Acupuncture Girl

Defeating Sugar Cravings

Source: Body Ecology

Are sugar cravings simply a matter of willpower?

As it turns out, your daily sugar fix may have more to with biochemistry than desire.

Anyone whose inner ecology is out of balance will crave:

• Sugar
• Breads
• Dairy
• Fruit

Your inner ecology is made up of bacteria, yeasts, cells that line the intestinal wall, and cells that make up the immune system.

When the inner ecology of your gut is in a state of balance, good bacteria and beneficial yeast thrive.

They work synergistically with your intestinal cells, soothing away areas of inflammation. They also contribute to your digestive fire and help to detoxify poisons from the gut.

When the inner ecology is out of balance, this harmonious environment breaks down.

Once your inner ecology begins to deteriorate, the gut becomes wounded. And two things may happen:

1. Candida overgrowth can take over your appetite.
2. Nutritional deficiencies can develop.

Both Candida overgrowth and nutritional deficiencies can feed a voracious appetite—particularly one that demands sugar!

Candida Overgrowth Fuels Sugar Cravings

Candida overgrowth and nutritional deficiencies can fuel limitless sugar cravings. Even worse, eating too much sugar can damage your digestive system and immune system.

Candida is yeast that is normally present in the gastrointestinal tract.

In order to maintain a healthy inner ecosystem, good bacteria compete with Candida for space within the gut. This competitive environment keeps Candida overgrowth in check. If there are not enough good bacteria in the gut (for example, after antibiotic use), Candida can quickly grow and overtake its environment.

When we eat sugar, we literally feed the Candida yeast and other harmful microorganisms living in the gastrointestinal tract. (1) Foods that contain sugar include bready foods, sweet desserts, fruit, and even starchy vegetables. According to the Body Ecology Principles, sugar is expanding in nature. Without proper balance, it can drive the body into an acidic and pro-inflammatory state.

In other words, a diet full of sugar can damage your inner ecology. The more sugar that you binge on, the more you feed Candida overgrowth. The more Candida overgrowth you have, the more you crave sugar. It’s a vicious cycle.

Too much sugar does not only damage the digestive system. It also damages the immune system. Research tells us that when you eat too much sugar, you throw your immune response system out of balance. (2)

Because sugar damages your immune response system, the body is not able to stop the growth of aggressive microorganisms like Candida. Once the immune system is thrown out of balance, Candida yeast is more likely to irritate the intestinal wall, destroy the inner ecosystem of the gut, and move into the bloodstream.

Nutritional Deficiencies Drive Us to Eat Sweets

When the inner ecology of the gut is damaged, the cells of the intestine become inflamed. We end up absorbing very little from the food that we eat.

The cells of the intestine lose their ability to do work. This means that food might sit stagnant in the small intestine, where it ferments and putrefies. The large intestine may lose motility, or the ability to move. Most importantly, the wall of the intestines becomes irritated and leaky.

A leaky gut allows large particles of food, toxins from bacteria, and Candida to pass into the bloodstream. When the gut wall is healthy, these particles, toxins, and yeast remain in the digestive tract.

Unfortunately, Candida overgrowth does not just happen in the gut, the mouth, and the birth canal. It can happen anywhere in the body.

Candida yeast can steal the small amount of sugar that your cells need for energy. This leaves you feeling exhausted. As much as you may try to give your body the raw materials that it needs to produce energy, when there is systemic Candida overgrowth you never feel quite right.

This could mean:

• Constant infections and allergies
• Reoccurring skin disorders
• Brain fog
• Bloated belly and gas
• Joint pain
• Insatiable hunger
• Need for caffeine
• Constant low energy

How to Get Over Sugar Cravings in 3 Steps

Before tackling any nutrient deficiencies, always address Candida overgrowth first.

If you have Candida overgrowth, feeding the body the best foods possible can be like refilling a bucket that has a gaping hole. No matter how often you go for water—even the highest quality water—your bucket will always be dry. Unless you fix the leak.

Sometimes, removing all sweet foods from the diet is too shocking to handle. After a lifetime of eating sweets, we can be emotionally and biochemically addicted to sugary foods.

Go easy on yourself. In 2008, one study found that sugar affects opioids and dopamine in the brain. These are the same neurochemicals that are involved in heroin addiction. Addictive behaviors to sugar—like binging, withdrawal, and craving—are all related to neurochemical changes. (3)

1. First: Since good bacteria compete with Candida for space in the intestinal tract—in one study done on mice, the probiotic Saccharomyces boulardii was found to reduce levels of Candida (4)—it is important to introduce the right strains of beneficial bacteria into your diet. For example, cultured vegetables and probiotic liquids include beneficial bacteria and saccharomyces boulardii.

