Jason Lincoln Jeffers Health/Wellness Coaching/Counseling

Trust in your intelligent body.

A disease care system.

It was previously thought that fructose didn’t have much of an impact on insulin, but a recent study at the University of California Davis has found that fructose (found naturally in honey, corn, and fruit) is actually more dangerous than glucose when it comes to developing diabetes or heart disease. Liver abnormalities and fat deposits showed up only in the study group that consumed fructose-sweetened drinks with their meals. Moreover, in this group, the liver converted the sugar into a higher amount of fat while the subjects consuming similar amounts of sugar from glucose showed no such change. The fructose-drinking volunteers were also more resistant to insulin.

In 1850, the average American consumed about thirty pounds of sugar annually, and obesity was unheard of. Today, the average American consumes 156 pounds of sugar (a wheelbarrow-full) annually, contributing to an obesity statistic of 26 percent, with a staggering 63 percent considered overweight. The 2011 USDA estimates the average American consumes nearly two tons of sugar in a lifetime. Yep, that’s per person.

Most of this sugar comes from high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) which is the main ingredient in processed foods, from sandwich meats to pretzels to ketchup. When you begin to read your nutrition labels, you’ll quickly notice that sugar, in one form or another, is added to over 80 percent of the products in the supermarket. And unless you live on a Stairmaster, all that sugar will easily get converted into fat by your body. Carrying excess weight around will increase your risk for deadly conditions such as heart disease, kidney disease, and diabetes. In 1893, there were fewer than three cases of diabetes per 100,000 people in the United States. Today, that ratio is nearly 2700 times higher, reaching 8.5 percent of the current population. New figures from Diabetes Health Intelligence suggest that more than one million people in the U.K. are thought to have undiagnosed type 2 diabetes. In the U.S., this figure is at least seven million.

So, what’s causing this type 2 diabetes epidemic anyway? I believe it begins and ends with an unknown sugar addiction. Molecularly speaking, your body can’t tell the difference between fructose from peaches or honey, lactose from milk or yogurt, galactose from navy beans, or sucrose from beets or maple syrup. Furthermore, all high glycemic index (GI) carbohydrates such as grains, legumes, corn, rice, pasta, and white potatoes, will immediately get converted into glucose in the bloodstream, causing your blood sugar levels to soar. For example, one slice of white bread turns into the equivalent of one tablespoon of pure sugar in the body.

Insulin is a pancreatic hormone that helps the body metabolize blood glucose by binding with receptors on cells, much like a key fits snugly into a lock. Once the insulin has “unlocked the door” into the cell and glucose is inserted, it is then either burned for fuel or stored as fat in the form of glycogen. Every time you consume excessive sugar or starch, the pancreas has to produce an unnaturally high amount of insulin which eventually becomes toxic to the cells. Eventually your cells require downtime from the abnormal and unhealthy barrage of insulin. So what does the intelligent body do to counterbalance this onslaught? It downgrades the number of receptors so that the cells don’t have to receive the insulin as often. When these cells fail to respond adequately to circulating insulin in the blood, glucose levels go through the roof. The liver helps regulate glucose levels by lowering its secretion of glucose in the presence of insulin. This typical reduction in the glucose production by the liver does not occur in people with insulin resistance. And there’s your cause for type 2 diabetes.

In response to this study’s findings, Dr. Walter Willett, chair of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, noted that consumption of sugary drinks containing fructose can double the risk of diabetes, with half of that risk due to the excess weight, and the other half due to the high fructose intake. The bottom line is this: Both glucose and fructose are bad for the body. Fructose is worse. Just remember this next time you go for a glass of orange juice. An 8 oz. glass will contain about 20 grams of sugar from fructose. So if you like natural juice, then you may want to adhere to the green veggie kind. Even carrot juice contains a fair amount of sugar. Of course, fruit contains nutrients that your body needs such as vitamins C and antioxidants, but these essential nutrients can easily be supplanted by the sugarless veggies.

Besides sugar, it is wise to stay away from all artificial sweeteners like aspartame, saccharin, and sucralose. Recent studies showed that people who use artificial sweeteners are heavier, more likely to have diabetes, and are more prone to be insulin-resistant compared with nonusers. Sucralose or its marketing name Splenda was initially created to be an insecticide but when it was realized to be sweet (an assistant who was told to test the ingredient actually thought he was being asked to taste it), they decided to develop it as an artificial sweetener.

