Everyone agrees that good nutrition is essential for good health, but it seems that every expert has different ideas on what is best. The following is what I personally follow. When my patients follow the suggestions, many of them feel better, have better energy, lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol, and lower blood sugar. As a rule of thumb, eat fresh, natural, unprocessed foods. My most important recommendations are:
- Avoid sugar. This is perhaps the most important recommendation I can make. Eating sugar puts stress on the pancreas which has to secrete insulin to keep sugar levels in the blood at a safe level. Sugar triggers the body to store fat and is associated with higher blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, cancer, and diabetes. Sugar includes desserts, sodas, sweet tea, and juices.
- Avoid high fructose corn syrup - This is another commonly used sweetener often used in products such as sodas and sports drinks
- Avoid white flour. The body converts white flour into sugar and is therefore as harmful as sugar. White flour includes pasta, breads, biscuits, etc.
- Avoid artificial sweeteners including saccharin, Nutrasweet, Splenda, and diet sodas. Some studies suggest that they can be toxic and are associated with weight gain, heart disease, and destruction of good gut bacteria. Xylitol is a safer sweetener and can be found in health food stores or at Global Sweet.
- Avoid trans fatty acids. This is a fat created by food manufacturers to help keep food from spoiling. They are linked to cancer, heart disease, strokes, and poor cholesterol levels. It is found in many packaged foods including margarine, chips, cookies, and other snacks. Always look at the ingredients and if you see “hydrogenated” or “partially hydrogenated” oils, put it back. Beware of “no trans fats” labels. Because of a loophole in the law, a food can be labeled has having no trans fats even though it does.
- Use only cold-pressed, unrefined oils for cooking. Over 90% of vegetable oils such as corn, canola, and sunflower oils are not cold pressed. That means most of them are exposed to heat which damage the essential fatty acids in the oil. Essential fatty acids are required by every cell to absorb oxygen. Heat damaged and trans-fatty acids keep your cells from getting enough oxygen and other nutrients. Also be aware that most foods cooked in vegetable oils, which include almost any food at a restaurant or packaged in a box, contain heat damaged fatty acids. Most people are surprised to learn that arterial plaques around the heart are mostly made of heat damaged vegetable oils and trans fats, not saturated fat. For cooking purposes, I like to use unrefined coconut oil. I order mine from Wildnerness Family Naturals. Cold-pressed, unrefined olive oil is good, too.
- Eat unlimited non starchy vegetables. As a rule of thumb, 50% or more of the food you eat should be vegetables. Ideally, they should be close to 80% of your diet. The rest of your food can be beans, unprocessed grains, such as basmati rice and oats, and nuts that don’t go rancid easily such as almonds and walnuts.
The following are also very helpful.
- Use sea salt instead of table salt. Table salt is chemically processed and bleached. Sea salt contains many minerals which are needed for the body. I believe that much of the “dangers” of salt are because trace minerals have been removed from table salt.
- Avoid cow’s milk and cheese – Hormones, chemicals, and the processing of dairy products can cause health problems in many people. Products from goats and sheep appear to be safer. Unsweetened yogurt and kefir are fine.
- Cut back on meat – Red meat and pork should generally be avoided. Cutting back on fish, chicken, or turkey to less than 20% of your diet is also helpful. Ideally, meats should be free range and any beef should be grass-fed.
- Avoid soy products - There is growing evidence that soy contains ingredients that block the absorption of nutrients and can disrupt normal hormone balance in the body such as causing hypothyroidism.
- Avoid commercially milled wheat products - This includes most flour, breads, and breakfast cereals. When eating wheat products, try to use stone ground or sprouted versions. Wheat that is commmercially milled instead of stone ground is exposed to high temperatures which destroy many of the nutrients found in wheat. At the same time, there are many people who are wheat sensitive and may benefit from limiting all wheat.
- Multivitamins – Taking vitamins is not as important as the rest of the suggestions listed, but if you do take them, you should know that most of them, especially tablets and capsules aren’t absorbed well by the body. I personally use Vibe by Eniva. It is a liquid multivitamin that is designed to be absorbed by the body. It can be ordered online from www.enivamembers.com/drou. I would not take them everyday to avoid your body becoming dependent on them. I would suggest taking them for 2 weeks then taking a 3 week break before taking them again.
- Drink plenty of clean water - The standard recommendation is about 8 glasses or half a gallon per day. I personally use Multi-Pure water filters (www.multipureco.com; distributor ID 418481), rated by Consumer’s Digest as one of the best filters on the market. I also use M-water, a water additive that increases your drinking water’s ability to hydrate.
- Nutri-Energetics Systems Wellness Program – Using this system to test his patients, Dr. Ou has found that most people have malnutrition even when they eat healthy and take supplements. Using Nutri-Energetics correlates with an improvement of the body’s ability to digest food and to process nutrients, thus correcting malnutrition.
New Atlanta location coming August 2010
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1766 Century Blvd., Suite B
Atlanta, GA 30345
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