Ahh, December . . . I remember two years ago when I sat down to do this newsletter, I wrote a few remarks about counting blessings, staying positive, enjoying the holidays (or something to that effect). I think it is time for me to go back and reread my own good advice, so I can remember to slow down enough to "in joy" the season . . .
This month, we have an article from Dr. Force on taking care of ourselves this winter. His simple suggestions can help us through the dry winter months.
The next article is a reprint from "The Facts About Fats", by John Finnegan. This piece has some surprising information about margarine and hydrogenated fats/oils. This is timely information, during the holiday season, with our rich foods and extravagant eating. For an additional explanation of fats and oils, refer back to Stephanie Jenkins' article in our AHSJ May 2000 newsletter on "The Lasting Solution to Weight-Loss: Part II".
We, at Applied Health Solutions, would like to wish each of you a safe and "enjoyable" holiday season.
The following are common problems I see in the winter months.
Dry Skin
Not getting enough natural fats and oils in the diet will cause dry skin. If a deficiency in fats and oils is severe enough, there may be dry or brittle hair (maybe dandruff, too), weak nails that tend to split, and cracking of the skin on your hands and feet (especially heels).
Use more butter, whole fat foods, and natural oils (like olive oil) in your diet. Avoid margarine and foods that have hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils in them. You might add some flaxseed oil (made by Spectrum, 2-4 Tb/day), until things clear up. Dehydration may be the culprit too. Drink lots of water.
Dehydration
Often, with the weather being cooler, we do not drink enough water during the winter. Symptoms are headaches, fatigue, sore stiff muscles and joints, digestive problems (including constipation), and muscle spasms.
Knowing that you are getting enough water is easy: your urine will be essentially clear when you are drinking enough. Sometimes getting some salt is necessary. Use Celtic salt liberally in your diet.
Lung and Sinus Problems
These are due to more air pollution in the winter. Get vitamins A and C in your diet by eating more fruits and veggies. Fresh vegetable juices are wonderful (get a juicer; they are worth your good health).
Dr. Mark Force can be reached at:
7500 E. Pinnacle Peak Rd. Suite A-207
Scottsdale, AZ 85255
480-563-4256
The following article is an excerpt from the book
"The Facts About Fats", by John Finnegan, 1993.
Permission to reprint was given by:
Celestial Arts Publisher
PO Box 7123
Berkeley, CA 94707
Fred Rohe is a well-known figure in the natural foods movement and author of several books, including "The Zen of Running", "Dr. Kelley's Answer to Cancer", and "The Complete Book of Natural Foods". He operates an advertising agency called Organic Marketing and is a marketing consultant for the natural foods industry. What follows is an historic study on margarine, which he tells in his own words.
The Great Margarine Experiment
"Between 1965 and 1973, I owned a couple of natural food stores, one in San Francisco, California, and one in Palo Alto. One day, I was talking to a food technologist who shopped regularly in my San Francisco store, and he told me how he thought the term 'plastic food' must have originated. Some biochemist, he speculated, must have observed that, when looked at through a microscope, a hydrogenated fat molecule looks very much like a plastic molecule. Spontaneously, he or she coined the phrase.
"There was something in the conversation much more compelling to me than any notion he had about how the term originated. 'Well,' I asked, 'if it looks a lot like plastic, isn't it, in fact, a lot like plastic?"
'Yes,' he answered. 'Lipid chemists actually talk about plasticizing oils.'
"His answer made me think about what business I was in. I was selling a lot of margarine to people who were assuming, as I had, that it was real good. Should I just tell them about it, or should I take a more radical approach? I decided to discontinue selling margarine, as well as products containing vegetable shortening, margarine's cousin, and to perform a little experiment.
"It was a real layman's experiment, not the least bit technical. I put a cube of margarine (the kind I had been selling) on a saucer, and placed the saucer on a windowsill in the back room of my store. I reasoned that if I made it readily available, and if it were 'real' food, insects and microorganisms would invite themselves to the feast. Flies, ants and mold would be all over it, just as if it were butter. If nature treats margarine the way it would treat butter, I thought, it would be circumstantial evidence that margarine is really more like food than like plastic. Seeing such evidence, I could then sell margarine again.