The only sweetener I’ve found to be safe for human consumption is pure Stevia (no fillers added) which so far is only available from one supplier, Stevita. Their website is www.stevitastevia.com.

Today, I am immensely grateful for being in perfect physical health. But this was not always the case. In fact, for more than two decades of my life, I was riddled with some type of disease, some of them debilitating. In 1996, after a decade of spending upwards of $40,000 on a wide variety of treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic dizziness from an inner ear disorder, anxiety, depression, heavy metal toxicity, TMJ syndrome, systemic candida, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), hypoglycemia, acid reflux disease, and borderline type 2 diabetes, I finally realized that conventional medicine was not cure me of anything.

After many years of going inward, and meditating for answers, eventually my inner voice spoke to me clearly, saying, “Stop fighting your diseases and treating them as the enemy. Instead, begin seeing them as the way in which your intelligent body is trying to communicate to you.” The solution to my chronic suffering suddenly became apparent. I had to start listening to and paying attention to my intelligent body.

Even though very few have heard about far-infrared therapy, it is nothing new. It has been used as an effective method of healing in the region known today as Tibet by the Finns as early as 5,000 B.C.E., before they migrated to Europe. Infrared or radiant heat comes from the sun naturally, and is in fact a necessary form of energy that all living things require for extraordinary health. If we don't receive enough of far-infrared light from the sun, we can become ill or depressed. Unlike conventional saunas, the infrared radiant sauna heats the body directly without having to heat the air in between. This results in its lower power-consumption and shorter warm-up time.

There are three wavelengths of infrared light: near, mid, and far. The infrared sauna focuses its output on the far-infrared range (between 6 and 14 microns) where 9.4 microns is the deepest penetrating, allowing the water molecules to vibrate, causing a release of the toxins through the sweat. Since the human body is 70% water, this far-infrared output is important for optimal detoxification of heavy metals such as mercury and aluminum. As toxins are released, the body's anabolic state to repair and rebuild itself is reactivated.

Infrared radiant heat therapy is beneficial for pain relief and there have been numerous clinical studies to back it up. The research has shown that infrared therapy is effective in relieving common pain conditions, such as lower back pain and menstrual pain. In a specific case study, a seventy year old man with arthritis began using an infrared sauna to relieve his pain. After numerous sauna sessions over a period of five months, his condition had significantly improved. In another case study, a fourteen year old girl who was challenged to even walk down the stairs because of severe knee pain since the age of eight (due to rheumatoid arthritis), also began using and infrared sauna for pain relief. After just three sessions, her pain had diminished significantly.

Infrared radiant heat therapy naturally supports the body's healing ability. This results in a variety of benefits such as the relaxation of sore and aching muscles and joints. Furthermore, because of the natural and powerful detoxification benefits, you will find that your overall health and energy will improve, allowing the body to maintain an anabolic, repair and rebuild mode, resulting in a boost to your immune system. The bottom line is that infrared sauna therapy is a natural, sale, affordable, and drug-free alternative to taking toxic drugs for pain relief.

Far-infrared therapy for drug-free pain relief and detox.

In America and indeed most of the Western World, we do not have health care system. We have a disease care system. This cockeyed, asinine, dangerously backwards approach to healing the intelligent body, exists mainly because our medical doctors are not taught the appropriate amount of holistic healing modalities, preventive or alternative medicine, proper nutrition, detoxification, and stress-reduction techniques necessary for the rejuvenation and healing of the physical Self. Primarily, medical professionals are educated on how to treat disease using drugs and/or surgery. And subsequently, those are the two options that insurance companies cover.

We are conditioned from birth to believe that disease is a perfectly natural and “normal occurrence” in the body. In other words, we are made to believe that the body, which performs all of its trillions of diverse, intricate, and concurrent functions every minute on its own––without any help from us––is just too stupid to keep itself healthy. We don’t stop to think that maybe it’s not the body’s fault that it’s sick in the first place. Perhaps its something that we are consistently and unknowingly doing to it that’s so harmful, so sabotaging, and so overwhelming to its immune system, that it breaks down, allowing viruses, bacteria, parasites, and carcinogens to damage it on a cellular level. After all, if you pumped a mixture of gasoline and seawater into your cars engine, how long do you think it would run?

