Stevia: Having Our Cake and Eating it Too?

© 2009 Nancy Appleton PhD and G.N. Jacobs

www.nancyappleton.com

We are always asked about sweeteners since we really don’t like sugar. Our answer is always we give limited support to Stevia and nothing else. We tell people who are healthy and still can walk away from the hot fudge sundae that Stevia is much better for you than sugar, fructose, high fructose corn syrup and the whole list of sugar alcohols and products of “Better Living Through Chemistry” that appear as multicolored packets on the restaurant table. We tell sick or addicted people to break the active phase of their sugar addiction and heal awhile before switching to Stevia.

Stevia, a plant-extract originally from Central and South America has been used as a sweetener for several centuries. It has been described alternately as either 30 or 300 times as sweet as sugar. Stevia has slowly gained popularity as an alternative to sugar, even though it wasn’t marketed, until recently, in the U.S. as a sweetener, but a dietary supplement. We can thank the FDA for this bit of Orwellian Newspeak. A food or drug is either safe or it is not.

As of September 2009, the Food and Drug Administration has given support to two Stevia products, Truvia and Purevia, for use as a sweetener in sodas and other drinks. Approval of Stevia as a food sweetener is still pending, but once the camel’s nose is in the tent things will happen automatically. What changed for a government organization that used a 1985 study that described Stevia as a mutagenic agent in the liver (possibly carcinogenic)?

Apparently, Coca-Cola and other large manufacturers of drinks and sodas have twisted some arms of the regulators, because as more people grasp Sugar Bad, Stevia Good Big Soda needs to give the people soda that appears healthy to keep up sales. Trust a corporation to turn something potentially helpful in moderation into something you still shouldn’t consume.

We will point to the “Hard Facts About Soft Drinks” chapter in our latest book, Suicide by Sugar to inform the reader that no soda is safe to drink. The primary culprit after sugar: phosphoric acid. Putting that much phosphorus into your body does as much damage to the Calcium-Phosphorus ratio as we have always said from the beginning of Dr. Appleton’s career. We also described phosphoric acid as an industrial solvent possibly able to clean toilets and kill insects.

Once the soda and juice manufacturers get their products into the marketplace, eventually Truvia will also be stuffed into the rainbow of packets on the table at our favorite eateries. Presently, that rainbow includes White (sugar or sucrose), Blue (aspartame), Pink (saccharin) and Yellow (sucralose). For purely, aesthetic reasons may we suggest Green for Truvia?

However, we will caution readers against these packs because we suspect that the Stevia in the Truvia packs will be mixed with dextrose or maltodextrin as the first ingredient (largest amount) in each pack as is the case with the other colors in the bin. These are sugar derivatives that will adulterate whatever is good and useful about Stevia. Mixing good things with bad things only ruins the food value of the beneficial as we have said many times explaining why many people are allergic to wheat due to a lifetime association with sugar.

So what is so good about Stevia that we actually are cautiously optimistic about the eventual release of small bags of pure Stevia powder in the supermarket for use in baking, coffee, grapefruit and lemonade? Well, despite the ignominious beginning to Stevia as a sweetener, a study that had been described as being “able to classify distilled water as a mutagen” enough people have used the product that there are health studies that show benefits for many diseases.

A study published in 2000 gave stevioside (Stevia’s active ingredient) to 60 hypertension patients with a placebo group of 49. Results described as significant for reducing blood pressure supplemented similar animal studies.[i]

Stevia’s reputed limited effect on blood glucose naturally led to diabetes studies. A Denmark study took blood glucose readings from 12 type-2 diabetes patients before eating Stevia or cornstarch with their meals and a couple hours later. The Stevia group showed blood glucose levels at least 18-percent less than the starch group, leading to the possibility that diabetes patients have finally found the sweetener that will allow them to have their sweet cake and eat it too.[ii]

But, after the FDA has spent many years trying to keep Stevia out of the U.S. marketplace, we should ask if there are any side effects. A study conducted by the Burdock Group generally supports the safety of Stevia, finding no adverse effects in rats at the massive doses such studies use to determine carcinogenic or mutagen properties of foods.[iii]

And so we give Stevia qualified support because while almost no information has surfaced to say that this sweetener hurts people, we realize that the weak link in any health plan is the patient him or herself. Many of us are unlikely to moderate our consumption of Stevia because so far we just have to have ice cream, chocolate cake or soda. Too much of a good thing isn’t good. But, on the range of things that are sweet but not named sugar, Stevia is a great start.