"That cube of margarine became infamous. I left it sitting on the windowsill for about two years. In all that time, nobody ever saw an insect of any description go near it. Not one speck of mold ever grew on it. All that ever happened was that it . . . half-puddled down from the heat of the sun beating through the windowpane, and it got dusty - very dusty. A cube of margarine does not clean up very well. Finally, it started looking so revolting that I decided to terminate the experiment. For me, the experiment had not been foreshortened. I had reached the conclusion long before that margarine really is not food. It is really a form of edible plastic.
"Apart from the experiment, what brought me to that conclusion was learning about hydrogenation, the process of hardening vegetable oils so they can be made into margarine and vegetable shortening. No matter what kind of oil it is, hydrogenation ruins its nutritional value.
"To hydrogenate, natural oils are heated under pressure for six to eight hours at 248-410°F and reacted with hydrogen gas, using a metal-like nickel or copper as a catalyst. If this process is brought to completion, as in vegetable shortening, you have a partially hardened oil, as in most margarines . . .
"Nutritionally worse than saturated oils are the partially hardened oils produced by hydrogenation. This is due to the formation of 'trans' fatty acids. According to Bailey's Industrial Oil Guide, the percentage of fat that has been transformed into trans fatty acids in margarines ranges between 20 percent and 40 percent. [. . . Because of their unusual molecular structure, trans fatty acids disrupt normal metabolic functions; raise LDL cholesterol levels; lower HDL levels; and also interfere with the work of necessary essential fatty acids throughout the body.] . . .
"If an altered fat molecule takes the place of an essential fat molecule in your membrane structure, the result is that your membrane then has a faulty structure . . . Faulty structure causes a faulty function. Faulty membranes are just one of the many [abnormalities] incorporated into our natural defense systems by the altered molecules in our industrialized food supply.
"Hydrogenation, which until now has drawn so little attention, may turn out to be one of the very worst of the many nutritional insults introduced during the 20th century. In the 1990s, death from heart attacks is 35 times more frequent than it was in 1900.
"It would be foolish to suggest that hydrogenated fats are the sole cause of the contemporary epidemic of heart disease, but a little-known study undertaken in India suggests a major role played by altered fats, in this tragic state of affairs. It was reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1967, 20:462-75.
The study was performed by Dr. Malhotra, medical doctor for the Indian National Rail System. He found two population groups in India, one in the north, the other in the south. The northerners were meat eaters, and the main source of fat in their diets was 'ghee' (clarified butter). You might assume, therefore, that they had high cholesterol levels. You would be right.
"The southerners were vegetarians, with much lower cholesterol levels. Even so, they had 15 times the rate of heart disease compared to their northern neighbors. The major dietary difference, Dr. Malhotra found, was in the kind of fat the southerners used. They had abandoned the traditional use of ghee (real food), in favor of 'plastic food' (margarine and refined polyunsaturated vegetable oils).
"A follow-up study done 20 years later found that the Indians in north India are having many MI (heart attack) deaths. The British medical journal, 'The Lancet' on November 14, 1987, contained a letter from Bihari S. Raheja of Jasiok Hospital in Bombay. He wrote that MI (myocardial infarction) deaths in India have greatly increased as the polyunsaturated liquid vegetable fats, and the margarines made from them, have largely replaced ghee in the Indian diet.
"It seemed there were two reasons for the switch: one was that margarine was cheaper than ghee; the other was that doctors had been telling people that they would be healthier if they replaced the 'bad' saturated fat of ghee with the 'good' polyunsaturated fat of refined vegetable oil.
"I wish I could tell those Indians not to believe it, that the modern experiment of replacing natural foods with industrialized foodstuffs has proven to be a health disaster. Maybe they would get the point, if I could tell them [about my cube of margarine experiment, in the saucer on my windowsill] . . . "