This highly flawed educational system is fueled, of course, by the pharmaceutical companies (Big Pharma) so that they can continue to rake in hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The global prescription drug sales market in the U.S. is expected to reach $1.1 trillion by 2014. This narcissistic, money-motivated model of disease care equates to the following typical scenario multiplied exponentially:

1. An individual becomes sick with a “disease.”

2. This person goes to the doctor and becomes a “patient.”

3. The body is presumed to be too stupid to know how to heal itself from the disease, and therefore the doctor prescribes toxic drugs.

4. The patient then goes to the pharmacist to buy the drugs.

Then its falls on the patient to deal with the plethora of drug side effects, many of which are either confused with or experienced as significantly worse than the symptoms of disease itself. Some of the most common prescription drug side effects include: drowsiness, skin rashes or hives, abdominal pain, blurred vision, constipation, diarrhea, dizziness, headaches, loss of appetite, memory loss, palpitations, loss of coordination, ringing in the ears, swelling of hands and feet, and fainting. And then there’s the aforementioned dangers from the potential “adverse reactions” or accidental overdose. It’s nothing less than criminal.

Your unknown sugar addiction.

Researchers studied a protein called osteoprotegerin (OPG) in people with celiac disease. In healthy people, OPG plays a crucial role in maintaining bone health by controlling the rate at which bone tissue is removed. This new research demonstrated that 20 per cent of celiac patients produce antibodies that attack the OPG protein and quash it. This results in accelerated bone damage and severe osteoporosis. Solution? Stop eating wheat and wheat products.

Gluten sensitivity is on the rise, mainly because of recent genetic engineering on strains of wheat, increasing their gluten content dramatically. In fact, a recent study published in the peer-reviewed journal Gastroentrerology compared blood samples taken from ten thousand people and found that there has been a 400 percent increase in celiac disease from fifty years ago. Additional factors may include the new processing methods of wheat, and prolonged storage of gluten-dense grains, resulting in enterotoxin contamination.

Celiac disease is an autoimmune disease of the small intestine that is caused from a reaction to prolamin, a gluten protein found in wheat, and other similar grains such as barley and rye. Upon exposure to gliadin, the enzyme tissue transglutanminase modifies the protein, and the immune system cross-reacts with the small bowel tissue, causing a highly inflammatory reaction.

Symptoms of celiac disease (caused by gluten sensitivity) include irritable bowel syndrome (diarrhea, gas, bloating, constipation), greasy stools, lactose intolerance, and abdominal pain. But the symptoms are not limited to the digestive system. Celiac disease can also effect other organs including the brain, heart, and kidneys. Brain symptoms include the impedance of blood flow in the frontal and prefrontal cortex. This part of the brain allows us to focus, manage emotional states, plan and organize, and access our short-term memory. This hypoperfusion is associated with conditions such as depression, anxiety, and ADHD.

In 1995, a magic bullet for obesity seemed within reach. Big Pharma raced to fashion a newly discovered hormone called leptin into an anti-obesity pill. Sixty million obese Americans eagerly awaited a drug that would keep their appetite in check for life. But seventeen years later, obesity still remains as perplexing as ever to scientists and there’s nothing remotely resembling a magic bullet. Leptin, the king of the hormonal chain of command, secreted by fat cells (yes, fat cells) to turn off hunger, has turned out to be a little more complex than initially thought.

There is not a single endocrinologist in the world who can duplicate the intricate and delicate balance of the intelligent body’s endocrine system. Anything you do to micromanage a single hormone in the body will, like dominos, affect them all. Hormones are the chemical messengers that tell your cells what to do. There are approximately 75 trillion cells communicating in our body at any given time. Hormones make sure that each individual cell receives the correct information and subsequently performs the right functions. There are over 100 different hormones playing their unique roles in determining when to feel sleepy at night and when to feel rested in the morning. Hormones govern everything in your body, including blood pressure regulation, emotions, digestion, sex drive, stress control, infections, and the burning and storage of fat. Any attempts to lose fat without ﬁrst activating the fat burning hormones will be in vain.