 

 

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[i] Chan, P, et al “A Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled Study of the Effectiveness and Tolerability of Oral Stevioside in Human Hypertension” Br J Clin Pharmacol. 2000 September; 50(3): 215–220. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2125.2000.00260.x

[ii] Gregersen S, et al. “Antihyperglycemic Effects of  Stevioside in Type-2 Diabetic Subjects.” Metabolism 2004 Jan;53(1):73-76

[iii] Williams LD, Burdock GA “Genotoxicity Studies on a High-Purity Rebauside A Preparation.” Food Chem Toxicol. 2009 Aug;47(8):1831-1836

Perhaps Someone is Listening

© 2009 Nancy Appleton PhD and G.N. Jacobs

www.nancyappleton.com

Dr. Appleton has spent more than 35 years writing, lecturing and preaching, for a lack of a better word, this simple thought: our modern diet does more to harm us than bullets, car wrecks, falling from high places and possibly those scary viruses with names like Ebola Zaire combined will ever do. Mainstream medical opinion has not always been positive during that time. When she brought in Mr. Jacobs to manage the day to day aspects of her business, she admitted to being tired and despaired of why she couldn’t continue like one of her role models, Coco Chanel who ran her fashion and perfume empire well into her eighties.

“Coco Chanel was never beaten up by the medical establishment for thirty years,” Mr. Jacobs replied.

And now perhaps the wheel has turned. People begin to listen and we are still here spreading the word. The latest support comes from the backers of a new bill before the California Legislature concerning medical choices and informed consent. Assembly Bill 1478 is intended to provide accurate information about the risks and benefits to cardiac and diabetes patients in the State of California. The logic says that if people become aware that traditional therapies aren’t nearly as effective as diet, exercise and other lifestyle changes then people will opt out and try something with more hope of working. But, the patient needs to be informed.

Statistics cited by the bill’s backers are quite frightening:

• Approximately, 44,800 bypass surgeries are performed per year in California.
• Up to 5-percent die.
• Nearly 80-percent experience cognitive difficulties afterwards.
• Repeat bypass surgeries increase the fatal risk to between 15 and 20-percent.
• Nearly 131,400 angioplasties performed every year with a 25-percent failure rate.
• Costs to California: $48.36 billion per year or which $8.22 billion is paid directly by Medi-Cal.
• Two million Californians have diabetes.
• Diabetes costs California $36 billion per year of which $6.12 billon is paid by Medi-Cal.

The Authors of the bill listed Dr. Appleton’s book Lick the Sugar Habit as a primary “Must Read” sourcebook. But, perhaps the backers aren’t as aware of our continuing work in the nutrition field as we know more now.

We suspect that part of the problem is the medical approach of most doctors who have based much of their work on Louis Pasteur’s Germ Theories. In essence, doctors seek to whack disease with medicine instead of rooting out the causes. Dr. Appleton’s PhD thesis has been published, alternately titled The Curse of Louis Pasteur or Rethinking Pasteur’s Germ Theory.

The work continues in such works as Stopping Inflammation and Suicide by Sugar where further information about sugar and the related problem of inflammation are discussed in more detail. In Suicide by Sugar, the doctor discusses soft drinks and many other sugar-added drinks in detail. It may open your eyes.

Why is it important to include health choice and informed consent laws as part of the total healthcare plan for the country? Consider Congressman Mike Roger’s harsh comments on the cost of healthcare and healthcare reform.[i] While we won’t comment here about the Congressman’s apparent lack of concern for people who can’t pay for their own insurance, he does seem to understand that healthcare costs a lot of money.

Our position and that of the backers of AB 1478 is that prevention over allopathic intervention with drugs and surgery must be considered a viable treatment plan as part of overall healthcare reform. It will certainly reduce the costs of treatment and may make public option health insurance or whatever improvements come out of the political process cheaper to implement.

A home cooked meal of two hamburger patties, mashed potatoes, grilled onions and a salad compared to the same building block foods prepared differently and consumed at McDonalds probably represents at least 300-percent price differential in cost per meal. So does the price break at the register also represent a break when it comes to calculating healthcare costs? Dr. Appleton’s work certainly has always said so, but let’s hear from the supporters of AB 1478 and the position papers they used to justify this legislation.

