Macular Degeneration Reduced by 43%

Macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in America. It affects more people than glaucoma and cataracts combined. But here’s the good news: By adding a few delicious foods to your diet, you can cut the risk of macular degeneration almost in half!
You may have heard about a bioflavonoid called lutein that protects the pigment in your eyes. Lutein protects the macular pigment in two ways: it absorbs harmful blue light from the sun’s rays, and it neutralizes harmful free radicals.
But how much lutein do you need? A study in the Journal of the American Medical set out to find out. The researchers in the study tracked people’s lutein consumption and then broke the group down into five equal groups, or quintiles.
They found that the people in the highest quintile were 43% less likely to develop macular degeneration.
Now here’s the best part: to eat as much lutein as the people in the highest quintile, all you need is a measly 6 grams of lutein a day. You can get that be eating a single serving of leafy greens. I use about 3 teaspoons of frozen blueberries in my old fashioned rolled oats. However, if you want more specifics, check out the following:
1 ounce of kale
1.5 ounces of collard greens
1.8 ounces of watercress
2 ounces of Swiss chard
2.1 ounces of raw chicory leaf
2.1 ounces of cooked spinach
2.4 ounces of mustard greens
3 ounces of beet greens
3.3 ounces of raw okra
3.35 ounces of red peppers
5.4 ounces of endive
6 ounces of celery (about 3 stalks)
The body is a complex and versatile electro-chemical mechanism. We only need to take what we already have and make the most of it. Educators would be well advised to do the same. My doctor once told me that I was a race horse and anyone who tried to change me into a turtle would kill me.
Picasso was a great artist, so why would he spend all of 16 years in our educational system wasting time on a recipe that attempts to make the same size fits all work on everyone. Take the cards dealt you and play the hand to its fullest potential. It works with health and education. Humans, in general, learn these important pieces of wisdom very slowly and in many cases — very reluctantly.

PH Balance For A Long, Healthy Life

Well, we know the numbers on cholesterol, blood pressure, triglycerides, BMI, weight and height, but what do we know about the numbers on balancing body chemistry?
God endowed us with balanced body chemistry, which if properly maintained provides us with a long, healthy life.
Unfortunately, doctors pay little or no attention to balancing body chemistry. If they did, it would unbalance their pocketbooks, because healthy people don’t spend much time in the waiting room, nor do they expect any human to solve all their problems in 15 minutes. The healthier we are, the longer we live, and the longer we stay in an acidic state, the more time we’ll spend trying to deal with serious health issues.
A healthy person is in acid/alkaline pH balance, slightly in favor of alkalinity.
If we are too acidic, we are unhealthy. And if we get totally acidic, we are dead and it's that simple! Dr. George W. Crile, a great surgeon, said, "There is no such thing as natural death. All deaths from so-called natural causes are merely the endpoint of progressive acid saturation."
Any form of poor health indicates a disturbed state of body chemistry balance — generally an acid state. In fact, over acidity is common to all health--robbing conditions. An infant is highly alkaline. An 80-year-old person is highly acidic. Death is 100% acidity.
What Are The Causes of Acidity?
Three big reasons: Stress, diet and dehydration. If you live and work in America, you’re overwhelmed with stress and stress is a BIG cause of increased acid production. As we age, we become more acid because we build up more acid waste. A poor diet is the principle cause. You’re probably eating 80% acid foods and only 20% alkaline foods, when just the opposite ratio is the one that will help you stay healthy.
Commercially processed foods are very acid and most people live on processed foods. Beef, pork, fish, turkey, chicken, pasta, hamburgers, hot dogs, ice cream, cheese, bread, butter, cookies, crackers, eggs, rice and cereals…just to name a few…All are acid favorites! We need to seek out alkaline-forming foods, which are primarily fruits and vegetables. Our current diet craze is the perfect host environment for harmful pathogens to thrive.
How Can We Determine Our PH Balance?
The relationship between acid and alkaline is scientifically quantified on a scale of 0 to 14 known as PH. On this scale, 7 is neutral. Below 7 is acid and above 7 is alkaline. The ideal ranges is between 7.35 and 7.45 with most of us falling in the acid range of 6.2 to 6.4.
Seven out of 10 people are chronically dehydrated—which means they suffer from dehydration fatigue, sluggish metabolism and an urge to eat all the time because the thirst mechanism is so weak that it’s often mistaken for hunger.
We age in direct proportion to how acid our diet is. The good news is that an acid body can be reversed. All one needs is a simple-do-it-yourself test and alkaline drinking water. Every man, woman and child should have an acid/alkaline balance of +/-7.4.
All drugs accumulate as acid waste in the body. Most people with high blood pressure are overly acid. But since the alkaline or higher PH blood contains excess oxygen, the heart doesn’t have to work as hard.
Soft drinks are the root cause for high acidity in our youngsters. Sugar grabs oxygen with the highest priority. The acid in soft drinks has an average PH of 2.5. That much acid will dissolve anything. Younger people are becoming highly acidic and are developing more and more adult health problems due in part to their high intake of soft drinks.
By drinking alkaline water, we restore oxygen, not in the form of O2, but in the form of OH, which is very stable because it’s mated with positively ionized alkaline minerals, which detoxify poisonous acid waste.
All foods are "burned" or digested in the body and leave behind an ash that can be neutral, acid or alkaline depending on the mineral composition of the food. When your body burns an alkaline ash, you develop a strong immune function. On the other hand, acid-ash foods are linked to many of today’s health complaints. In other words, a healthy body is always slightly alkaline. When you alkalize your body, you oxygenate, detoxify, and energize your cells.
We’re not talking about stomach acid here, but the fluids and tissues of the body that comprise over 70% of what you are! Proper stomach acid of 2 to 4 must be maintained to properly digest and assimilate food. Stomach hydrochloric acid goes down with age, so supplementation is called for.
Commercial advertising has built a very profitable industry promoting antacids that destroy normal and absolutely essential stomach acid. It’s the perfect crime, because when the body gives a signal of acid indigestion, it does not come from over-acidity but under acidity. That is why a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar usually resolves the acid indigestion almost immediately.
Our body produces organic acids of fermentation when stomach acids are low, causing undigested foods to rot in the stomach, which of course causes symptoms of acid indigestion. Antacids help deplete an already low stomach acid. The deception is temporary relief, but the poor customers never understand cause and effect.