Have you ever gone on a diet, only to end up rebounding, ending up heavier than you were before you started? The reason why fad diets don’t work is because they create a hormonal imbalance in the body. They communicate to the body, “Famine is here.” So what does the intelligent body do to counterbalance this? It stops burning fat, because fat is designed to keep it alive during famine emergencies. All of this is controlled by leptin.

In 1994, Jeffrey M. Friedman, M.D., Ph.D, and his colleagues published a landmark paper in which they identified a gene in mice and humans called obese (ob) that codes for a hormone later named leptin, after the Greek word “leptos,” for thin. Leptin is the body’s mechanism for signaling satiety. Fat cells secrete leptin, which travels through the bloodstream to the brain’s hypothalamus, the control center for hunger, thirst, sex drive and other primal functions. When the body has stored enough fat, the hypothalamus is inundated with leptin, prompting it to suppress appetite and make us feel full.

Prior to Friedman’s groundbreaking research, little was known about the components of the homeostatic system that controls weight, with many scientists questioning the very existence of such a system. As a result of Friedman’s work, body fat is now understood to be a complex endocrine organ, and leptin is now understood to coordinate our metabolic responses to thirst and starvation, which is the body’s number one priority; survival. It was previously believed that the thyroid gland controlled mammalian metabolism. But the thyroid answers to leptin which oversees all the energy reserves, inflammatory response, and even controls the arousal mechanism between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.

Peculiarly, researchers found that the majority of obese people typically had very high levels of leptin circulating in their blood. Friedman’s lab went on to discover that high leptin levels are associated with leptin resistance, in much the same way that people with type 2 diabetes are resistant to insulin. They also found that the level of circulating leptin is directly proportional to the total amount of fat in the body. It has now become conventional wisdom in the research community that obese people are simply not sensitive enough to leptin––somewhere between the fat cells and its receptors in brain neurons, there is a breakdown of communication. Friedman believes that 90 percent of the 60 million obese people in America suffer from leptin resistance. But why?

A recent study at the University of Florida showed conclusively that the consumption of high amounts of fructose causes leptin resistance and elevated triglycerides in rats. The rats consuming the high-fructose diet subsequently ate more and gained more weight than the rats fed a fructose-free diet. Researchers hypothesized that a high-fructose diet in humans could lead to leptin resistance, which in turn could lead to exacerbated weight gain, especially in people living in industrialized countries that consume a diet high in high fructose corn syrup.

There is also a direct correlation between insulin and leptin. Insulin increase in response to the caloric load provokes a simultaneous dose-dependent rise in leptin, an effect potentiated by high cortisol levels.

There is now considerable consensus among the scientific community that the adipocyte hormone leptin and the pancreatic hormone insulin work hand-in-hand in the regulation of food intake and energy balance. Leptin and insulin levels are positively correlated with both body weight and body fat. In addition, insulin and leptin concurrently provide important negative feedback signals to the central nervous system, proportional to the energy stores of the body. In conclusion, diet appears to be the only way to prevent both leptin resistance and insulin resistance.

The key to switching off your body's hunger.

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In 1999, I founded the holistic wellness company, Sunlighten, and in 2004, I co-founded Sunlight Day Spa. These companies are dedicated to drug-free pain relief, drug-free detoxification, drug-free stress relief, massage therapy, and whole body rejuvenation using cutting-edge wellness technologies such as far-infrared sauna therapy and sound vibrational therapy.

Prescription drugs are lethal.

Going gluten-free.

In 1995, I was introduced to a specific modality of chiropractic known as “upper cervical care”. At that time, X-rays were taken by a chiropractic physician of my skull and upper spine and it was revealed that I had developed an abnormal curvature of my top vertebrae known as a vertebral subluxation. I was then shown an X-ray of a normal, healthy spine and the difference was astounding.

My doctor explained that the fatigue, dizziness, and TMJ syndrome that I had been enduring for so many years was no doubt caused by the two car accidents I had when I was a teenager. He said that car accidents are one of the major causes of vertebral subluxations, but even a fall or slight trauma to the head or back could be enough to contribute to a misalignment of the upper curvature of the spine.

The brain facilitates communication via trillions of nerve fibers to every part of the body via the spinal cord. In between the spinal cord and the brain is a bundle of nerves called the brainstem. This brainstem acts as the control center for functions of the body such as breathing, heartbeat, motor function, equilibrium, and the regulation of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. Because of the important neural structures concentrated in this small portion of the nervous system, the slightest of damage to this area may have profound effects.

