the British English that we Canadians use!
Raise your hand if you are a big fan of premature ageing, disease, and death.
Yeah, not so much, right?
Yet,
this is exactly what a massive amount of people are doing on a day to
day basis, some knowingly and some unwittingly. If you’re reading this
article right now, chances are you are interested in reversing the
ageing and disease process, and maybe adding a decade or two to your
life span through a healthy lifestyle.
Part
of that can be accomplished by either completely avoiding or
drastically limiting the following ten foods, behaviours, habits, and
toxins. For damage that has already been done, a highly nourishing and
cleansing diet (as found in the THRIVE online health program) will help remove toxic residues and feelings in potentially as little as 60 days.
Keep in mind this list could be much longer, but if you deal with these ten effectively, you are on the highway to health.
Dehydration
If
you want to find The Fountain of Youth, you should search no further
than good, clean water! Considering that the body is made up of
approximately 70% water, it makes perfect sense that dehydration will
create a pronounced ageing effect (often seen in the skin) and
accelerate the disease process. There’s a reason why you can only live a
few days without water.
Dr. Batmanghelidj, M.D. pointed out the significance of water in his popular book, Your Body’s Many Cries For Water.
Having studied the effects of water on the human body for over twenty
five years, he spent much of his life on educating people to properly
hydrate themselves to avoid premature disease and death.
Dr.
Batmanghelidj believed that chronic dehydration lead to many of today’s
illnesses, such as heart disease, asthma, hypertension, lupus, and
multiple sclerosis. He also pointed out that conditions such as
arthritis were a cry for help from a body that is suffering from chronic
dehydration:
“If
you have chronic pain in the spine, hands, or legs, that means those
joints are thirsting for water," he said. “You are not drinking enough
water. The pain is due to dehydrated joints, plus wear and tear, and the
inability of the cartilage to repair the damage."
Think
of water as the “grease” in your body that helps every simple function
work effectively, from your heart to your bowel movements. Without
proper hydration, these things can slow down and grind to an
uncomfortable stop.
It
is also important to remember that dehydration can influence your
cognitive abilities, and even mild levels can disrupt mood,
concentration, alertness, and short term memory. Nothing makes you feel
old like arthritic joints and a failing memory, so you can begin to
appreciate the importance of proper hydration.
Now,
the simplest way to fix this is not necessarily to drink more water,
but rather, drink BETTER water. If you consume tap water, poorly
filtered water, or water from plastic bottles, you are not being
properly hydrated. Furthermore, if you are drinking reverse osmosis or
distilled water without adding back in minerals, you are also
effectively dehydrating yourself (even though it is cleaner and better
than tap or most filtration systems).
It
is also important to note that to avoid dehydration you need to cut
back on dehydrating foods and beverages like bread, meat, coffee, and
alcohol. In combination with that, start eating more water dense fruits
and vegetables, preferably in their raw form.
To get the complete picture on water consumption and optimal sources of it, read Guide To Drinking Water.
Smoking
At
this point, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that smoking is a
major reason for accelerated ageing and disease. This comes mostly from
conventionally made cigarettes, but there is also a negative effect from
other smoking mediums.
So why is cigarette smoking so harmful to your ageing process and promotes untimely disease? Let me count the ways:
- Cigarettes are more than just tobacco. In fact, there are a ridiculous amount of other toxic ingredients that are sure to pull the life out of you. Some of these toxic substances include arsenic, methane, butane, cadmium (batteries), toluene, ammonia, and methanol (rocket fuel). Mix this in with a (un)healthy dose of carbon monoxide and nicotine, and there’s no wonder they call them “cancer sticks”.
- The carbon monoxide in cigarettes displaces oxygen in your body and your skin, and the nicotine reduces blood flow, which leaves your face dry and discoloured.
- Cigarette smoking depletes essential nutrients that are important for your vitality and your skin, including vitamin C which helps protect and repair skin damage.
- The cadmium in cigarettes is a well-known toxin that is particularly harmful to the kidneys. This may affect your urinary system, make you retain water, and promote bags and dark spots under your eyes.
- Smoking is a leading cause of cancer, including lung, throat, mouth, esophageal, and skin cancer. In a 2001 study, smokers are three times as likely to develop squamous cell carcinoma than non-smokers.
- Cigarette smoking is also extremely taxing to the thyroid, which is partly responsible for your energy, weight, hormonal balance, and metabolism. Decreased thyroid function can lower energy, make you more irritable, and cause your hair to thin and fall out.