2. Second: Once you are consuming fermented foods, find other ways to satisfy your sweet tooth. Here at Body Ecology, we love using Liquid Stevia Concentrate, a sweetener made from the stevia leaf. Stevia is naturally 300 times sweeter than sugar—without all the noxious side effects. While your sugar cravings will drop as you incorporate more fermented foods into your diet, you can use stevia during those times when you would like to taste something sweet.

3. Third: Focus on healing the gut. As you add good foods to your diet, be sure and remove those foods that may irritate the lining of the gut. At Body Ecology, we recommend removing wheat gluten, milk casein, and sugar from the diet. We also recommend removing those foods that may be uniquely irritating to you.

Healing the lining of the gut may require additional support, like glutamine, as found in Vitality SuperGreen. Researchers have found that glutamine is the preferred fuel source for the small intestine. In fact, studies show that glutamine supports the regeneration and repair of intestinal cells. (5)

Six Science-based benefits of Acupuncture

Article from Rodale.com

Has your doctor ever prescribed you a round of acupuncture? Probably not. Alternative treatments often get short shrift in standard healthcare because doctors are generally unaware of the science showing that they really are effective alternatives to drugs and medication. But a new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine may (hopefully) change that.

The researchers pooled data from nearly 18,000 people who had participated in studies examining the effectiveness of acupuncture and found that, yes, it really is a good treatment for chronic pain and that doctors should start recommending it as treatment for arthritis and other chronic ailments.

Chronic pain is certainly one of the most common reasons people seek out acupuncturists, but here are six other scientifically studied ways that acupuncture therapy can alleviate what’s bothering you:

#1: Eases your aching back. Using acupuncture therapy to successfully relieve chronic back pain is well documented in scientific literature, and acupuncturists say that it’s the leading reason that people visit their clinics. A study published in May’s issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine even found that people who were given “simulated acupuncture,” where pressure was place on certain acupuncture points but no needles were actually used, saw as much as a 15 percent greater improvement in their symptoms (equal to the improvements seen in people who were receiving true acupuncture) than people who were taking medications and undergoing standard chiropractic care.

#2: Boosts the effectiveness of pharmaceuticals. A study from China, published in the August issue of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine found that a low-dose of fluoxetine (Prozac) combined with acupuncture therapy was just as effective at reducing anxiety in patients being treated for depression as full-dose medication. Cutting the dose and adding acupuncture also reduced the drug’s side effects, which can include nausea, weight gain, and a decreased sex drive.

#3: Soothes the burning in your stomach. This June, Brazilian researchers published research finding that acupuncture therapy alleviated heartburn and indigestion in pregnant women. One group of pregnant women was given a combination of acupuncture and medications, and another group was counseled on dietary changes and given medications if needed. Over the course of the study, 75 percent of the women in the acupuncture group saw heartburn intensity, and antacid use, decline, while only 44 percent of women in the standard-treatment group saw those same effects.

#4: Counteracts the effects of radiation. Cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment are likely to suffer a variety of side effects, depending on the part of the body being treated. However, acupuncture therapy has been found to have some effect on the perception of how bad those effects can be, particularly for nausea and dry mouth, common in patients receiving radiation to the head and neck. A review of studies published in CA, a journal of the American Cancer Society, found that people undergoing radiation treatment perceived fewer negative side effects of radiation even though the side effects may still be there. For instance, in one study, patients who wore acupressure bands during treatment said they felt less nausea, although they still had the same occurrence of vomiting as they did before wearing the band, and in another study, people said they had less of a problem with dry mouth, even though measures of their saliva showed that levels remained the same. The acupuncture didn’t actually alleviate the symptoms, but it did help improve patients’ quality of life after treatment.

#5: Dulls persistent headaches. A review of 22 studies involving acupuncture therapy, migraines, and tension headaches found that regular acupuncture therapy was effective at preventing tension headaches and migraines from becoming a problem, and that it was an effective treatment for existing headaches.

#6: Ends obesity? The influence of acupuncture therapy on obesity isn’t as well-documented as the other examples we’ve listed, but there’s enough evidence to suggest that it could be an effective weight-loss treatment. Researchers from Korea analyzed 31 studies on a total of 3,013 people, and found that acupuncture therapy led to greater decreases in body weight than lifestyle changes or medications. However, they note in their findings, published February in the journal Obesity, that flaws in many of the studies made it difficult to see how effective acupuncture therapy would be on obesity in the long run. But for people willing to try it, adding a weekly acupuncture session to daily exercise and a smart diet could lead to healthy gains.