The brainstem is sheathed by the atlas (C1) and axis (C2) vertebrae and when completely aligned and freed of nerve interference (from upper cervical care adjustments), the rest of the spine and skeleton will automatically realign itself (like a domino effect), thus restoring the nervous system to its optimally healthy state. As a result of this vertebral realignment, the body is allowed to reclaim its anabolic state which allows it to regenerate tissue, repair cellular damage and heal.

Chronic back, muscle, and joint pain has been shown to be relieved or eliminated completely with upper cervical care. In addition, recurring ear infections, asthma, sinus infections, neck pain, migraines, chronic fatigue, and other many other ailments have improved or healed over time through ongoing upper cervical corrections of a vertebral subluxation.

Upper cervical chiropractic care is gentle and non-invasive. It is completely painless and you barely feel anything when adjusted. You simply lie down on your side and the doctor makes the adjustment on the upper cervical area, just below the atlas. It is this inter-relationship between the upper cervical spine (neck) the central nervous system, and the brainstem, that affects every aspect of human function, including touch, hearing, vision, mental processing, regulation of hormones, motor control, and immune system regulation. But perhaps most importantly, when properly aligned, it helps the body maintain an anabolic state of repair and renewal. You can find an upper cervical care practitioner near you at: www.upcspine.com

A vertebral subluxation takes time (kinda like straightening teeth) to heal. The chronic dizziness that I had experienced for over five years slowly dissipated and dissolved within two years of upper cervical care. And my overall energy and health has improved quite dramatically over the years, especially since I have been living in a stress-, pain-, anxiety-free mode. I’ve learned that living a life without stress significantly accelerates the healing process and contributes greatly to your sense of well-being.

The importance of upper cervical care.

Candida yeast is a natural part of your colon's bacteria population. In a healthy body, it makes up about 15% of your gut bacteria. When this healthy balance is compromised -- because of excessive antibiotics or improper diet -- the body will develop a host of unpleasant symptoms, such as vaginitis, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), colitis, systemic candida, food allergies, white tongue (oral thrush), psoriasis, migraines, asthma, depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue syndrome, acid reflux, acne, food sensitivities, and metabolic syndrome.

I suffered from systemic candida for over twenty years, and I tried every “remedy” and "treatment" out there. But no matter how many products or promised cures I tried, how many how many fasts I endured, how many anti-fungal herbs I took, how many colonics I was given, or how many probiotics I ingested, the candida fungi kept coming back. Eventually, I began to realize that the candida were being produced by my Intelligent Body to counterbalance a more significant underlying problem: an inability to properly digest foods and absorb nutrients.

You see, candida is not something you "catch". And it's not something you need to "get rid of" or "eliminate" or "cure", because it's created naturally by the body for good reason. It's not a an accident that you have it, because just as when the body creates a fever to kill off a lethal virus or causes vomiting or diarrhea to expel toxins, its divine intelligence is doing its job to protect itself from a much more life-threatening danger. The Intelligent Body is all about life-preservation. In my case of systemic candida, my body was constantly having to defend itself against the barrage of sugar that I was unknowingly ingesting on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. And candida fungi feast on sugar.

A major epiphany hit me like a ton of bricks when I realized that the massive amounts of sugar I was ingesting was coming from honey, fruit, fruit juice, maple syrup, bread, potatoes, pasta, and legumes. Even though none of these foods and drinks contain "added sugar", all of them get converted into glucose in the body and this is why my body was manufacturing the candida; to dispose of all this toxic sugar.

And so, what does your intelligent body do to compensate for this constant barrage of foods that it can't digest and sugars that it can't assimilate? It protects itself by manufacturing a fungus (a.k.a. candida albicans) to devour the sugar! And this is what causes candida overgrowth -- it all boils down to an unknown addiction to sugar.