- The nicotine in cigarettes damage the fibres and connective tissue in your skin, causing it to lose elasticity and strength.
- Smoking cigarettes can increase the risk of cataracts by 22% by putting oxidative stress on the lens of the eye.
- Cigarette smoke damages the delicate cilia lining the inner walls of your lungs and irritate them to the point that they produce excessive mucous. As this mucous builds, respiration suffers.
This is just a short list of how smoking can cause premature ageing, disease, and death. Ready to quit yet?
Alcohol
Alcohol
is very prevalent in our society, and is often the go to beverage of
choice in a wide variety of situations. In fact it is heavily consumed
in any celebration, or set back, and this categorizes the majority of
human’s moods on a day to day basis.
Although
there has been several studies showing the benefits of alcohol, the
drawbacks are more pronounced. Alcohol, after all, is a drug and with
one to many wobbly pops comes the slurring, irrational behaviour, lack
of balance, and headaches. This is certainly not the symptoms of a
healthy choice.
One
of the primary reasons alcohol causes premature ageing, disease, and
death is it’s effect on your liver. In order to metabolize alcohol, it
has to turn ethanol (alcohol) into acetate, and that doesn’t happen
without first converting ethanol into acetaldehyde. This compound is up
to 30 times more toxic than ethanol itself, so it has no place being in
the body. If your liver is not properly producing glutathione, a
compound that transforms acetaldehyde into acetate, the liver’s
detoxifying processes are put on hold while glutathione stores are
attempted to be built back up. This mean that the noxious acetaldehyde
in left circulating in your bloodstream.
If
your liver is compromised and your glutathione stores start to
deteriorate, regular consumption of alcohol (especially more than one
drink per hour) leads to more of this poisonous substance circulating in
your bloodstream. This not only hurts the liver, but every organ and
gland that is fed by your bloodstream. So effectively, this alcohol
consumption pollutes your entire body and compromises all your body’s
functions.
Nothing accelerates prematures ageing, disease, and death more than introducing poison into your bloodstream.
Sugar
This
one should be obvious to most health enthusiasts by now, as sugar has
been waging war on people’s health for decades. More specifically, white
refined sugar that is found in baked goods, highly processed foods, and
even “healthy” snacks.
If
there was on thing that has had the most detrimental effect on people’s
health and has created many chronic and degenerative diseases, it’s
sugar. Sugar feeds infections like candida and causes it to proliferate
to extremely unhealthy levels, which in turn cascades into multiple
disease processes. Sugar is also an excellent food source for cancer, an
epidemic that is now being diagnosed in approximately 50% of the
population in North America.
Refined
sugar consumption also suppresses brain derived neurotrophic factor, or
BDNF, a very important growth hormone for the brain. This factor
triggers new connections between neurons in the brain that are vital for
memory function. Studies have shown low BDNF levels in patients with
depression and schizophrenia, and the consumption of sugar could
exacerbate those conditions by further contributing to those low levels.
Chronic stress
Chronic
stress is a common complaint these days, as people attempt to keep up
with the pace of life. Unfortunately, this usually results in poor
work-life balance, bad eating habits, and an excess of legal drugs like
coffee and alcohol.
Stress
has a number of negative effects on the body, many of them which will
create premature ageing, disease, and death. One of the major components
that facilitate this process is elevated cortisol.
Cortisol
is an adrenal hormone (often called the stress hormone) and if it stays
abnormally high (such as in chronic stress conditions) it can become
dangerous and contribute to long term health problems. It has been
linked to adrenal fatigue, hormonal imbalances, heart disease, excessive
blood sugar levels, elevated cholesterol, excess body fat (particularly
around the midsection), and depressed sex hormone levels in both men
and women. Those with rheumatoid arthritis or other autoimmune
conditions have also been found to have high cortisol levels.
Nothing
makes a person feel old like being tired, moody, and achy, and high
cortisol from chronic stress is sure to create many of these symptoms.
Refined
sugar also increases inflammation, which can disrupt the digestive and
immune systems. If this inflammation is chronic, it can lead to a higher
risk of depression and schizophrenia. Dr. Ilardi, associate professor
of psychology at University of Kansas, encourages depressed patients to
remove refined sugar from their diets, and those who were willing to
comply reported significant improvements in mental clarity and mood.