Dr. Pamela Poppe, one of the experts tasked to defend AB 1478, presents many examples of the comparative ineffectiveness of many traditional treatments for many common diseases. A long-running study conducted by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn started with 24 patients in 1983, of which 18 were still on the program of a healthier diet in 2000, showed that the patients still on the program had no new cardiac events, while the six that left the program had 11, including one death.[ii]

Dr. Poppe continues to list examples for almost all of the main diseases that kill us and in many cases the results of the dietary approach are vastly superior to the drug and surgery approach. A 35-year study on multiple sclerosis patients found that over the time of the study a low-saturated fat diet prevented the disease progression to the tune of a 95-percent success rate.[iii] The traditional therapy shows that half of all patients are dead, in wheelchairs, or using walkers.[iv] Something is wrong.

These facts are but a small sample of how modern medicine hurts us more than helps us. We encourage you to venture to www.camedicalchoice.com for more information on health and the fight to include heart disease, diabetes and other diseases on the long list of things your doctor must tell you before starting treatment.

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[i] http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=G44NCvNDLfc

 

[ii] Esselstyn, CB Jr. “Updating a 12-year Experience With Arrest and Reversal Therapy for Coronary Heart Disease (An Overdue Requiem for Palliative Cardiology)” The Am J of Cardiology 1999 August 1; 84:339-341

[iii] Swank, RL, Dugan BB “Effect of Low Saturated Fat Diet in Early and Late Cases of Multiple Sclerosis” Lancet 1990;336:37-39

[iv] Munari, L, et al. “Therapy With Glatiramer Acetate for Multiple Sclerosis.” Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2004 (1):CD004678

Sweet Suicide Promo Video

Radio Show Announcements 10/4/09

Dr. Nancy Appleton will appear on the radio show Gab with the Gurus on Blog Talk Radio on 10/20/09. Connie Bennett (sugar shock) will interview Dr. Appleton at 2pm EST. Follow this link:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/GabWithTheGurus/2009/10/20/Can-Sugar-Kill-You-Slowly-Author-Nancy-Appleton-Tells-You-How

Radio Show Announcements 8/30/09

Doctor Appleton has appeared or will appear soon in radio interviews at the following links:

East West Health Clinic -

http://www.eastwesthealthclinic.com/RadioShow.php

My Thin Lifestyle – http://www.mythinlifestyle.com/interviews.php?guest=4&type=previous

1800 Chemist – www.1800chemist.com, click on Health Connection Radio, then Taped Broadcasts

thank you

Your Heart is Sweet Enough

© 2009 Nancy Appleton PhD and G.N. Jacobs

Authors of Suicide by Sugar

www.nancyappleton.com

http://nancyappletonbooks.wordpress.com

Perhaps, you’ve already read one of the many variations of recent statements on sugar from The American Heart Association? We at Nancy Appleton Books are very happy, so much so that we’ll take a moment to do the Snoopy Dance. On second thought, the dance looks stupid when real people do it.

So, what does the American Heart Association’s instructions that everyone should cut their added sugar intake by 70-percent mean beyond giving Doctor Appleton a moment where she gets to say I told you so sometime back in 1986? Well, that depends on your circumstances, because we think the Heart Association has picked a sugar threshold that is still well above what is best for optimal health, but also represents a vast improvement over how things are done now.

Data collected between 2001 and 2004 and cited in the statement put the average American’s sugar consumption at 22 teaspoons or 355 extra calories of sugar per day. Citing recent studies that generally link sugar to obesity, diabetes and heart disease, the association has decided that men on 2,200-calorie diets should cut their sugar intake to 9 teaspoons or 150 calories per day. Woman in similar actuarial brackets assumed to eat 1,800 calories per day are instructed to cut down to 6 teaspoons or 100 calories per day.

Just so you know, while these “official” recommendations may not be enough for some people to lose weight and become healthier, they do represent threats to the major producers of sugar in our modern diet. A soda manufacturer, for instance, will worry because the average cola tips the scale at 8-10 teaspoons or 130-150 calories. The heart association published statistics that break down our sugar usage to regular soda (33%), sugars and candy (16.1%), cakes, cookies and pie (12.9%), fruit drinks (9.7%), dairy desserts and milk products (8.6%) and other grain-based treats (5.8%).

Even with other categories of foods that deliver sugar to an unsuspecting populace not discussed in this breakdown, a reduction to 9 and 6 teaspoons respectively means many sugar producers may change their business model. We’ll discuss what the heart association left out in a later paragraph.