Antibiotics can lead to candida overgrowth -- this is true, however, it is not the primary cause of it as many nutritionists advocate. As a population, we simply don't take nearly enough antibiotics to be causing such as "yeast syndrome". However, we do consume, by far, more than enough sugar. And contrary to another popular myth in the wellness industry, the Intelligent Body is perfectly capable of manufacturing the appropriate probiotics on its own (there are over 500 varieties) if it is supplied with the proper nutrients, minerals, and foods that it can digest. If, however, you're continuously drowning out vital magnesium, calcium, selenium, and trace minerals with diuretics such as caffeinated beverages every day, the body simply cannot do its job properly and assimilate the minerals.

The U.S. Congress just passed a law that the tomato sauce on pizza will be considered as a vegetable for school lunches. Not only is the pizza devoid of all nutrition and has a glycemic index above 70, when combined with the high-starch, sugary, acidic tomato sauce, it will be instantly converted to glucose in the bloodstream, contributing to the rapidly rising childhood diseases of hypoglycemia, type 2 diabetes, ADHD, and obesity.

I believe that poor nutrition is the major cause of cancer, candida, digestive disorders, and nearly every other chronic disease out there because it weakens every cell in the body. The modern American diet is completely devoid of the vital nutrients and minerals that the body needs to repair the constant bombardment of sugar, GMO's, indigestable oils (such as margarine, trans fats, Canola oil, and soybean oil), heavy metals, fluoride, chlorine, vaccines, prescription drugs, and other carcinogens and toxins that we are bombarding it with on a daily basis.

When, however, you give your Intelligent Body the right nutrients, and remove the interference, i.e. toxins, it will restore a healthy balance of about 15% yeast bacteria to 85% non-yeast bacteria in the gut. I have learned over the years that the genes of the homo sapiens body is programmed for one optimal diet, and that this diet does not include foods that the body is incapable of assimilating and digesting properly (including excess fiber).

Proper nutrition through diet puts the candida in check.

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Because my Skype online Wellness coaching sessions take place in the comfort of your own home, I am grateful to be able to counsel clients from all over the world. The first step, if you’d like more information about my personal coaching style or methodology, is a complimentary, no obligation 30-minute personal consultation. Contact me now to schedule your free consultation or to ask me any questions you may have about my services. To see my coaching rates, please click here.

I am not a physician. I am a wellness coach. I cannot and do not prescribe medical treatment. Therefore, the information provided here is for educational purposes only. Any decision on your part on how you use this information is your personal choice and I am not liable or responsible in any way whatsoever for what you do with this material after reading it. The information on this site is not meant to diagnose, prescribe, or treat any disease. Please discuss any changes to your diet or to your health with a qualified, licensed health care provider.

"The writer is fully aware that his message is not orthodox; but since our orthodox theories have not saved us we may have to readjust them to bring them into harmony with Nature's laws. Nature must be obeyed, not orthodoxy."

Weston A. Price

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (1939)

No disease is incurable.

There is false much information amongst alternative wellness counselors and physicians who will try to convince you that if you become a vegan, drink ionized “alkaline water,” or take coral calcium, you can raise the pH level of the blood, prevent cancer, or cure your digestive disease. But this is simply not true. From the research I’ve done in biology and chemistry, as well as long-term personal experimentation with many “alkalizing” treatments for my chronic acid reflux, I’ve learned that the Intelligent Body is perfectly capable of restoring the appropriate pH balance to all of its cells, fluids, and organs (which varies greatly), and reverse the disease -- when it’s given the appropriate assistance. And it will do this -- in its own way and in its own time -- no matter how “incurable” the disease is proclaimed to be.

Certain foods can leave end-products called “ash” that can change the acidity of your urine, but that's unrelated to your digestive process because your urine is isolated in your bladder and does not affect the pH of any other part of your body.

When you ingest excessive protein, your body cannot store it, so the excess amino acids are converted to organic acids that would acidify your blood. However, your blood never becomes too acidic because as soon as the proteins are converted to organic acids, calcium (from your bones) and sodium bicarbonate (secreted from the pancreas) is utilized by the body to neutralize the acid and prevent any rise in blood pH. This is one reason why it’s important to consume sufficient calcium every day so that your body doesn't take it from your bones.