Some
of the other common chronic diseases that sugar consumption promotes
include diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, obesity, arthritis, high
blood pressure, and even dementia.
To
help keep that ageing and disease process to a minimum, severely
restricting ALL added sugar is necessary. For those who are relatively
healthy, stick to whole fruits for your sweet cravings, and try to eat
them more seasonally. For those with candida overgrowth, cancer, or
diabetes, avoiding high sugar fruits would be prudent.
Highly processed fats
Most
everyone is familiar with processed foods and how they can create all
kinds of health problems. One of the many harmful ingredients commonly
found in these foods is highly processed fats.
There
are three processing techniques in particular that are a major cause of
concern, and those are extraction, hydrogenation, and homogenization.
In today’s extraction
processes, oils are processed in large factories by crushing the
oil-bearing seeds and heating them to 230-degrees Celsius. The oil is
then squeezed out under immense pressure (10-20 tons per inch), which
generates more heat. During this process the oils are also exposed to
damaging light and oxygen.
If
this weren’t bad enough, in order to extract the last 10 percent of the
oil from the crushed seeds, processors treat the pulp with solvents,
usually hexane. This solvent is then boiled off, but up to 100 ppm may
remain in the oil. Not only are these solvents toxic but they also
retain the pesticides sticking to the seeds and grains before the
processing even begins.
This
high-temperature processing causes the weak bonds of unsaturated fatty
acids to break apart, creating dangerous free radicals. To add insult to
injury, high temperatures and pressures destroy antioxidants such as
vitamin E, which protect the body from free radicals. To make matters
even worse, BHT and BHA are often added to these oils to replace the
natural preservatives that were destroyed by the heat.
With hydrogenation,
polyunsaturated trans fats that are normally liquid at room temperature
are turned into fats that are solid at room temperature. Prime examples
of this process are margarine and shortening.
To
make these oils, manufactures start with the cheapest oils on the
market, typically soy, corn, cottonseed, or canola (which are already
rancid from the extraction process) and mix them with tiny metal
particles like nickel oxide. The oil with this nickel catalyst are then
exposed to hydrogen gas in a high pressure, high temperature reactor.
Following that, soap-like emulsifiers and starch are squeezed into the
mixture for better consistency and it is then subjected to high
temperatures again to be steam-cleaned in order to remove its unpleasant
odor.
Finally,
since the margarine is now a very unappetizing grey color, bleach is
used to remove it. Dyes and strong flavors are then added to make it
look like butter, and it is then packaged and marketed to appear
healthy.
Finally, homogenization
is a process where the fat particles of cream are strained through tiny
pores under great pressure (4000 lbs. per square inch), which results
in the fat particles being so small they stay in suspension rather than
rising to the top. This makes the fat and cholesterol more vulnerable to
rancidity and oxidation, and research suggests that these homogenized
fats may contribute to heart disease.
As
a result of this process, certain proteins can bypass the digestive
process instead of being broken down for proper assimilation. Once in
the bloodstream, these unaltered proteins can trigger autoimmune
diseases like diabetes and multiple sclerosis.
This
should make it very clear that any highly processed oils that have
undergone these treatments should be avoided at all costs to prevent
premature ageing, disease, and even death.
Artificial sweeteners
Artificial
sweeteners such as Splenda, Equal, Sweet ‘N Low, sucralose, aspartame,
and most recently, AminoSweet are found in 6,000 products and consumed
by more than 250 million people (Americans consuming about half).
Artificial sweeteners can be found in found in sodas, yogurt, chewing
gum, cooking sauces, tabletop sweeteners, flavored water, cereal, and
sugar free products.
Aspartame
is a combination of chemicals, namely aspartic acid (an amino acid with
excitatory effects on brain cells), methanol, and phenylalanine, and
when broken down produces a compound that is a powerful
brain-tumor-causing chemical.
Aspartame consumption causes a variety of other symptoms including anxiety attacks, slurred speech, depression, and migraines.
Stay away from these toxic nightmares at all costs.
Low antioxidant diet
Antioxidants
have become a bit of a buzz word, but are legitimately a huge factor in
the rate we age and develop disease. Unfortunately, the foods that
contain these oxidation inhibiting substances are arguably the least
purchased of all the foods at the grocery store. Instead, low
antioxidants foods like processed grains, animal protein, and dairy
make up the lions share of food consumption, which severely limits
antioxidant intake and drives up the the ageing and disease process.