In her first book Lick the Sugar Habit, Dr. Appleton states that the human body needs only about 2 teaspoons of blood sugar (glucose) per day. Normal consumption of whole fruits, vegetables and grains will provide this amount of glucose without resort to any added sugar at all![i] So you see, 6 or 9 teaspoons of sugar versus 2 teaspoons still means that the heart association people have quite a ways to go before they get our full support.

We also have reason to wonder if the statement writers have based their sugar consumption numbers on statistics that underreport the real story. Statistics on sugar vary between reports depending on who is doing the test and how close they are to the U.S. Government, which until very recently thought nothing was wrong with sugar if you brushed your teeth. In 1989, the Berkley Wellness letter, estimated that sugar consumption in 1985 to be 133 pounds per year or 500 to 600 calories per day per person.[ii] We are already well above the numbers cited by the heart association statement written nearly twenty years later. We have in the years since raised yearly sugar consumption to well over 150 pounds per person per year.

One thing that we can completely agree on with the American Heart Association is the high degree to which soda delivers the most sugar to the most people. Their information says that soda represents a third of all sugar injected into the average diet. Our information may not exactly agree, but still says that we get too much sugar from soft drinks, lemonade, punch and whatever Tang is defined as. We devoted a whole chapter of Suicide by Sugar to soft drinks and other similar sugary drinks.

In 2005, the average American was estimated to drink 35.5 gallons of just regular soda, which when the other categories of sugary drinks are added in comes out to the equivalent of 637 cans of soda per person per year.[iii] We cited a statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics made in 2004 that said that all members should advocate for the removal of all sugary drinks from schools. The primary reason was to prevent obesity in children and to make sure that sugar didn’t replace healthy nutrients in children’s diets.[iv]

The Heart Association has come out for sugar reductions and we applaud. But, we find it interesting that the bulk of the recommendations fall against the easy culprits in our sweet diets: soda, ice cream, cake, pie, but not some others that may in the long run be more useful. We understand about birthday parties and the social reasons we eat sugar, even though we assume many people will act like addicts and lose the ability to say “no more today.” But, shouldn’t sugar reductions fall against all sugar producers equally?

As of this writing, Mr. Jacobs holds a Heinz ketchup bottle in his hands with this ingredient list: tomato concentrate, distilled vinegar, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, CORN SYRUP, salt, spice, onion powder, natural flavoring. He also pulled out a can of his generic brand chili where SUGAR and MODFIED CORN STARCH are listed together about in the middle of the list. So far, there is no call on the part of the Heart Association to question the sugar that is in regular processed food that doesn’t need to be there from the point of view of taste.

Mr. Jacobs admits to making compromises with some sugar-laden foods for convenience. He refuses to boil beans and simmer down meat and spices to make his own chili, a recipe that he was never taught, because he already spends too much time in the kitchen some days. He is trying to wean himself off of ketchup as a base for marinara sauce in favor of steamed tomatoes. He reports mixed results. But, these foods aren’t supposed to taste sweet; yet, we see sugar in all of its many names on the labels.

We would suggest to the Heart Association to take a look at the sugar in these processed foods and see if advocating for cans of chili without sugar added would help reduce sugar consumption without being so draconian about the obvious sugar sources. Yes, in a perfect world whole fruit with a tiny bit of cream for the lactose tolerant would replace the fudge sundae, but the short term comfort of these foods is very powerful.

Instead of denying the occasional fall off the wagon doesn’t it make more sense to start with foods that the sugar taste is practically overwhelmed by all the other spices as to be tasteless? Sugar is not a preservative and canned meat is vacuum-sealed, so preservation isn’t the reason for this practice. We hope it isn’t because sugar is addictive, another of our common rants.

Sugar upsets body chemistry and helps cause heart disease, diabetes, obesity and many other maladies. Doctor Appleton has said this for more than 30 years and we feel good that other health groups are now catching on. It is a good day.

www.nancyappleton.com

http://nancyappletonbooks.wordpress.com

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[i] Appleton, N. Lick the Sugar Habit. (New York: Avery Penguin Putnam, 1988) Pg 13.

[ii] University of California, Berkley Wellness Letter 6, No. 3 December 1989, pp 4-5

[iii] U.S. Department of Agriculture “Food Availabilty: Custom Queries.” www.ers.usda.gov/Data/FoodConsumption/FoodAvailQueriable.aspx

[iv] Taras, H.L., et al. “Policy Statement” Pediatrics. Jan 2004; 113; 1: 152-154.

