American Fitness Professionals & Associates

By Nancy Appleton, Ph.D.
www.nancyappleton.comHolidays are coming and these times can put a strain on everyone’s digestive and nervous systems.  This article will help you understand the importance of our diet and our emotions on our immune system.  Why is it that some people get colds or the flu when exposed to another person who has a cold?  Why is it that other people do not get the colds?  We all know.  A healthy immune system defends us from foreign invaders.  But what keeps our immune system healthy?  What does it take for our immune system to respond to foreign invaders?

For the last 100 years or more, the principal focus of the practice of medicine has been the treatment and elimination of symptoms of disease.  Medicine whether it be allopathic, homeopathic or other forms of natural remedies treats the symptoms, many times saves lives and returns the body to health by such treatment of symptoms.

The question arises as to what lets these symptoms occur. How to prevent them from occurring needs to be addressed more thoroughly.

The immune system can only function optimally if the rest of the body supports it.  A major part of this support is diet.  The negative aspect of diet-food intake that diminishes the functioning of the immune system-is just beginning to be understood.

In terms of the ability of the body to digest, metabolize and absorb nutrients, medical practitioner have looked at the following in the blood test: glucose, cholesterol, triglycerides, total protein, blood urea nitrogen, albumen, globulin, a/g ratio, creatine and other factors.

Recently, information has emerged as to what happens to the minerals in the body when we eat certain abusive foods.  When researchers look at the minerals in the blood stream, this is what they would find.  Every time we eat as little as two teaspoons of sugar, we can change the delicate mineral balance in our body, upset our body chemistry and throw our body out of homeostasis.  Blood tests before and after the ingestion of sugar would show that some of the minerals increase while others decrease, and in so doing change relationship with each other.

In the usual case the calcium increases and the phosphorus decreases.  

When the ratio of calcium to phosphorus increases too much, there is toxic calcium in the body because minerals only work in relationship to each other.  A mineral can become toxic to the body when there is an excess of that mineral in the body.  If in relationship to the other minerals with which it works, there is too much of a particular mineral to work productively, that mineral is in excess.  Toxic calcium can cause plaque on the teeth, kidney stones, arthritis, and hardening of the arteries, among other things.  These are the effects of an increase in a particular mineral ratio.  

When minerals decrease, there are not enough of them for our enzymes to function well.  Enzymes are mineral-dependent: therefore, when we are mineral deficient the enzymes do not work properly.  The metabolic enzymes cannot function optimally nor can the digestive enzymes.    

Therefore, we do not digest our food completely.  When we do not digest our food completely, some of it putrefies.  The purification irritates the lining of the gastrointestinal tract, the cells widen, and the spaces between the cells widen.  The partially digested or undigested food gets into the blood stream causing havoc in the body.  This toxic food is a form of food allergy.  This allergen can go to the head and cause the classic symptoms of allergy: runny eyes and nose, itchy ears, scratchy throat, and sinusitis.  It can go to the head and cause headaches, fatigue, dizziness or schizophrenia.   It can go to the skin and cause acne, psoriasis, edema or hives.  This partially digested food can lodge in the nerves and cause multiple sclerosis.  It can go anywhere in the body and cause problems.

At this time our immune system comes to our defense.  The immune system looks at this toxic food as a foreign invader and escorts it out of the body.  Our immune system was not meant to do this on a daily basis, so we tax our immune system.  The overuse of the immune system can cause an exhaustion of the system, which opens the door to infectious and degenerative diseases.  Unfortunately it is not only sugar that causes the body to go out of homeostasis but also excess alcohol or coffee, fried food, corticosteroids, antibiotics and many other over-the-counter drugs and prescription drugs.

Another 20th century life style problem that can upset the body chemistry and make it difficult to maintain homeostasis is how we deal with the stress in our life.  Of course, it is not life’s situations but how we deal with them as to whether we let stress become distress.

Distress can upset the body chemistry just as abusive foods can. I suggest that if you have anger, hate, depression, exhaustion, hold judgments against others or have any other negative emotion that you do not eat.  Go pray, exercise, meditate, do Yoga, write in a journal or do anything else to un-stress your body, to bring your body back to homeostasis before you eat.

If a person has inherited a healthy endocrine system, lives a happy life without too much distress, eats few abusive foods and takes few over-the-counter and prescription drugs, he or she is able to reestablish homeostasis relatively quickly.

We could get a metabolic overload by eating a little sugar, letting stress become distress, having a few French fried potatoes and our body would not be able to maintain homeostasis.  Our cells would become toxic and turn from healthy cells to unhealthy cells.  Upsetting our body chemistry over and over will eventually weaken our immune system and other body tissues.  We create our own sicknesses by upsetting our body chemistry, and we can create health.  Stop doing to the body what you did to make it sick and the body will heal itself.  It is a fact that the average person who lives to be over the age of one hundred, does not die of a disease.  These people simply die, peacefully, of old age.  We can too.

In my books I explain how homeostasis is the key to health but by our twentieth century life style many of us upset our body chemistry on a daily basis by what we eat, do, think, feel and say.  When we loose the ability to regain and maintain homeostasis on a regular basis, we open the door to infectious diseases and degenerative diseases.

  For more information on the effects of sugar on the body and methods to lick the sugar habit, read Dr. Nancy Appleton’s LICK THE SUGAR HABIT.   Appleton is also author of HEALTHY BONES, THE  SECRETS OF NATURAL HEALING WITH FOOD and THE CURSE OF LOUIS PASTEUR.  Learn more about her work on the internet: www.NancyAppleton.com.

Nancy Appleton, Ph.D. is author of LICK THE SUGAR HABIT and LICK THE SUGAR
HABIT SUGAR COUNTER. Learn more about Dr. Nancy Appleton at www.nancyappleton.com