Why Diet Isn’t Enough – The Five Big Triggers For Disease And What To Do About Them.

Here are the five main triggers for disease and what to do about them… Having an autoimmune condition, or any other modern so-called “incurable” disease can seem like an insurmountable puzzle. You do every detox in the book, every diet tweak, every anti-inflammatory herb and potion and it’s still ticking away. There’s no wonder that people get frustrated and put themselves in the hands of doctors and end up taking the latest cast-off cancer drugs and biologics that the drug companies are experimenting with. So, let’s have a look at five areas that you need to address. These really are the big five.

1. Non-native EMF.

The planet creates its own electromagnetic fields, and we are adapted to these, but in recent decades we have really messed up with our fascination with technology. The big problem we have made for ourselves comes from two main sources – mobile phones and WiFi. Our physiologies are constantly bombarded with these EMFs and they do untold damage. Even if there is anything mentioned in the press about the dangers, it usually focuses on cancers caused by overuse of mobiles – there is little mentioned about its effect on autoimmune conditions, but the disruption to cellular signalling can cause havoc in the body. I won’t get technical here, but EMFs are not only possibly the number one cause of the steep rise in many diseases, but unless they are understood and brought under control very soon, they could even contribute to our extinction. It’s that serious.

What To Do About It.

Don’t get the latest mobile phone – the higher the “G” rating, the worse it gets. When you are carrying your mobile phone, have it switched off or at least to airplane mode. When talking on the phone, use speakerphone and keep it well away from your head. Use it only for texting and emergencies. Check your text messages every so often then switch it off again. Don’t let kids have mobile phones. Just don’t. Don’t let them muck around all day on tablets either, particularly with the WiFi turned on. Their brains are in a delicate stage of development and the risks just aren’t worth it. If you have to get them a basic phone for emergencies, get them to turn it off unless they are using it for an emergency call. Don’t listen to music with earphones, even if switched to airplane mode. It just puts the EMFs deeper into the brain. Switch your phone off in the car, which acts like a Faraday cage, blocking the signal and making the phone work harder, therefore making it more dangerous. Get rid of cordless landline phones. They can be worse than mobile phones when they “talk” to the base station. Get a good old corded phone instead. I used to recommend grounding/earthing mats to use when working on the computer and sleeping on a grounding/earthing sheet, and many still do, but these days I’m not so sure, particularly if hooked up to the earth pin of an electrical socket. This can cause more problems than it cures, so to be safe, just get those bare feet on the ground outside as much as possible. Consider getting pendants made of Shieldite or tourmaline to absorb EMFs, which you can then discharge by grounding them for 15 minutes a day or so. Yes, they do work. If you work on a laptop use it on battery power, don’t put it on your lap and wear orange glasses even in daylight (see section 3 on artificial light). As mentioned before, walk barefoot outside as often as possible on the grass, beach or even concrete if nothing else is available. This will dissipate a lot of the stored EMFs. Get rid of WiFi and hardwire your router to your computer with an Ethernet cable. Inconvenient? Yes, but not as inconvenient as the possible health risks. Our domestic electricity can also be a problem. Want to be really sure? Turn your electricity off at the circuit breaker while you sleep. Job done. Hire an EMF specialist to come and survey your home. It doesn’t cost much and might give you some very useful information, which it did when we got our house checked out. Say no to smart meters for your gas and electric. They also pump out EMFs. Oh, and get rid of the microwave too. They ruin food and they ruin your cells. Nasty.

2. Water and Hydration.

As most people know, our bodies are mostly water, so if we are dehydrated, the cells are not going to be working optimally. Some people never even drink water, relying on fizzy drinks, coffee and alcohol, so it’s no wonder there are so many imbalances. Fluoride also plays havoc with hydration.

What To Do About It.

We need to drink water that is as pure as possible, preferably spring water straight from the source, but not many of us have that option. Glass bottled spring water is perhaps the next best, followed by filtered water as long as your area has reasonable tap water to start with. Don’t get caught in the trap of thinking distilled water is a good move. I did, and it stripped me of zinc, taking away my sense of taste for two months. Yes, it chelates, but it chelates the good stuff too. Stay clear! However, if you live at the top of a high-rise apartment block, watch a lot of television, work on computers, use a mobile and have WiFi, drinking a gallon of the very best water a day might do no good. There are many more factors to consider including all the other ones here that stop the body hydrating properly even when you drink a lot. It’s all connected.

3. Artificial Light.

You might never have considered this, but it’s so important. Our bodies need natural light in the day to trigger cortisol production and they need darkness at night to trigger melatonin production. If that cycle is messed up, our bodies have very little chance of healing from anything. Our sleep is disturbed, we feel listless during the day and things start to go seriously wrong. When we stay up late, way past sunset, under light bulbs, watching TV and playing computer games or surfing the Internet, our caveman bodies are completely confused. Apart from the cortisol/melatonin problem, there is also the problem of artificial light messing around the cholesterol/vitamin A balance in the brain, which makes hydration almost impossible too, and is one of the reasons so many have high cholesterol – it’s certainly not down to eating butter and egg yolks! Check out Jack Kruse for the mind-boggling science of this. I won’t attempt to explain further.

What To Do About It.