Clear Eyes Without Cuts

© 2009 Nancy Appleton PhD and G.N. Jacobs

www.nancyappleton.com

http://nancyappletonbooks.wordpress.com

How does a non-surgical treatment for cataracts grab you? As we age, cataract-related eye problems will only become more numerous. Estimates published in 2003 said that 42-percent of all blindness cases worldwide are due to cataracts and that 28,000 new cases were reported daily. These estimates also said that 43-percent of ophthalmologist referrals for Medicare patients were for cataracts. In civilized countries, mainstream treatment says surgery, even though there is up to a 50-percent chance of a relapse within two years and up to a 2-percent chance of surgical complications. In the rest of the world without enough trained eye surgeons, treatment may only be a shrug. Apparently, we need a non-surgical treatment that may help prevent and reverse the formation of cataracts.

A cataract is an eye problem consisting of proteins that fail to respond to the body’s natural antioxidants to remove Free Radicals to deal with oxidative stress. The proteins turn brown and yellow in the lens and cloud up vision. This process occurs during glycation or glycosylation, which is the process of how excess sugar binds with protein. Sugar is supposed to bind with proteins using enzymes, but if the body gets too much sugar this process happens differently and many bad results follow from these Advanced Glycated End Products (AGE). Glycation and oxidative stress are paired stressors on the body and cataracts are one possible outcome.

So, if there are just enough reasons to avoid surgery how do we prevent cataracts? Of course, Dr. Appleton will find at least one study that directly says sugar helps cause cataracts. In a recent study conducted in Pakistan, the researchers found that higher fructose levels in the blood led to reduced antioxidants and created conditions that could predict cataract formation.[i]

However, even if a cataract patient stops with the sugar the condition can continue to get worse. What to do? Much research has centered on variations of the antioxidant L-carnosine in an eye drop solution. Eventually, trial and error settled on N-acetylcarnosine as being the best way to get the L-carnosine into the eye without it breaking down into histamines too soon, so that it can work to clear up the oxidative stress that clouds vision.[ii]

A 1-percent solution of NALC dropped into the eye at least twice a day fights with the Free Radicals in the lens by binding with the glycation products that would otherwise bind with various proteins in the lens. The makers of Con-C, one such NALC formula, report consistent results above 80-percent improvement for all classes of cataract patients, even those who had vision problems for more than 20 years all without side effects.[iii]

For most patients, it takes at least three months for the changes in the eyes to become noticeable as improved vision. Obviously, the reminder to consult a medical professional before starting any treatment applies here as well, but you now have some alternatives to discuss before you go under the knife. To be fair, Con-C shares the market with another similar formula called Brite Eyes. We presume an equal effectiveness.

www.nancyappleton.com

http://nancyappletonbooks.wordpress.com

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[i] Gul, A. et al. “Role of fructose concentration on cataractogenesis in senile diabetic and non-diabetic patients.” Graefes Arch Clin Exp Ophthalmol. 2009 Jun;247(6):809-14. Epub 2009 Feb 6.

[ii] Babizhayev MA, et al. “N-Acetylcarnosine and histidyl-hydrazide are potent agents for multitargeted ophthalmic therapy of senile cataracts and diabetic ocular complications.” J Drug Target. 2009 Jan;17(1):36-63.

[iii] Babizhayev MA, et al. “N-Acetylcarnosine sustained drug delivery eye drops to control the signs of ageless vision: Glare sensitivity, cataract amelioration and quality of vision currently available treatment for the challenging 50,000-patient population.” Clin Interv Aging. 2009;4(1):31-50. Epub 2009 May 14.

Sugar and the Mind

© 2009 Nancy Appleton PhD and G.N. Jacobs

www.nancyappleton.com

http://nancyappletonbooks.wordpress.com

Does sugar impair memory? According to rat studies conducted at Georgia State University, apparently so. Adult rats were given diets of either 0-percent or 60-percent fructose and ran through a water maze to test performance. The short version: the fructose impaired the rats’ ability to remember the location of the target platform.

First, all the rats were put into a maze sunk into a tank and set free to find a platform on which a lever or other device to get the rodents out of the water had been placed. Then, a few days later, the rats were put in the same maze only without the platform. The differences between the high fructose diet and the zero fructose diet were recorded.

