Enjoy this water – Courtesy of Phoenix Bodyworks Massage www.phoenixbodyworks.com

8.5 – 9.5 Drinking Water can help with the following:

• Help make the body more Alkaline
• Use less coffee and teas
• Cooking:
  • Rice and Pasta cook faster
  • Cut flowers last longer
  • Helps with intestinal problems
  • Helps with fibromyalgia
  • And more…

11.5 Alkaline water can be use in the following ways

• Cuts through grease without harsh chemicals
• Removes the oils on vegetables that hold many sprayed on chemical and pesticides
• Cleans jewelry – removes lotions and body oils
• Helps the emulsion oil/vinegar dressings
• Laundry
  • Fill spray bottle with a drop of dawn to remove stains
  • Ring around the collar
  • Add a liter to a quart to help whitens whites without using bleach
  • Burns – helps to heal burns
  • Cleans oils/pesticides from fruits and veggies
  • And more…

5.5 Slightly Acidic – Beauty Water can help with

• Help tones skin
• Helps reduce eczema and rashes
• Helps with seed germination
• Hair conditioner – reduces/removes tangles
• Good for bathing pets, especially show dogs
• And more…

2.5 Acidic water can be use in the following ways

• Skin
  • Use to kill bacteria on face, follow with 5.5
  • Also use on Rashes
  • Use on skin cancer – follow with 5.5
  • Use as a mouthwash to kill bacteria – follow with 8.5-9.5 water
  • Household cleaner
  • And more…

For more information go to www.purifyh2o4u.info

*Not meant to diagnosis or to be use lieu of medical treatment.

Each of the following sites have pretty much the same information on Acidosis.

Google Health: https://health.google.com/health/ref/Acidosis ,

Medline Plus: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001181.htm

WebMD:  http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/lactic-acid

There are many types of acidosis, each due to the body not able to process toxin out of the body. The causes are varied but many have one thing in common, dehydration. If you don’t have enough fluids in your system the lymphatic system, lungs, kidneys, liver and pores cannot remove the waste that is produced on a “normal” day. Once this process of being dehydrated starts it can snowball, sometimes quite quickly and can turn the body turns acidic. This is not irreversible is all cases and if your Doctor tells you it is, while I don’t want to disparage western medicine, I would suggest you seek a second and third opinions. There are many ways to treat things that western medicine does not always recognize as valid. One of the things I find amazing is, depending on where you live, your tap water is also acidic, which is not going to help you at all!!!

Here on the different type of acidosis – many, if not all can be treated by alkaline water.

• Types
  • Kidney disease (distal renal tubular acidosis and proximal renal tubular acidosis)
  • Poisoning by aspirin, ethylene glycol (found in antifreeze), or methanol
  • Lactic acidosis is a buildup of lactic acid. This can be caused by:
    • Alcohol
    • Cancer
    • Exercising vigorously for a very long time
    • Liver failure
    • Low blood sugar (hypoglycemia)
    • Medications such as salicylates
    • Prolonged lack of oxygen from shock, heart failure, or severe anemia
    • Seizures
  • Diabetic acidosis (also called diabetic ketoacidosis and DKA) develops when substances called ketone bodies (which are acidic) build up during uncontrolled diabetes.
  • Hyperchloremic acidosis results from excessive loss of sodium bicarbonate from the body, as can happen with severe diarrhea.
  • Respiratory acidosis develops when there is too much carbon dioxide (an acid) in the body. This type of acidosis is usually caused by a decreased ability to remove carbon dioxide from the body through effective breathing. Other names for respiratory acidosis are hypercapnic acidosis and carbon dioxide acidosis. Causes of respiratory acidosis include:
    • Chest deformities, such as kyphosis
    • Chest injuries
    • Chest muscle weakness
    • Chronic lung disease
    • Over-use of sedative drugs

Symptoms

1. hypoxia
2. diarrhea
3. fever
4. fatigue
5. nausea
6. frequent urination
7. constipation
8. weight loss

Drugs – These are used to treat acidosis, but may have secondary side effects!

1. regular insulin
2. metformin
3. sodium bicarbonate
4. aspirin
5. urea
6. acetaminophen
7. hydrocortisone
8. heparin

Dehydration: Dehydration means your body does not have as much water and fluids as it should. Dehydration can be caused by losing too much fluid, not drinking enough water or fluids, or both. Vomiting and diarrhea are common causes.

Infants and children are more susceptible to dehydration than adults because of their smaller body weights and higher turnover of water and electrolytes. The elderly and those with illnesses are also at higher risk.