It’s fairly simple actually. The receptors for this cortisol/melatonin cycle are mostly in the eyes. Paleolithic man never had to deal with blue light after sunset; it just didn’t exist. They spent all day outside, soaking up natural light from the sun, and at night they had the light of the moon, the stars, and later, campfires, which give out no blue light. We can trick our bodies though. If you wear glasses with orange coloured lenses such as Blublockers after sunset to cut blue light, and maybe get an app called f.lux to dim the computer screen and take out blue light at sunset, this will do a lot to reset melatonin production. In this way, the TV and computer become your “campfires”. You will immediately feel a huge improvement in your sleep patterns. Better still, ditch the lights and screens altogether and light candles at sunset. Just try it! It becomes so natural that if somebody switches on a light it feels like a horrible assault. Don’t go to bed late though – use that melatonin for a restful night’s sleep and go to bed when you are sleepy – listen to the body. At least be in bed by 11pm. Bear in mind the skin also reacts to light – there are circadian clocks in all our cells – so keep the bedroom dark. When you get up, go outside, watch the sun rise – barefoot preferably to earth yourself at the same time. Get that cortisol pumping. Don’t miss this out. It can make all the difference to the effectiveness of cutting the blue light in the evening.

4. Diet.

This is about as far as a lot of people go, and even then they usually get it wrong. They turn to vegetarianism, or veganism or even raw diets and juicing. I know – I made those mistakes. I won’t bang on about whether we are vegetarian or not – I covered that in my last blog HERE, but no, we aren’t. Eventually most people who have autoimmune problems, if they are looking down the right path, come across the carnivore diet. However, not only is it often misunderstood, but your basic paleo diet, huge as the improvement is over a junk food or grain and dairy based diet, just isn’t enough to shift an established disease. While on the subject of grains, even though we all know these days that they strip the gut of its good bacteria, act like sugars in the system and cause inflammation with their glutens etc, these problems might not even be the worst of their “evils”. These days they are often treated with potassium bromate. Bromine displaces iodine, which causes all sorts of problems including cancer and interferes with hydration. So, you’re on a good high fat/low carb paleo diet and you’re still ill. What to do? Well, look into the other factors in this post, but as far as diet goes, here are a few ideas… Giving up grains, sugars, dairy, pulses and nightshades, great improvements that they are, just isn’t enough. What most people miss is that 50 years ago we wouldn’t have had to be so strict with diet as we do today now we face so many other problems. Escalating environmental factors demand more radical diet considerations. I missed this crucial gem of wisdom for a long time. These days to have any chance of reversing something serious, you really need to be in nutritional ketosis, at least in the winter, especially in the northern hemisphere where vitamin D from the sun is scarce and we are designed to eat a lot less carbohydrate.

What To Do About It.

Use paleotrack.com to input your food and make sure your daily intake of calories is about 75-80% from good fats – animal fats, keep protein to about one gram per pound of lean bodyweight and keep the carbs to less than 40g, or 0g for some people with autoimmunity. This will induce ketosis, but is ketosis enough? Probably not, but it will take sugar out of the equation, which solves a lot of problems. Don’t rely too much on them or for too long. Once the gut is seeded, if you eat the right foods that don’t feed the “bad guys” the “good guys” should start to proliferate on their own. Some people can get a lot of problems from prologed use of probiotics because of the lactates that the bateria produce. If you have been taking them for two or three months with no significant improvement you might want to look at other factors. Even light can upset the gut flora balance, so get all the steps in order. Also, and please don’t ignore this step – up your intake of oily fish and shellfish. The massive amount of beneficial nutrients in these beasties, along with their ability to rebalance the body’s omega 3 levels make them possibly the best food on the planet. In short, seafood fixes the brain, and without fixing the brain, nothing else gets properly fixed. Try to eat the occasional meal of organ meats too – far more beneficial than muscle meats.

5. Stress and Emotional Balancing.

So what is stress? Well, it’s all of the above physical stressors for sure, but it’s perfectly possible to get all the above right and yet still have problems. Actually, why is it that so many people eat a horrible diet and stay up late watching tons of TV, yet they are still much healthier than we are? I believe that the answer lies in the way they process stress. Some of us get wound up by the slightest thing, hold on to anger and frustrations and worry all the time. This is like a constant attack on the body, and eventually the body starts to attack itself too. There are several things we can do about this…

What To Do About It.

We can learn to meditate. This is wonderful for relieving stress and taking us to a place of calm. However, many meditators are still beset with stress of all types as soon as they get up from their meditations. In this case, it’s very useful to look at various methods of emotional rebalancing. My particular favourites are EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and Byron Katie’s “The Work”. I have had staggering results in zapping stresses that even 30 years of meditation didn’t touch, and the ensuing physical benefits have been spectacular. After a long time of thinking such techniques were a bit “beneath me” I am glad I came to my senses and looked into them. They are very, very powerful. Apart from that, just get out in nature more, be grateful for the things you do have instead of moaning about things you don’t have and follow your heart and do what you enjoy. Spend quality time with friends and family too – work less, play more.

Conclusion.

All of the above come down to one thing really – our disconnects with our genetic history. People who still live in tune with the planet are usually very healthy. Some put this down to their hunter/gatherer diets and this certainly has an effect, but there are so many more ways that we have become disconnected from our natural way of living. I would strongly recommend that you look into the work of Dr Jack Kruse for the EMF science, artificial light and his amazing take on a ketogenic seafood based diet. His various series on EMF, light, water, brain/gut connection, leptin resistance and cold thermogenesis are mind-blowing. I was very honoured when he agreed to write the foreword for my book. For healing the gut and restoring gut flora, please research Dr Natasha Campbell McBride. She has done wonders in this field. For emotional balancing and how it relates to specific physical ailments, please look at Louise Hay, Robert Smith, Inna Segal and Byron Katie. Links to all of these can be found on our resources page HERE. Really want to understand this fully? Listen to this PODCAST and this PODCAST with Dr. Jack Kruse on the “Not Just Paleo” site.

Originally posted 2014-04-12 09:59:37.