February 2008
In This Issue:
Do you have blood tests from your physical?
The Quality of Health Care Delivered to Adults in the United States
For many of you, eliminating sugar, processed foods, alcohol and caffeine may be a huge and sudden change. Up until now, maybe your hectic and busy lifestyle has lead you to shop and eat this way. Now it’s time for a change. You want to be healthy, but you are sensing that there is a steep learning curve ahead.
Let us give you a few pointers on eating during the Cleanse…
1) Plan ahead – don’t shop when you are hungry and don’t wait until you are tired and starving to cook either.
2) Have some simple quick recipes ready - I like to buy chicken breasts and marinate them in any type of vinaigrette in a Tupperware container in the morning or the night before. When I get home, I apply some olive oil to them, add salt and pepper, and sear both sides in a hot skillet for 1 minute. Then I pop them in the toaster oven at 350 degrees for about 18 minutes. If I use the oven, I can roast vegetables that have been coated with olive oil, salt and pepper at the same time I’m cooking the chicken. I roast red potatoes, yams, sweet potatoes, onions, beets, carrots, broccoli, or any vegetable that can be cut in to thick chunks. If I roast a lot at the same time, I have left-overs for lunch or dinner the next day.
3) Use technology – We have a rice cooker that is good for all type of rice and most grains. Just throw in the rice and water (proportions are usually 2 to one, water to grain, but occasionally vary) and press the button. It cooks itself, never burns, and stays warm for hours. Whole Foods and as well as others stores, now have Indian food in pouches that can be put in boiling water, torn open and served over rice.
We can review them from a holistic point of view. Today many busy doctors scan the numbers and look for the high and low values that have been flagged by the laboratory. We see many tests that show early stages of health problems that have not yet crossed out of the lab’s reference ranges.
We also have noticed a startling trend in lab tests…
Over the years as America has gotten sicker and more overweight, the reference ranges have become more lenient. For instance, the American Diabetic Association (ADA) considers a fasting blood glucose level of 127 or above diabetes. I’ve seen Austin labs with a reference range that extended to 130. So a patient with a glucose level of 129 might not be noticed if the doctor is just looking for the highs and lows, but they are already a diabetic according to the ADA. With our understanding of holistic medicine, we can see digestive problems, subtle liver, kidney, thyroid and metabolism problems before they have an official disease diagnosis that your MD was trained to find.
From the New England Journal of Medicine:
“Our results indicate that, on average, Americans receive about half of recommended medical care processes... These deficits, which pose serious threats to the health and well-being of the U.S. public, persist despite initiatives by both the federal government and private health care delivery systems to improve care.”
