Over the Counter Natural Cures (27 page)

Some things are worth dying for. The MSG fat trap is not. If you want to control blood sugar, live thin and slim, or just avoid eating your body weight in beef, be alert to these common grocery-store fat traps. You might have to dedicate an extra twenty minutes to shopping. But after that, you'll never fall victim to them again.

4. EXPOSE YOUR BELLY TO SUNSHINE

Your body needs sun exposure. Get it! Contrary to what you've been told by the sunscreen pushers, sunshine isn't going to kill you. In fact, it can heal you. And that's why you need to do your best to habitually obtain sensible sun exposure.

Exposing 85 percent of your body to sunlight for twenty to forty-five minutes three to five times per week elicits the biological production of vitamin D and a neuropeptide known as MSH (melanocyte-stimulating hormone). Together, these compounds prevent fat storage, control appetite, and most importantly, normalize blood glucose and insulin levels.
¹³⁹
Fat loss is the result.

With the smallest hint of sun exposure, most people ridiculously and hastily rub themselves and their children with sunblock. You'd think that the sun was good for nothing except unleashing a caustic, death ray. Don't be fooled. Sunscreen will prevent you from receiving all of the benefits of sun exposure. If you're in the sun longer than an hour, you'll want to cover up with light clothing, not sunscreen.

Sun keeps you living young. And since sitting in the sun is easier than running on a treadmill, most people will be happy to indulge in this important health habit. Be warned: without sunshine, you'll feel bad, especially when you watch excess fat storage occur right before your eyes.

5. EXERCISE: THE MOST MISUNDERSTOOD HEALTH HABIT

It's lame that I need to remind people of this. The fifth and final habit you need is exercise. Nothing replaces it. What can I say about this habit that you don't already know? You know you need to do it. So do it. But maybe you don't know how or when. Let me help. You'll be surprised at how easy this can be.

Exercise is overrated. You don't have to do it daily, or even every other day. But, regardless of your physical condition, you must commit to doing it at least every two or three days. Sure, you could walk, sniff flowers, skip around the block, bounce on a physio-ball, or do some other silly activity and call it exercise. You might have fun. But it's not going to fulfill the goal of controlling blood sugar. To do this, you need to dedicate two or three days per week to fifteen to twenty-five minutes of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) with resistance bands or weights.

When exercising, you can wander the gym saying hi to friends, or stare at yourself or others in the mirror. Or you can get in, make it hurt, and get out. That's HIIT in a nutshell. It's simply harder exercise for a shorter duration. I've studied different HIIT programs and have learned how to modify them just a little bit to make HIIT more applicable to a larger number of people. Here's how to make it work for you.

Find your target heart rate.

 

For HIIT to be effective, you'll want to calculate 60 percent to 80 percent of your max heart rate (220 – Age) x 0.60 = 60 percent of your target heart rate. For someone who is thirty-five years old, the target heart rate is going to be 111 beats per minute.

 

Now, choose an exercise that best suits you. It could be lunges, squats, or the more difficult push-ups, sit-ups, or even pull-ups. Using resistance bands affords you tons of other options. After a light warm-up, recover and then start your exercise.

If you've chosen squats, begin by doing them while monitoring your heart rate. (A heart rate monitor really helps.) Once you hit 111 beats per minute, keep doing squats for fifteen to thirty seconds more. Rest, and then recover to your resting heart rate. Do it again five to ten times.
As time goes on, you'll see that you need to take part in more strenuous exercises (such as jump squats), reach a higher percentage of your target heart rate, and take shorter recovery times. This is evidence that it's working. Congrats.

This type of HIIT works because it completely alters the way your body responds to blood sugar. Without it, sugar remains in the blood-stream for too long. In an attempt to get it out, the pancreas releases mass amounts of the dreaded, fat-storing hormone insulin. As you know by now, this makes you fat. It also rids your body of the antiaging hormones testosterone and hGH (human growth hormone).

HIIT training protects you from this by decreasing your body's need for insulin. It lowers blood sugar, thanks to its ability to increase sensitivity to it. In the long run, this means less fat, along with the prevention of all the medical complications that go along with it—like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
¹⁴⁰

Since this type of HIIT is simple and requires very little equipment, you can do it anywhere. The benefits can stick with you for at least two full days, so do it at least every third day. This is really all you need. You won't be featured on the cover of any fitness magazines, and your friends might not notice any huge muscle gains. But if you do HIIT properly, you can control blood sugar to ensure that your supplements work harder for you. If you want some sexy lean muscle, exercise for thirty to forty-five minutes.

THE SILVER BULLET FOR LIVING YOUNG

The silver bullet for living young is controlling blood sugar. If that isn't kept in check, this book can't help you. Many hormonal systems that regulate appetite, mood, muscle growth, and even fertility are thrown out of whack by high blood sugar. There isn't a single supplement that
can save you. But, taking part in these simple habits can help guarantee that
Over-the-Counter Natural Cures
becomes more than a book for you. It can be a practical remedy to America's gaping nutrient deficiencies and overdose of symptom-masking drugs. Applying these habits, along with nutrient logic as outlined, can help anyone feel better in a matter of thirty days, inexpensively and safely!