The stomach is an acid organ and when it is deficient in hydrochloric acid, this can be a serious problem. Digestion begins in the mouth and a major part of it occurs in the stomach. If you're not properly digesting your food, your body is not assimilating the vitamins, minerals, proteins, and essential fatty acids that it needs for optimum health. When the “sensors” that measure the pH of your stomach in the Lower Esophageal Sphincter (LES) valve, located in between the stomach and esophagus, detect a concentration of stomach acid low enough to properly digest food, it will close tight, preventing a backward flow. On the other hand, when the pH of the stomach is too high (because of insufficient hydrochloric acid), the LES valve will open up, causing gastroesophageal (GERD), a.k.a. acid reflux disease.

Conversely, the pyloric sphincter, located in between the stomach and the small intestines, is the valve with a job to do pretty much the opposite. It won’t open until stomach acidity is raised -- until after the food is properly digested. However, when crudely and improperly digested chyme inside the stomach then becomes rancid, putrefies, and ferments into toxic compounds, the "gatekeeper" pyloric valve will lock tight to prevent these too-acidic putrefied toxins from entering into the alkaline environment of the small intestine. When this happens, bloating occurs and the putrefied chyme backs up into the esophagus, causing acid reflux. The more you age, the less hydrochloric acid your body produces.

All foods that leave your stomach are acidic, no matter how alkaline they were when you ingested them. That just your stomach doing its job properly. When food enters your intestines, bicarbonate of soda from your pancreas neutralizes the stomach acids. So, no matter what you consume, the food in your stomach becomes acidic and the food in your intestines becomes alkaline.

If the cause of acid reflux is due to the fact that the stomach's acidity is not acid enough, then the cure to acid reflux is to lower the stomach pH, not raise it. Because the stomach is an acid organ, when you try to block the acid by drowning it out with Tums, Pepto Bismol, and prescription drug acid blockers, then all you're doing is relieving the acid in your esophagus -- which does give temporary relief -- but in the long run, you're contributing to your body’s inability to properly digest its food and assimilate essential nutrients and minerals.

Having enough hydrochloric acid (HCl) is absolutely critical for complete digestion. If you have acid reflux, frequent heartburn, or frequent indigestion, then the pancreas will not be activating sufficient sodium bicarbonate for the small intestines to do its job of assimilating nutrients. In my personal wellness coaching sessions as well as in my upcoming book, The Intelligent Body, I explain in detail how to get the HCl levels of your stomach normalized to reverse these digestive diseases without having to take harmful acid blockers.

The true cause for acid reflux and other digestive disorders.

Exercise is extremely important for metabolism, weight management, and overall health and well-being. It improves insulin and leptin regulation. But exercise cannot make up for a nutrient-deficient, starch-based diet. I exercise almost every day and recommend to my clients to do the same. However, long-distance, time-consuming, endurance exercising over time will actually contribute to weight gain, rather than weight loss.

What do you think your Intelligent Body does to compensate for the message that you're sending it when you spend an hour a day on the treadmill or in an aerobics class? Sure, you’ll burn fat, but in the long run, what you’re actually doing is training your body to become as efficient as possible at making fat more available for burning! So what does your body's divine intelligence do to counteract this onslaught of ridiculously unnecessary endurance exercising, day after day, week after week, month after month? Well, it will ramp up its ability to convert every single calorie of food that you consume -- directly into fat. Why? Because from an evolutionary standpoint, you are communicating to the body that you're going to continue to burn as many calories as you can for as long as you can, and so your body responds by doing everything in its power to compensate for this "famine emergency."

And contrary to popular opinion, running for an hour or more a day does not improve your cardiovascular health. The marathon runner, fitness guru, and daily jogger, Jim Fixx died of a heart attack at the premature age of 52. Many other endurance athletes have also prematurely died of heart attacks since the advent of the jogging and aerobics craze. The human body is simply not designed to be pushed over the edge and taken to its extreme limits on an ongoing basis. Not only is it a complete waste of time, you're doing more harm than good.

Furthermore, when you look at nature, guess how many animals spend more than an hour at a time exerting a significant amount of their energy? That's right. None. This is because evolution selects the species that are the most efficient at energy conservation, not energy consumption. The cheetah, for example, can only sprint to its maximum speed of 70 miles per hour in very brief bouts.

