Health advice to make you sick

Health advice to make you sick is a response to Zoe Sadler's article in Times Live.

First enjoy no cake or wine; and eat more kale. It is quite entertaining and worth a four-minute read. Alas this link has sunk below the waves, leaving just a few ripples; read on in any case.

Zoe outlines the dilemma faced by us all; wanting to enjoy a long and vigorous life without pain and pills but also the desire to indulge in the pleasures of the moment.

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To avoid a grisly early-death, apparently I need to join the plant and fitness brigade; yawn.

- Zoe Sadler

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Her pen delightfully goes on, perhaps cynically about how weekly sex might help fend off illness in a blissful marriage; do they exist, one might well ask?

Or should we rather indulge in binge-watching of romantic comedies?

Two little phrases did worry me a little that she might actually be serious. That word yawn; and that the healthy life is absolutely boring and puritanical.

Zoe bemoans the fact that every time she eats nice food, she experiences a cascade of self-recrimination, regret and fear.

My own thoughts are that Zoe underestimates the power of the mind to alter the sweet desires of the tongue. To cast us as victims of our lusts, helplessly unable to fend for ourselves is just not the whole truth.

But it is a rocky-road that we all walk; the temptations to indulge in Pinocchio's Pleasureland lie at every corner.

Pain

Re-educating the tongue came slowly for me.

Perhaps too slowly; having a dislike for pain got me started on the health kick. That meant back exercises, walking and making a start with the foods that help prevent inflammation.

These are now our 10 top anti-inflammatory foods.

But slow and sure is perhaps better; impetuously turning over a new-leaf at the start of each year, lasting rarely more than a week or two has zero benefit.

Metastatic disease

Watching those around me suffering the indignity of breast amputation, the impotence of prostate treatment and the surgical intervention required after many long-hours spent lounging about in the sun brought home to me that metastatic disease doesn't only happen to others. I too was in the firing line and would become sick if I refused to consider health advice.

So we bought a wheat mill and started baking our own bread every day using 100-percent wholemeal, rich in lignans; they are the phyto-estrogens that help prevent breast tumours^[1]. Flaxseeds are another rich source.

Personally I feel that it is going to be many years before there is certainty about the association of GMO foods and Roundup with lymphoma; but having lost one family member to the disease, nearly two others and recently buried a dog with non-Hodgkin's disease, I am ready to look for the organic alternatives.

There is plenty of health advice, some undoubtedly wrong, to help keep us from getting sick. Is butter good or bad? We make our own choices; and live or die by them.

For so many medical conditions the treatment often seems worse than the disease; prevention no longer seems quite such a yawn.

Disability

As a DC I witness daily the ravages of obesity in those patients I am unable to convince of the necessity of getting those pounds off; it did not take me long to realise that the frustration that comes from the disability that prevents us from doing what we want to do, is even worse than the pain.

That soon placed a damper on the scoffing of cakes of former times; and refined carbs in general.

Suddenly becoming a sugar-shunning fitness nut was not so difficult; a good hat when out in the midday sun became an imperative. Like caffeine, half the researchers seem to be saying there are benefits from alcohol in moderation, so swilling a few pints of beer and necking a good wine has not at this stage come into question.

I wrote this some years ago; the pendulum has again swung. How much alcohol causes cancer?

Life without medication

Seeing the 7-day large pill box container at the breakfast table at the home of a friend caught my attention, especially when he started to complain about the side effects. Blood pressure medication made him cough and all his joints ache; and drastically lowered his sodium making him feel weak and trembly. A life without medication was a pipe dream for him.

Then came the discovery that I was pre-diabetic and would soon be jabbing myself four times a day with insulin if I did not cut the refined carbohydrate out of my diet; and take a walk after any meal rich in starch.

So far it is working; pricking my finger before a meal and three-times at 30 minute intervals thereafter revealed that for the present that medical advice was not making me sick but stronger. Two months later the A1_c was quite normal; change of lifestyle can be profound.