Sugar Addiction - A National Problem

Of all the animal species, the human race has a very high proclivity to sugar addiction and sugar dependence. Doctors will issue a bag full of prescription drugs and not once say, "avoid all sugar."
America’s latest epidemic is most certainly in direct relationship to sugar consumption. According to the U. S. Surgeon General, 61% of adult Americans are clinically overweight. Furthermore, being overweight is very often a precursor to more serious health problems: including death, says the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in an article titled, "The Glycemic Index."
The American Diabetes Association reports that 18.2 million Americans have serious blood sugar conditions. Shockingly, only about 13 million have been diagnosed while another 5.2 million are unaware that they are victims. Of those afflicted, seniors are at greatest risk.
Scientific evidence points to abnormally high levels of insulin in your blood (hyperinsulinemia) as a leading cause of today’s weight problem. What this means is that your pancreas is making too much insulin in an attempt to regulate your blood sugar.
What most people don’t realize is that insulin is the "master hormone" of our metabolism. It not only controls blood sugar levels and many other aspects of carbohydrate breakdown and storage, but it also directs much of the metabolism involving fat, protein and energy (calories).
Sugar and its Effects on You!
What is sugar? Sugar is any substance that has a glycemic index. Any food or substance that has a glycemic index can disturb insulin balance in the body. The glycemic index is simply a way to measure how quickly the body’s blood glucose levels rise in response to different foods. A food that has no effect on the body’s glucose level would have a glycemic index of zero while pure glucose has a glycemic index of 100. Higher glycemic foods cause a higher release of insulin because the pancreas is stimulated to metabolize the sudden surge of glucose into the blood.
People fighting their weight are constantly trying to cut down on their consumption of high glycemic foods and carbohydrates, yet all the while their weight worsens every year. One problem is that many foods induce excess insulin production, making it impossible to avoid meals that result in added pounds. High glycemic foods cause weight gain by causing the body to overproduce insulin.
There are many ways to disguise sugar or divert one’s attention from sugar. Most supermarket-manufactured foods are loaded with sugar, usually noted in small print. The big diverter, "low fat" or "no fat" is nearly always in bold or set out in a box or different color on the label. Manufacturers know that the public has been thoroughly programmed against fat consumption. So if they print "no fat," the customer is drawn to the product most often loaded with sugar.
Few people know this, but commercial food producers know that sugar in any form is addictive and that’s why sugar today goes beyond the old white sugar used for 200 years. Sugar and the manufacturing of sweeteners now is a science of its own. There are dozens of forms to feed the American addiction. Sugar is now not only used as a sweetener but as a filler to build volume in "food product." High fructose corn syrup is an example (an extremely sweet filler) that is widely used—and deadly to insulin imbalance. And what do you know about fillers? They are extremely cheap and a low-cost scheme of "food" production. Anything that tastes sweet is considered food in America.
But sweeteners are not the only insulin offenders. High carbohydrate diets are definitely associated with high levels of insulin in your blood. One saltine cracker will take the blood sugar to over 100. And in many people, one saltine cracker will cause blood sugar to skyrocket to 150 for a variety of reasons, not just the sugar in the cracker. This is extremely high when the ideal insulin level should be below 10.
The body’s overproduction of insulin is likely to cause constant hunger, which can lead to a vicious cycle of overeating, causing more and more weight gain, and thus higher amounts of insulin secretion by the pancreas. The effects of eating high glycemic foods and the subsequent hunger and weight gain can quickly lead you down the road to poor health.
Paying attention to what you put in your mouth will have a profound effect on your body’s blood sugar levels.
Pay attention to the glycemic index of the foods you eat and try to stay away from sugar as much as you can.
It is time for people to become more aggressive toward their healthcare providers. Insist on copies of all "blood tests" by preparing in advance a release of your test-results to you first and then include the names, addresses, fax numbers and phone numbers of all the doctors involved in your health care. Your primary-care physician, your cardiologist, your nutritionist and any other person you trust to give you feedback. Reading blood test results is not rocket-science. The norms are indicated on the report and simple letters: H for high, and L for low are there for you to use in questioning your healthcare specialists at your next appointment.
Put together a notebook of plastic sheet protectors and accumulate information on your health tests. Your doctor may die or purge your records, but you will need this information for the rest of your life and for the future generations of your family tree. We can no longer trust the government, the FDA, the AMA or our physicians to be candid with us–regarding our health.
Money and possessions, power and affluence are far greater incentives than trying to improve the health of the general public. Doctors need to research the most recent approaches to health problems. Integrative Medicine is necessary to change the dangerous environment Americans find themselves in. Fifteen minutes of HMO attention is not going to improve the fact that we are now in 25th place when it comes to longevity of all the industrialized nations of the world. We do not have the best health care only the most powerful military and the greediest Corporate Global Governance. Start today taking control of your records.

Ask your doctor for a copy of the report he sent to your insurance company and insist on his advice on improving your health without the easy route of just writing you a prescription.