So, when it comes to exercising, remember that less is always more. Instead of jogging for an hour, switch to running as fast as you can for only twenty minutes. Instead of spending an hour in an aerobics or spinning class, get on the treadmill for twenty minutes and run as fast as you can. These brief, higher intensity bouts of exertion and maximization of heart rate will serve to dramatically boost your oxygen intake, expand the capacity of your heart and lungs, and rapidly burn blood sugar and glycogen stores. Subsequently, as your insulin levels normalize, your body’s ability to burn fat increases -- without alarming the body that a famine is coming. In this way, your body becomes an efficient fat burning machine, not an efficient fat storing machine. It's all about balance.

Stop jogging and start sprinting.

Disclaimer

The intelligent body requires more than 100 nutrients each day if it’s to function according to its genetic and cellular programming. In fact, your body’s total health is ultimately determined by the state of the somewhat simple, yet highly intelligent biological cell. Varying combinations of cells make up every organ and tissue, and approximately 100 trillion cells are constantly being replaced by new cells. Around 24 billion are renewed every day. Typically, the surface of the small intestine is replaced every five days and your body will re-grow an entirely new skin every seven weeks or so. Most body cells are replaced within eight to ten months, with bones taking a few years. The intelligent body innately knows exactly how, why, where, and when to red-flag every cell and tissue, break it down, repair and rebuild it, without you having to give it one thought. Why not empower your body to replace its damaged cells with perfectly healthy cells?

More than three out of four Americans have a diagnosable chronic disease. Don't believe anyone who tells you that your body’s disease cannot be cured. In this dimension of polarity, every toxin has its tailor-made antidote, and every disease has its own cure. The law of duality guarantees it. But the cure is not likely going to come from the drug industry. After all, how many chronic diseases can you think of that modern medicine has actually cured?

Marketing executives working for pharmaceutical companies dream up names for “new” diseases every day of the year. And most of the time they’ll abbreviate them in an effort to make them sound more “authentic.” Then they’ll patent them so that a a chemical can be marketed as a panacea or "cure" for a targeted disease––that is, until enough people are harmed or killed by the drug and it’s taken off the market.

Billions of dollars have been invested in research for a myriad of chronic diseases such as cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, and muscular dystrophy. It's been twenty-seven years and billions spent on research since the HIV pandemic began and we still don't have a cure for it, and in the United States we spend an average of $5 billion every year on cancer research and treatment development with nothing to show for it.4 The truth is that no cure has been developed for any chronic disease, ever. This is because cures can only come from the intelligent body itself when it’s empowered with the right tools to do so. Ever hear of spontaneous remission?

In reality, there’s really only one disease of the body. It’s called imbalance. In my more than two-decade-long personal journey toward extraordinary wellness, I have become aware of only four factors that blocked the intelligent body's self-healing powers:

1. Stress and emotional trauma.

2. Improper diet.

3. Toxins.

4. Brain stem trauma.

In the prior three chapters, I have revealed all of my knowledge and wisdom regarding what I’ve found to be the most significant cause of disease; stress and trauma. In this chapter, I will focus on revealing the proper diet and nutritional requirements for your body, how to effectively and efficiently eliminate toxins, and the optimal way to keep the brain stem free of nerve interference so that your body maintains an anabolic state of renewal.

Listen to your body. It’s more intelligent than you are. It was designed to take care of itself, on its own, without you having to worry about it. Unfortunately, as a species, we’ve been given false information about what it needs to stay healthy, and consequently, our “health care”system is seriously flawed.

The four major causes of disease.

The U.S. Department of Health estimates that more than 50% of Americans take at least one prescribed pill a day. We are constantly inundated by prescription drug commercials for ailments as varied as fibromyalgia, Crohn's disease, erectile dysfunction, allergies, acid reflux, rheumatoid arthritis, and depression. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), overdose deaths involving prescription drugs increased more than 200% from 2001 to 2007.

According to a recent article in Scientific American, the number of deaths and hospitalizations caused by prescription drugs has risen dramatically in the past decade, with overdoses of pain medications, in particular opioids, sedatives and tranquilizers, more than doubling between 1999 and 2006. In fact, by 2006, overdoses of prescription pain killers alone were already causing more deaths than overdoses of cocaine and heroin combined.

According to a 2003 report from Death by Medicine magazine, nearly 784,000 people in the United States die every year from conventional medicine mistakes. Of these, about 106,000 are from prescription drugs. In fact, prescription drugs cause most of the more than 26,000 fatal overdoses each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.