“What we discovered is that the fructose diet doesn’t affect their ability to learn,” said Marise Parent, the head researcher. “But, they can’t seem to remember as well where the platform was when you take it away. They swam more randomly than rats fed a control diet.”[i]

The researchers didn’t find any effect on the first time trial and error learning process that enabled the rats to find the platform, just the ability to employ the abstract spatial memory that says, “the platform should be here based on yesterday’s results.” If a rat or person, for that matter, learns a task, but can’t prove they learned the task by reproducing it at some point in the future, is it really learning?

Other studies have indicated that sugar affects other aspects of the mind, which typically shows up in the classroom. The knowledge that bad diet and lower test scores have gone hand in hand has existed for some time.[ii] Some of the reasons why sugar consumption have an inverse relationship, sugar goes up and scores go down, may have to do with behavioral changes, which are also linked to sugar.

In our article 141 Reasons Why Sugar is Ruining Your Health, we have made statements that “sugar can cause hyperactivity, anxiety, inability to concentrate and crankiness in children.”[iii] We also said flat out that “sugar can cause juvenile delinquency in children.”[iv]

Apparently, a child will suffer a variety of mental effects in a high-sugar environment that will feed each on other. Decreased memory retention leads to lower scores leads to acting out behavior and so the chicken and egg cycle continues until someone changes the diet.

Our recommendation at this point is some form of a whole food diet to arrest the mental decline with sugar and the modern diet. Allergies play a part in this process. It’s quite simple: stop hurting your mind and you too will find your way through the maze.

www.nancyappleton.com

http://nancyappletonbooks.wordpress.com

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[i] Ross, AP, et. al. “A High Fructose Diet Impairs Spatial Memory in Male Rats” Neurobiol Learn Mem. 2009 Jun 12. [Epub ahead of print]

[ii] Fu M.L., et al. “Associatation Between Unhealthful Eating Patterns and Unfavorable Overall School Performance in Children.” J Am Diet Assoc. 2007;107(11): 1935-1942.

[iii] Goldman, L et al. “Behavioral Effects of Sucrose on Preschool Children.” J Abnorm Child Psy. 1986; 14(4): 565-577.

[iv] Schauss, A. Diet, Crime and Delinquency. (Berkley, CA: Parker House, 1981).

Eat Less, Live Longer

Nancy Appleton PhD and G.N. Jacobs

© 2009 Nancy Appleton Books

www.nancyappleton.com

http://nancyappletonbooks.wordpress.com

How many times did your mother tell you to eat up because kids living in a place you weren’t going to visit anyway were starving? How many times did you respond saying “why don’t you send this plate to Ethiopia?” Believe it or not, the child’s wish to not eat is sometimes more nutritionally appropriate than the mother’s position.

According to the results of a long-term rhesus monkey study from Wisconsin, modest reductions in daily calories can help primates live longer and healthier than on the normal diet. Over twenty years, the monkeys were divided into normal and reduced calorie diet groups. Apparently, 37-percent of the monkeys in the regular group had died of age-related conditions as opposed to 13-percent of the dieting group at the end of the study.

The researchers reduced the dieting monkeys’ calorie intake by 30-percent, but took steps to make sure that all necessary nutrients were still consumed. The calorie-cut monkeys didn’t just live longer they had approximately half the heart disease and cancerous tumors of the non-dieting group. Additionally, the rates of diabetes and brain atrophy, conditions associated with aging, were greatly reduced in the dieting group.[i]

We at Nancy Appleton Books applaud this research with both cheers and a “we told you so.” We have commented on food intake and other aspects of our diet making us fat, especially in our recent book Suicide by Sugar.

A sedentary lifestyle that goes from bed to work in front of a screen to entertainment in front of another screen and back to bed leads to lack of exercise, overeating and eating processed foods. The processed foods are high in sugars, especially fructose. Fructose has a way of making people feel still hungry[ii], which feeds a vicious cycle of eating more and more making people fat and unhealthy. Our position has always been to cut back on sugar and preservatives in favor of whole foods, which represents the kind of caloric reductions mentioned in the Wisconsin monkey study.

What the average person reading this article needs to know before applying a 30-percent daily calorie reduction to his or her life is what is in the monkey chow normally fed to the primates in captivity? Rhesus monkeys in the wild eat insects, fruit, worms, leaves and roots usually after exerting some energy to get the food. We have it directly from the Wisconsin researchers that the “animals ate a semi-purified, well-defined pelleted diet consisting of 15-percent protein (lactalbumin) 10-percent fat (corn oil) that also contains sucrose, corn starch, dextrin, cellulose and a vitamin and mineral mix. In addition each animal receives a piece of fresh fruit (~100 kcal) daily.”

