Working with both sick and healthy people and utilizing the energy of the acupuncture points, has given me a leading edge on what people today term as alternative healthcare. Not only are the “doomed” getting well, but athletes who were on their way to exhaustion, possible heart failure, as well as other ailments, are actually staying healthy while increasing their endurance and performance.

As I poured through the research materials of “diet effects on athletes” I became just as frustrated as I am with medical research! I am constantly asked to become involved with various research studies, but they are all based on groups-not individuals. Individuals alone have so many variances in their body chemistries as well as environments that just considering and narrowing down the parameters of the study barely scratches the surface!

Athletes, in some ways are at higher risk for more severe or traumatic ailments than most of the population due to their increased need and use of the hormone adrenalin (as well as many other hormones). This combined with their diet which is consistently higher in carbohydrates that requires more insulin and adrenalin. Recommending a healthy diet to an athlete is sometimes like leading a horse to water to make him drink. Most athletes are pushed to their limits and brainwashed into believing that the high carbohydrate diets are what gives them the energy and stamina to compete. This could not be further from the truth.

Yes, it is true that the body uses carbohydrates for every living process in our body. Carbohydrates are broken down to sugar. This provides energy for our day to day activities and is a major “food source” for our brains. The problem is most athletes are eating diets high in simple carbohydrates based on “inconclusive or skewed” research which is done by mostly biased companies. This “artificial sugar” is causing chaos with the body processes, which includes scrambling the brain, since it too runs on sugar! Worse yet, we are taught to think that following the food pyramid for our regular diet is appropriate and we are completely convinced that the only way to get fiber is by eating grains. This could not be further from the truth! Long before I was finished with college, the government took the land away from the farmers and subsidized them by promoting grain sales. If you research history, it was at this point in time that our food pyramid was “upgraded” (in my book, turned upside down) and promoted as a more healthy way to eat. Recommendations for whole grains and fiber were increased based on carbohydrates instead of noting that we get more than enough fiber if we eat a balance of fruits and vegetables. It was shortly after this that all the health problems such as Diabetes, ADHD, ADD, Cancer, and Heart Disease increased.

Conveniently enough, prescription drug use increased, health insurance fees increased, and disease skyrocketed. (Add this to technological advances which made it more convenient for people to entertain themselves by watching TV or playing videogames instead of exercising.) This increase of disease was not because of some major breakthrough in testing technology to find diseases early, but instead through the increased intake of carbohydrates (Enriched grains being worse than whole grains that have not been processed to death!), which in turn scrambled our body’s ability to balance it’s “State of Well Being.”

First of all, the best source of carbohydrates are complex ones. “Grazing” on “low glycemic index” foods or complex carbohydrates provides energy without the constant insulin flux. This in and of itself is a better approach to building glucose stores, but you still have the constant adrenalin flux which occurs not only with exercise, but also to regulate blood sugar. Immediately after insulin is released to regulate the blood sugar, adrenaline is released to regulate the effects of the insulin. The constant “abuse” of this hormonal relationship with athletes eating diets high in carbohydrates (especially the simple carbohydrates) as well as requiring increased needs for adrenalin for activities, is causing severe adrenal burn out. Low adrenalin levels create communication problems with other hormones which in turn are “back-ups” to the heart. If the heart has to do all the work by itself without the backup hormonal organs, eventually you end up with a heart attack. Many of our young athletes die of sudden heart attacks and it’s labeled as “unknown cause”. Add to this that feeding the body “too many sugars” overfeeds the yeast which are natural flora in our bowels. Yeast love sugar, and the more they feed, the more our enzymatic processes become scrambled. Before too long, without the proper enzymes and acidity, all kinds of parasites can enter the body and cause disease. These parasites thrive on sugar too! Thus, the high carbohydrate diets feed the parasites and yeast, which in turn creates the diabetes, and cancers our athletes are getting later in life. These digestive problems and disease processes further stress the heart!

The bottom line is this: Our athletes are scrambling their hormonal production and destroying their bowel flora, which in turn is causing multiple “unknown causes” of ailments.

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