 

 

 CHAPTER 12 

A senior chemist once told me:

 

Today's health professionals have a fragmented view of what it means to be healthy, and it's undermining everyone's health. Rather than being led by science—the observation of reproducible results—today's medicine is led by B.S. logic, which flies in the face of reason, common sense, biochemistry, and medicinal chemistry. With appalling conflicts of interest, direct-to-consumer advertising, and government lobbying, this logic has conned millions of doctors into pushing drugs as vitamins. Slowly but surely, prescriptions have become more deadly than the so-called diseases they are trying to fight.

 

As a young chemist working within the pharmaceutical industry, toiling over the design and synthesis of new medications, I was burdened with this paradox and chose to ignore it. I wanted to believe that prescription drugs could serve as the healing compounds they're
promoted to be and that my work and that of others was an asset to the health of millions.

But as time passed, the truth of the senior chemist's statement became irrefutable. Outside of emergency medicine, the mass use of prescription drugs as vitamins was undermining health and longevity, and Big Bucks were helping the paradox flourish. Trained as a chemist to identify health problems and solve them at the microscopic level, I set out to find a solution to the myriad health and financial problems caused by B.S. logic.

Grandma Joyce died prematurely from her prescription blood thinners. Charles passed away gruesomely, leaving his wife and three-year-old daughter because of a doctor-prescribed addiction to antianxiety meds. Little Jennifer left her parents, courtesy of a prescribed antibiotic. Millions of others have suffered unspeakable injury and loss of life while in the grips of the “fragmented view of what it means to be healthy.”

I thought about what these people deserved, rather than what they got—drugs being passed out like vitamins and the horrific loss of their dreams and lives. Not only did they deserve to have their stories told, but they also deserved the same things I teach my friends and family: simple ways to revitalize their health and live young that aren't risky and expensive. They deserved the same thing that saved millions of our ancestors from the ravages of scurvy, pellagra, beriberi, and rickets. They deserved nutrient logic.

Nutrient logic isn't alternative medicine. It's scientifically proven, evidence-based medicine supported by historical data as well as today's most advanced techniques of medicinal chemistry.

Nutrient logic isn't a newfangled, natural health revolution. Nutrient logic is the next obvious evolution of health. It's simply carrying on the tradition that fueled survival of the fittest centuries ago. And now, thanks to the convenience of Wal-Mart and other mass retailers, it's attainable for anyone who wants to save money and live healthy.

But since so few will profit from nutrient logic, you won't see it advertised during your favorite TV show, and your friendly family doctor won't be pushing it. It may even be ferociously attacked. Regardless, nutrient logic and the healthy lifestyle factors that go with it will always trump B.S. logic, no matter how much money it swindles from those who are conned by it.

 

 

www.overthecounternaturalcures.com

www.thepeopleschemist.com

www.twitter.com/peopleschemist

www.myspace.com/thepeopleschemist

www.wellnessbakeries.com

www.healinggourmet.com

www.uswellnessmeats.com

lpi.oregonstate.edu

www.cchr.com

www.thincs.org

www.thinktwice.com

www.health-heart.org/

www.hotzehwc.com

www.rsbell.com

www.durangonaturalmedicine.com

www.momsinthongs.net

 

 

Rogue chemist turned consumer health advocate, Shane “The People's Chemist” Ellison has a bachelor's degree in biology from Fort Lewis College and a master's degree in organic chemistry from Northern Arizona University. He is an award-winning scientist and has been quoted by
USA Today
,
OnFitness
,
Woman's World
,
Shape
,
Women's
Health
, and
Women's Day
.

Shane is the founder of www.ampmfatloss.com, which teaches people how to activate Hormone Intelligence Therapy (HIT) to easily and inexpensively lose fat, build muscle, and boost energy. His free, monthly column is read by more than 400,000 online readers. Sign up at www.ThePeoplesChemist.com.

 

 

Introduction

1. Dima Qato, et al. “Use of prescription and over-the-counter medications and dietary supplements among older adults in the United States.”
Journal of the
American Medical Association.
2008; 300(24): 2867–2878.

2. Eric D. Mintz, MD and Richard L. Guerrant, MD. “A lion in our village—the unconscionable tragedy of cholera in Africa.”
New England Journal of Medicine
. 2009; 360(11): 1060–1063.

3. Data from National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys I and III (1971–1974 and 1988–1994).

4. J. Lazarou, B. Pomeranz, and P. Corey. “Incidence of adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients.”
Journal of the American Medical Association
. 1998; 279: 1200–1205.

5. Preetha Anand, Chitra Sundaram, Sonia Jhurani, Ajaikumar B. Kunnumakkara, and Bharat B. Aggarwal. “Curcumin and cancer: An ‘old-age' disease with an ‘age-old' solution.”
Cancer Letters
. 2008; 267(1): 133–164.

6. Amy Ellis Nutt. “The End of Aging.”
Readers Digest
. November 2003, 70.

7. Janene M. Rigelsky and Burgunda V. Sweet. “Hawthorn: pharmacology and therapeutic uses.”
American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy
. 2002; 59(5): 417–422.

 

Chapter 1

8. W. Watt Gibbs. “Roots of cancer.”
Scientific American.
July 2003.