Eating With Your Skin

Due to my diagnosis of pre-daibetes I've been reading a book called There is Cure for Diabetes by Dr. Gabriel Cousens. I would highly recommend this book for anyone with or without the threat of diabetes in their life. I'll point out a couple interesting points made in this book before getting to the odd title of "Eating With Your Skin".

Side Point #1 - There is already a cure

First, there is a cure for diabetes. Yes, we have those diabetes walks out there, and yes we have health companies trying to find a cure, but there is actually already a cure for most diabetes patients and that is diet. Once sugar, meat, dairy, and processed food is cut out of a diet, even the worst diabetics can be less diabetic than a "normal" person. However, we're too scared of a diet like that, and rather we want these benefit walks to invent some miracle pill. If you have a family member suffering with diabetes, you need to tell them about this book.

Side Point #2 - Diabetes is mainly influenced by diet

Diabetes is increasing in America at a rapid rate, which tells us diet and lifestyle contribute to it heavily. Dr. Cousens shows several studies were tribes of all sorts have a tremendously sharp increase in diabetes upon taking up a Westernized diet. Additionally, there are projections stating that all individuals born after 2000 will have a 50% chance of diabetes. All signs point to our increasingly terrible diet -- pseudo health foods being part of the problem. Our genotype allows for diabetes, and our food and lifestyle choices allow it to happen (otherwise known as the phenotype). As I'm starting to discover this is the case with most disease, including cancer.

Eating With Your Skin

Everyone has heard that vitamin D is good for you. Beyond that Dr. Cousens points out some very interesting ideas and statistics. First, vitamin D is actually hormone, produced by your body. Hormones are responsible for regulating a variety of processes going on in the body. The best way to get vitamin D is the sun, as you may have heard. In this day and age we are taught "sun evil". Personally, I never feel more invigorated or in a better mood than when I've just spent a weekend day in the sun. I don't think there is a coincidence to that. Now, obviously the sun is starting to give us cancer, because of the harmful rays. However, in my unprofessional opinion our obsession with sunblock is stealing away the remaining benefits. Here are some facts from Dr. Cousens:

• One 20 minute full body exposure to the summer sun will result in putting enough vitamin D in the body for 48 hours
• If you're fat, you don't produce as much vitamin D from sun exposure
• Using sunscreen of even a low spf of 8 reduces vitamin D production by 95 percent
• 75 percent of women in the US are vitamin D deficient

The conclusion seems like a no brainer to me, and that is spend the first 20 minutes in the sun without sunscreen on.