Dehydration is classified as mild, moderate, or severe based on how much of the body’s fluid is lost or not replenished. When severe, dehydration is a life-threatening emergency.

• Symptoms: Dry or sticky mouth
• Low or no urine output; concentrated urine appears dark yellow
• Not producing tears
• Sunken eyes
• Markedly sunken fontanelles (the soft spot on the top of the head) in an infant
• Lethargic or comatose (with severe dehydration)

In addition to the symptoms of actual dehydration, you may also have vomiting, diarrhea, or the feeling that you “can’t keep anything down,” all of which could be causing the dehydration.

Read, Educate, Think!

After my last Article on the movie Food Inc, I start wondering how the food companies were labeling sugar on food packages. I also wonder why, ok maybe not a lot, they would do this. Here is the list I have found so far from http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/whattoeat/a/sugars.htm;

• Corn sweetener
• Corn syrup, or corn syrup solids
• Dehydrated Cane Juice
• Dextrin
• Dextrose
• Fructose
• Fruit juice concentrate
• Glucose
• High-fructose corn syrup
• Honey
• Invert sugar
• Lactose
• Maltodextrin
• Malt syrup
• Maltose
• Maple syrup
• Molasses
• Raw sugar
• Rice Syrup
• Saccharose
• Sorghum or sorghum syrup
• Sucrose
• Syrup
• Treacle
• Turbinado Sugar
• Xylose
• chicory
• inulin
• iso glucose
• glucose-fructose syrup
• fruit fructose

And to the body, who cares, SUGAR is Sugar that your body either had to process, use or store. If your body has no immediate need of the sugar your liver tries to store it to use later. If that can not happen, either because it already stored enough, or there is too much sugar in the system for the liver to store, then it is converted into fat. Yep, that bulge in the belly, especially for us middle age folks, is not all just from beer anymore. Its from the donuts, the mocha, the pasta, muffins and about any processed food you buy.

And we can not forget the “healthy” sugar, in the form of sugar alcohol such as maltitol and sorbitol and xylitol. These substances are lower on the Glycemic index so they have less impact on blood sugar level because they are not absorbed by the body. The problem here is that they have to go through the intestines and depending on how clean your intestines are, they may sit there and cause bloating. Let see where they come from,

Maltitol – comes from Seaweed

Sorbitol – comes from Corn syrup, nuf said.

Xylitol – Produced in plants and in humans in small quantities. Only one to inhibit bacterial growth in the mouth.

So what do you do with this information. Well, read this post, talk to a nutritionist, the one I use is Agnes Green. Any nutritionist can give you the pro and cons of sugar, in general and specially for you.

Read, Educate and Think

One of the interesting things that I learned was there is a veggie libel law that make it illegal to say anything disparaging against any food that could affect the sale of the food product. So much for free speech!!! So all this is my opinion, I only want people to educate themselves, think for themselves and make a choice.

There are so many things I want to say and discuss that I am having a hard time figuring out where to start. Do I start with the over processing of food, the fact that foods like processed corn, is an ingredient in many, many, many foods as a sweetener, under different names – High Fructose corn syrup is one which I have already written some about. Or the horrendous way, personal opinion – is that legal?,  that meat is raised, fed and slaughtered. It could also be the blind eye that the Government turns to the importing in of illegal immigrants, the abuse these immigrants endure, or the fact that they get punished for being in this country – illegally – but the corporations don’t get fined or closed (according to the movie Food, Inc).

One of the interesting points was that most food travels around 1500 miles from farm to table. So much for reducing greenhouse gases, decreasing the carbon footprint and supporting your local farmer. In order for food to travel that far it has to be picked before it is naturally ripe. Food picked before it is ripe can not have all the nutrients that naturally ripened food has. Nature uses sunlight, water and nutrients from the soil. When it picked before it is ripe, it ripens in the dark and they use and ethylene gas (according to the movie Food, Inc) to ripen the food. So not only does the food not ripen naturally, it is forced to ripen so all those little chemical process that are important for proper nutrient may not get made, or made in the quantity, that is beneficial.

So I advocate that you buy locally and support your local, independent, farmer.

Luckily water goes to a treatment plant (not Portland’s) where it is cleaned up right???

I could not begin to tell you the whole process that goes into processing water. Check out Portland’s Water Bureau online. Here are a few things I did notice from them. They add chlorine and ammonia to kill bacteria that is in the water. This chlorine will diffuse out of the water if you leave it sit, but how many of us have the time or counter space to do that for all the water we drink in a day. Those chemicals get absorbed into your skin and, when you rinse you food, into your food.

