Teen Rap: Hormone Facts Adults Don't Always KnowWritten by Dr. Loretta Lanphier, ND, CN, HHP
Teen Rap: Hormone Facts Adults Don’t Always Know By Dr. Loretta Lanphier, ND, CN, HHPAre you wondering how to handle your body’s changes, acne, mood swings, anger, or just plain stress? Here’s scoop—there’s a possible solution to these symptoms of hormonal problems that is simple to determine and inexpensive, too. Stressing Out Teens today experience many hormonal imbalance symptoms as a result of pressures of being a teen today. Too often you’re exposed to chemicals in foods and in environment from pesticides, plastics, beauty products, cleaners, and lawn and garden chemicals, just to name a few sources. Water alone can contain hormones. You’re exposed to so much junk food, fast food, and soda. Dairy products and farmed fish have added hormones and antibiotics. Antibiotics to control yeast and acne also stress body. Your body can be overloaded by time you enter your teen years. Many of you are being put on birth control pills to control premenstrual syndrome (PMS)— symptoms that occur before or at beginning of your period--or to prevent pregnancy. Or maybe you’re on medication for ADD or depression. Then there’s all stress that a typical teenager today is under with school work, social life, dating, sports, expectations to “be best,” high achievement pressure, summer school, get into college, etc. Your home environment might be stressing you with sibling arguments, disagreements with parents, a death in family, alcoholism, an unexpected divorce, or a parent running off. Or you’re helping a friend going through some of these issues and share their pain. The list is endless. What Happens to Body Adrenal glands, which regulate hormones in your body, do a good job under normal circumstances. But too much stress creates hormonal imbalances, which then creates emotional instability. Your adrenals can get exhausted, then can cause hormone imbalances, or hormone imbalances can cause adrenal exhaustion. Regardless of cause, results are same. So to handle all of stress, your adrenals produce a large amount of a steroid called cortisol. This over production leads to a huge reduction of hormone progesterone. When this happens, another hormone estrogen takes over. So now two hormones are affected. They have become unbalanced.
| | Low Fat FallacyWritten by Jim Foster
I guess we all know that obesity is at epidemic levels. It's drummed into us from all angles. Isn't it strange that we have biggest range of low-fat foods available but we keep getting fatter?Isn't somebody going to stand up and say "It hasn't worked"? In 70's and 80's we were told that fat was enemy, and carbohydrates were good. The USDA Healthy Food Pyramid had carbs as base (6-11 servings per day). There was however, little mention of quality of these carbohydrates. Manufacturers were quick to respond, and began bringing out "Low Fat", "Fat-Free", and "Lite" versions of various food products. These are generally biggest selling items, and have resulted in lot's of clever marketing tactics - in fact anything to make consumer feel guilty, and look for "Fat-Free" option. Milk - Is Whole Milk Really That Bad? Most of our modern milk undergoes process of homogenisation. This process forces fat globules into an atomiser (i.e. tiny holes) that will form tiny particles. These particles are then evenly dispersed throughout milk, giving milk a uniform appearance. Most of our low fat, trim, super-trim milks are created using this process. However, recent research has shown that structural changes do occur in homogenisation process. In unhomogenised milk, an enzyme called xanthine oxidase would pass throught digestive system, and be secreted harmlessly through bowel. The homogenisation process allows this enzyme to enter bloodstream. Some researchers are saying enzyme attacks issues of our heart and arteries, encouranging an increase in cholesterol levels! Low Fat Hasn't Worked
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