A
low antioxidant diet will facilitate many health issues, including
heart disease, cancer, and dementia. It will also inevitably make you
age much quicker, and facilitate other varieties of diseases.
To
get rich sources of antioxidants (foods high in things substances like
carotenoids, beta-carotene, lycopene, and vitamin C), you need to
consider a wide variety of fruits and vegetables (the brighter, the
better) like tomatoes, peppers, carrots, pumpkin seeds, sweet potatoes,
pomegranates, strawberries, kale, broccoli, grapes, and squash. The more
raw these foods are, the better! These types of high antioxidant foods
can provide skin, heart, eye, memory, mood, and immune system benefits.
For the highest antioxidant foods and the most benefits, consider:
- Goji berries
- Wild blueberries
- Dark chocolate
- Pecans
- Artichoke
- Elderberries
- Kidney beans
- Cranberries
- Blackberries
- Cilantro
Also, don’t forget about herbs which have high antioxidant levels as well! Ten of the best herbs for antioxidants include:
- Clove
- Cinnamon
- Oregano
- Turmeric
- Cocoa
- Cumin
- Parsley
- Basil
- Ginger
- Thyme
It’s easy to find these items in most grocery stores, just spend more time in the whole foods, no label section.
Prescriptions
With
100,000 deaths and 2 million injuries each year being caused by legal
prescription drugs in the United States, and with 1.5 million Americans
contracting cancer each year, eyebrows are now being seriously raised on
the risks of prescription medication.
In
fact, just a few years ago, according to a 10-year-long study,
accidental overdose deaths in New Mexico caused by prescription drugs
increased at a HIGHER RATE than those caused by illegal drugs – heroin
and cocaine. That’s alarming.
Actual
poisoning from prescription drugs has RISEN to become the
second-largest cause of unintentional deaths in the US, according to the
CDC. When did the increase really gain so much momentum? In its
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, researchers found that deaths
from prescription drugs nearly doubled in the US from 1999 to 2004. This
mortality data was collected from the National Vital Statistics System.
On
the alternative side of medicine, statistics from the U.S. National
Poison Data System have revealed, in a 174-page detailed report, that
the number of Americans actually killed in 2009 by vitamins, minerals,
amino acids or herbal supplements was exactly zero. On top of that, data
shows that not even one single death was caused by a dietary supplement
in the prior year of 2008. The annual report published in the journal
Clinical Toxicology shows zero deaths from taking any of the vitamins A,
B, C, D or E. That full report also states zero deaths from any other
vitamin.
With
these kinds of statistics, it’s clear what is the most dangerous habit
of all in causing premature death. So make a plan to eventually wean
yourself off these toxic medications, and start embracing REAL medicine
and a healthy lifestyle, like the THRIVE online health program.
Heavy metals
One
of the most common but often unnoticed reasons for health issues is due
to the accumulation of toxic heavy metals such as mercury, lead,
aluminum, arsenic, and cadmium.
Mercury is one of the worst and is well known as a neurotoxin that can be found in metal fillings, pollution, fish, and flu shots.
Lead
is also a big issue that people are exposed to through lead-based
paint, water, batteries, rubber products, and more. Some symptoms
related to lead toxicity include brain dysfunction, hypertension, and
kidney disease.
Aluminum
is another sinister heavy metal that you can find in antiperspirant,
water, cookware, foil, over the counter drugs, baking powders, and table
salt. It can cause illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis,
nervousness, anemia, headaches, forgetfulness, speech disturbances, and
decreased liver and kidney function.
Arsenic
is mainly found in pesticides, hazardous waste sites, water, and
factory farmed chicken! It has been linked to cancer of the bladder,
lungs, skin, kidneys, liver, and prostate.
Cadmium
can be found in food, water, industrial pollution, and cigarette smoke.
Long term exposure to low levels can contribute to cancer, kidney
disease, lung damage, and fragile bones.
Unfortunately,
all of these heavy metals are known to accumulate and are very
difficult to remove from the body. This makes avoidance of these
exposure areas vitally important in order to avoid premature ageing,
disease, and death.
There
are certainly more perpetrators on this list of things that can cause
premature ageing, disease, and death, and some of the notables include
glyphosate, GMO foods, and conventionally produced animal products. It
can be intimidating at first on knowing where to start so you can avoid
accelerating these processes and living a higher quality of life, but if
you truly want to be informed and start to live the lifestyle that
largely avoids these threats, look closely into the THRIVE online health program.
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