Many housed, especially older homes, have copper pipes that can react with the chlorine. While copper is important for many functions in the body, it does have it limits and can be toxic at high doses. Lawrence Wilson, MD gives a good explanation of coppers role, both good and bad.

What to do? Filter your water.

There is also some buzz going on about Alkaline, Kangen, water. This water is filtered, passed over platinum plates that has a slight current, and made alkaline. This process also uses a buzz word micro-cluster. Water, when sitting in pipes, forms long chains of water molecules (and minerals, some good, some bad). These long chains are harder to pass through the membranes and get into the cells where they are needed.  A current breaks these long chains into smaller chain which is easier absorbed into the body. I have tried alkaline water and I really like it.

If you have never tried alkaline water you should, here are some testimonials from people. The benefits of drinking alkaline are many. We have many different harmful things in our bodies, and if our bodies are alkaline they never do us any harm. When our bodies go acidic, acidosis, is when the trouble begins and drinking alkaline water can stop and may even reverse that. There are many people who will give, yes give, it away.

That brings me to bottle water, many of them are nothing more than tap water. Tap water, in many areas, is acidic. If you want to know if your bottle water is good for you, get it tested. Either find a lab, or go to a pool and spa place, buy a testing kit, and test your bottle water to see how acidic it is. While you are testing go ahead and test the chlorine level, you may be surprised. Acids should be stored in glass containers, not plastic, the acid starts to break down the plastic

It has been a crazy couple of weeks. I just became a new Membership Coordinator for I Take the Lead and am on the Lead with Heart committee for the 3rd annual gold tournament. If you know of any golfers, please have them contact me.

Also this week is the Portland’s Gay Mens Chorus concert, at Kaul  Auditorium, which I volunteer my time as a rehearsal manager. I am one of those folks who loves music and everyone loves it when I sing, as long as they don’t have to hear me… Which is fine, seeing how much time and energy the guys put in is way more than I have. And then I would only sound OK at best, where I can put energy into be a LMT and be exceptional.

In the few moments I have had I have been trying to get out into the yard and get that prepped for spring planting. Nothing can ground me faster than getting my hands dirty in the gardens. So far we have planted potatoes, lettuce, peas. Our Kiwi have started to awaken, the peach tree is full of blossoms as is our lingonberries and one of our columnar apples.  This year we started an asparagus bed. This is truly a time commitment, if you start a bed by seed it 2-3 years before you get anything to harvest. We started with crowns and still may have to wait a year to get anything. I am hopeful for a bountiful harvest this year, last year we got chickens and one of the benefits is plenty of nitrogen rich fertilizer.

Well gotta run, thanks for your patience and I will be posting more articles this week.

That being said, lets tried to figure out why HFCS is bad for the body, especially in high quantities – and quantify what is “high quantities”.

According to one article I subscribe to Total Health Breakthroughs Chronically high blood sugar and insulin levels dramatically speed up the aging process and are primary risk factors for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, reduced immunity and more. Diabetes alone affects over 20 million people, costing over $132 billion, most of it on drugs. These prescription drugs always seem to have secondary side affects with most of them bad!

There have been many studies done about HFCS with varying results. When ever a study is done I always ask myself who stands to profit, after all we are a capitalist society, from the results. If you google HFCS you will see that Pepsi funded one study – do you think they will be impartial? I read a book once on how to lie with statistics. The main message from the reading  was that you can use statistics to support almost any, if not everything you want to prove.

If even small amounts, and I am having trouble quantifying this, are bad how do you get away from sugars of any sort when manufactures add it to almost everything. Not having found anyone who will admit that HFCS is directly bad for you, even on the CDC website, they do admit that these (empty) calories have been increasing in recent decades. That along with decreased in sustained exercise has decreased and weight has increased, which can, and does account for many health issues.

I would still like to find something that says how the body breaks down the sugar, not how the sugars look in the lab. Is the body able to break down the sugars in glucose or glycogen to store as energy reserves or does it all get stored as FAT!?

If all this was not enough the Washington Post wrote an article that showed that most brands foods that contain HFCS also contained mercury. Part of the process of making HFCS uses mercury and not all the mercury gets removed before packing.

So I could not find any conclusion that HFCS is directly bad, except that it is an empty calories and that people are consuming way to many empty calories. In drinking empty calories they are not drinking enough water. Dehydration is another article!