At this point, we need to refer the reader to experiments conducted on cats by Francis Pottenger Jr. MD between 1932 and 1942 that show how the modern processed diet is in of itself a cause for alarm. Pottenger’s cats were given a diet of raw milk, cod liver and either raw meat or cooked meat. The cooked meat cats showed generations of abnormalities that left alone killed off the cat breeding after three generations and took four generations of a proper diet to heal in the cat offspring.[iii] While it is true that subsequent replication studies suggest a taurine deficiency more than cooking as the cause of the symptoms showed by Pottenger’s cats, which included heart disease, bad vision, lack of balance and wild variations in birth weight, there is some link between our diet and the symptoms we feel.[iv]

Pottenger’s cats apply to the monkey study in this way; the standard captive monkey diet already has a lot of fat, heart disease and other ailments built in. Making a 30-percent cut in this non-whole foods diet will help because a lot of sugar is being cut out and every little bit helps. More research is obviously needed to see if monkeys and humans would benefit as much from calorie reduction when they go on a diet of more whole foods than not, or if these primate studies just tell us to cut the sugar, excess carbohydrates, preservatives and other time bombs in our diet to achieve the same effect.

Another minor issue in applying the monkey study to our diet is the distressing fact that portion sizes in human meals keep increasing. Some food items, like chocolate chip cookies, increased 700-percent between 1982 and 2002.[v] We need to find out which year to use in setting an appropriate base meal size, because while any reduction from a high-calorie diet is an improvement it represents a false hope if the underlying average meal size continues to grow.

However, while there are holes left to fill concerning sugar and carbohydrates the first bit of research on overeating and longevity is in. Eating a little less without depriving yourself of nutrients will go a long way to extending your life and making you healthier. But, there are no magic pills for your health says Dr. David Finkelstein of the National Institute of Aging, a funding source for the Wisconsin study.

“Watch what you eat, keep your mind active, exercise and don’t get hit by a car,” Finkelstein says.

www.nancyappleton.com

http://nancyappletonbooks.wordpress.com

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[i] Coleman, RJ, Et. Al. “Caloric Restriction Delays Disease Onset and Mortality in Rhesus Monkeys” Science 325;(5937): 201-204.

[ii] Tannous, dit El Khoury D. et. al. “Variations in Postprandial Ghrelin Status Following Ingestion of High-Carbohydrate, High-Fat and High-Protein Meals in Males.” Annals of Nutritional Metabolism. 50(3): 260-9 Feb 2006.

[iii] Pottenger, F. M. Jr.  Pottenger’s Cats (1983, Price Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, La Mesa CA.).

[iv] Beyond Vegetarianism.  ”Lesson of the Pottenger’s Cats

Experiment: Cats are not Humans.”  http://www.beyondveg.com/tu-j-l/raw-cooked/raw-cooked-1h.shtml. Viewed  July 10, 2009.

[v] American Journal of Public Health. Feb 2002;92(2):247.

It Hurts Down There: Vulvodynia

Nancy Appleton PhD and G.N. Jacobs

© 2009 Nancy Appleton Books

www.nancyappleton.com

http://nancyappletonbooks.wordpress.com

Doctors just love giving medical conditions fancy names with Latin roots to make us tremble when they give the diagnosis. Vulvodynia is one such word. Derived from vulva (a key part of the female anatomy) and dynamo (an active, irrepressible machine or energy source), the word translates to plain English as the poor woman has a lot of chronic pain down there.

The condition typically presents with stinging, burning and/or itching sensations that can really zap a woman’s sense of wellbeing. If men put great store in their virility and testosterone production (see article), then vulvodynia is one female equivalent that results in less sex, depression, low self-esteem and a general hit to quality of life from not exercising or riding bikes to avoid the pain. One estimate says that 14 million women in the U.S. and up to 16-percent worldwide have this condition, which is not contagious, nor is it related in any way to sexually transmitted disease.

Is there a cure or treatment? Mainstream medicine has been slow to come up with a definitive answer.  In 2006, a researcher at the University of Michigan wrote an article that gives an overview of the symptoms and many treatments available once a woman is diagnosed with vulvodynia.