All these thoughts gradually had their effect; no cake, less wine and more kale began to look more attractive.

Kale and macular degeneration

A friend in her sixties who has for years eschewed her greens and smoked without concern, finds she now has advanced macular degeneration; the ultimate disabling disease.

Two phytochemicals, zeaxanthin and lutein that are found in our greens are in very high concentration in the macula of the eye; they absorbe the damaging high-frequency light.

Researchers have found that smoking together with a deficiency of these two phytochemicals greatly raises the chances of getting macular degeneration; it is estimated the at least five-million Americans are needlessly blind.

Guess what, Zoe; the richest source of lutein by far is kale. So I have re-educated my tongue so what may once have seemed like health advice to make you sick is no longer an issue.

But kale from the greengrocer generally is awful; so we plant it ourselves. Fresh young leaves like these from four different varieties are only to be had from your own garden.They grow like weeds; easy as pie, Zoe.

Peppers too are a good source of these phytochemicals.

Health advice to make you sick

Health advice to make you sick wonders whether Zoe writes tongue in cheek. Or is she serious?

The tongue is described in the Bible as a fire and a world of wickedness that sets great forests ablaze. Most of this, of course, is as an organ of speech used to flatter, mock and gossip.

But the tongue is also a sensory organ and equally vulnerable to the flattery of soft-baked chocolate chip cookies, cheesecake and colas.

So where are we, Zoe? You forgot to mention that the tongue can be retrained. It is perhaps in large measure a spiritual process, recognising that for the Christian anyway, the body is the temple of God, rather than any church or cathedral.

But equally having witnessed the effects of loss of well-being and the encroachment of pain and disability of those around us, we are not helpless victims at the mercy of our lustful tongues; they can be retrained.

Zoe bemoans boring and dull but virtuous kale. She has got a point; I have never seen it at the greengrocer where it would tempt me to purchase it and even less likely to pass my lips. But freshly-picked, young kale leaves have become a delight in our lives.

Likewise beans have been a horror in my life since being exposed to old, badly cooked favas as a child. For fifty years I eschewed them, until dished up a delightful plate of these fresh, young legumes, beautifully prepared; they are now my favourite legume along with chickpeas and limas.

Fresh food

For me personally it was the discovery of the taste of fresh-food that enabled me to start enjoying those vegetables like kale that others like Zoe find reprehensible; and usually that meant from the garden or at least a farmers' market. The time from harvest to the pot and plate was and is greatly reduced.

Health nut neurosis

Blessed are the balanced and there are not many of us around; except for you and me that is!

Overbearing health advice can certainly make you sick; by making you neurotic. A cascade of self-recrimination, regret and fear after enjoying a glass of wine, a bar of chocolate or a cookie does no one any good.

Orthorexia is a serious disease where we become overly concerned and anxious about our food; first cousin to anorexia. It is typified by those persons who refuse an invitation to dinner because of concerns about the fare; or insist on bringing their own nosh.

Take home

Some of the stuff typically fed to humans cannot in all honesty be called food. Take wheat or corn for example; we strip out the bran and germ, feeding them to the pigs; the remaining ultra-refined starch, we keep for our children to consume.

Cornflakes and a slice of white-toast for breakfast cannot in all honesty be described as food. No farmer would feed them to his animals.

Health advice to make you sick may greatly irritate you but these issues need to be addressed. Kale lightly cooked in a dressing with almonds is delicious.

• Kale and almonds salad
  

And secondly our tongues can be retrained to love whole, unrefined foods; thoughtful cooking and the healthy life in general certainly need not be boring and puritanical.

Even to the extent that a soft-baked cookie loses its appeal, though a bar of chocolate and a glass of beer still have their allure for me.

Facing squarely the understanding that these are spiritual issues finally enabled us to deal with the sugar-binge.

• How much sugar in the life of a Believer?
  

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