Healthy eating as therapy
Eating healthy is the best therapy to stay healthy and prevent disease and premature death.
We mostly learn about nutrition through health industry advertising, and through the problems in industrial agriculture and animal husbandry.
Choosing the right food
Sugar
The health and nutrition industry puts a one-sided emphasis on how much one eats (‘too many calories!’) rather than its quality (the right food). Vegetables and whole grains, for example, contain as many calories as refined sugars. But their effect on health, as we know, is completely different.
You know sugar best as the snow-white lumps from Tienen that end up in your coffee. The general term for sugars are carbohydrates. Important in healthy sugars are their glycaemic index (how fast sugars raise glucose levels in the blood), their antioxidant activity (protects us from air pollution, inflammation, ageing,...) and the corresponding nutrients (vitamins, minerals,metals,...) they contain.
Types of sugars
Healthy or dangerous
Carbohydrates consist of chains of glucose, fructose and/or galactose. There are complex carbohydrates (in cereals, vegetables, potatoes, nuts,...) consisting mainly of chains of glucose exist and are not really sweet (!). Medium carbohydrates are chains of fructose, are weakly sweet and very important for our intestines. Short carbohydrates consist of chains of glucose , fructose and/or galactose. The latter are sweet in taste and fructose in particular is unhealthy.
Even more than the amount of sugar one consumes, it is the quality of the sugar that is important. A study of the Western refining process of cereals also makes this clear: each grain is stripped of its germ and bran until all that remains is an empty flour body, a literal white product: high glycaemic index, no nutrients or antioxidants, no fibre. You can eat this literal fried air in the form of white bread, brown bread, white rice, cakes and pastries, doughnuts, baguettes, sandwiches.
Sugar= energy source
Healthy eating as therapy
What is the importance of nutrients?
Our body works like a classic internal combustion engine.
With fuel in the form of glucose that provides the body with energy through combustion in our body cells. This also requires the listed nutrients (Vit B, magnesium, metals,...) that enable combustion after oxygen is added.
So what happens when sugars are refined? After refining, only the glucose remains, no nutrients. To burn, the missing nutrients are ‘stolen’ from our own bodies. So to join oxygen and glucose to enable the burning process in our body's cells. So eating refined sugars is also preying on one's own body.
There are still problems with refined sugars. Eating sugars with a high glycaemic index causes blood sugar spikes. This is partly stopped by beta glucans. These are certain fibres. By now, you had already understood that refining also removes these fibres from our diet. These spikes cause increased production of insulin by the pancreas which, after years of overuse of refined sugar, leads to depletion of the pancreas resulting in hyperglycaemia and hypoglycaemia. Little known (and often denied) is that not so much fat but mainly sugar is responsible for higher cholesterol in the blood. And that in the same vein, it is not salt but sugar that is the main cause of high blood pressure. This can also eventually lead to adrenal exhaustion.
Psychologists
Jan Schrans
Approval Numer: 641104942 jan.schrans@gmail.com
Sabine Vranken
Approval Number: 692109216 psysabinevranken@gmail.com
SCHRANS Jan