One condition of the diagnosis requires that a woman have the pain without the usual suspect – Candida Albicans (yeast infection) – being present. Doctors poke and swab and find nothing under the microscope. So, the article meanders through discussions of nerve sensitivity, cognitive behavior therapy and pelvic floor muscles. However, there are some interesting tidbits for the holistic minded in that several key phrases common to Dr. Appleton’s work popped up: inflammation, immune system, allergies and diet.[i]

The first question to ask is did this researcher overlook Candida as a cause simply because it couldn’t be found on a microscope slide? Can the yeast infection change form and continue to cause pain in women after the topical ointment has killed off the infection, which typically is found on the surface?

Obviously, we’re asking the question like a lawyer, we already knew the answer to be yes. According to Marjorie Crandall, vulvodynia is caused in many cases by a Candida infection seeping through tissues and cell membranes. The infection becomes dormant in terms of growth, but continues to irritate causing pain.[ii]

So if Candida can cause vulvodynia, what causes Candida? Again we knew the answer: allergies and sugar. We will refer to our article 141 Reasons Why Sugar is Ruining Your Health – Sugar assists the uncontrolled growth of Candida Albicans.[iii]

Dr. Crandall suggests that the treatments and prevention regime for Candida is what is required for vulvodynia only switching out the topical antifungal creams for a systemic antifungal taken orally to make sure the patient gets the yeast that has entered her vulva and vagina. She also notes that allergies play a role in the development of symptoms saying, “Some women notice that their symptoms worsen 12 to 72 hours after eating certain foods.”[iv]

Other researchers have noted a high correlation between yeast and other symptoms of allergies meaning that people who have one seem to have the other. A study from Brazil showed that 71-percent of the Candida group also had allergic rhinitis (classical nasal allergy symptoms like runny nose and watery eyes).[v]

Most information about Candida says that prevention includes a diet free of sugar, alcohol, coffee and refined carbohydrates along with removing anything that can change the woman’s hormone balance like birth control pills and antibiotics.[vi] For women who specifically have vulvodynia as opposed to regular Candida on the surface, further dietary recommendations include going on the Low Oxalate Diet originally indicated for kidney stones.

Foods to avoid completely on the Low Oxalate Diet: spinach, rhubarb, beets, strawberries, nuts, chocolate, tea, coffee, cola and wheat bran.

Foods to limit: White corn grits, wheat germ, whole-wheat flour, berries, concord grapes, red currants, Damson plums, citrus peels, tangerines, fruity deserts, baked beans in tomato sauce, peanut butter, tofu, sweet potatoes, vegetable soup without vegetables, beans, dark leafy greens (swiss chard, endive, escarole, parsley), eggplant, leeks, summer squash and draft beer.

Your health care professional will have the last word on what you should remove from your diet to heal vulvodynia or kidney stones for that matter.

We have talked about sugar and allergies as seemingly separate causes of vulvodynia, but Dr. Appleton has always asserted that allergies are also the result of too much sugar in the diet. The very first statement in 141 Reasons is sugar can suppress the immune system.[vii] Sugar depletes minerals that make hormones work and said hormones are part of the immune system’s proper functioning. An allergy is merely a precursor response that can later develop into whatever disease comes next, because the immune system fights off the food allergy instead of the rapidly growing Candida.

Sugar causes everything and vulvodynia is but one more example.

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[i] Reed, BD “Vulvodynia: Diagnosis and Management” Am Fam Physician 2006;73:1231-8, 1239.

[ii] Crandall, M “Allergic Predisposition and Recurrent Vulvovaginal Candidiasis” Journal of Advancement in Medicine, Spring 1991;4(1):21-38.

[iii] Crook, W. J. The Yeast Connection. (TN: Professional Books, 1984).

[iv] Crandall, M “Allergic Predisposition and Recurrent Vulvovaginal Candidiasis” Journal of Advancement in Medicine, Spring 1991;4(1):21-38.

[v] Moraes, PS “Recurrent Vaginal Candidiasis and Allergic rhinitis: A Common Association” Ann Allergy Asthma Immunol. 1998 Aug;81(2):165-9.

[vi] http://www.empowher.com/media/reference/vaginal-yeast-infection#prevention viewed July 9, 2009

[vii] Sanchez, A, et al. “Role of Sugars in Human Neutrophilic Phagocytosis.” Am J Clin Nutr. Nov 1973; 261: 1180-1184.