Iron rules of health - 15

[Guest guest]

Relax! Sugars are good for our health after all!

 

Sugar cravings are not only peculiar to Indians, with the large

numbers of sweets being served in every celebration of religious

events and festivals, but certainly Indian cooks excel in these

delicacies probably more than anywhere else in the world! The

obvious purpose of such delicacies is to boost the mood of the

participants! In fact the word "sugar" ultimately originates from the

Sanskrit word sharkara, and the first production of sugar from sugar-

cane took place in India. We do not therefore need any further

explanation on why the Indian population has such a large incidence

of Diabetes.

 

Craving for sugar and many other causes of cravings can be found at:

 

http://www.naturalhealthtechniques.com/Diet%20%20&%

20Nutrition/food_cravings.htm

 

The contents of glyconutrients in many fruits and vegetables can be

found on:

 

http://www.naturalhealthtechniques.com/Basics%20of%

20Health/glyconutrients%20and%20sugars.htm

 

The best Glyconutrient foods are all available on the above site,

together with their sugar content.

 

Despite many glycosugar foods having been given there, author would

like to emphasize some particularly beneficial foods, in particular

for Indians.

 

· Molasses and jaggery - A leftover sludge of the sugar making

process. While teeming with minerals and vitamins, it contains more

calcium than milk, more iron than eggs, and more potassium than any

other food; all the minerals are highly bio-available. It's great for

problems of anemia. Tastes almost like honey, without slightly bitter

aftertaste. Same properties also for organic jaggery. This jaggery is

about thrice costlier than white sugar. Available in Mumbai. The

brown sugar, better known as Khandsari sugar is inferior to jaggery,

but convenient to use.

 

· Dates: Slightly sticky fresh dates are a good tonic for

children, pregnant/nursing mothers, petite kids, as already discussed

by author in various other posts on ayurveda. Dried dates can

be powdered for adding to milk when boiling, just before bedtime to

make a good tranquiliser.

 

· Dried Black grapes: They are used in many herbal remedies and

when soaked for 8 hours and taken, are great for anemia. Tablets made

from pounded mixture of dried black grapes, haritaki and ardusi

powder is a coagulant, helpful to stop nosebleed, menstrual and piles

bleeding. A jam made from these grapes is Drakshavaleha, useful for

pregnant women to stop vomits and obtain iron for foetus. Licorice is

another herb, useful to boost immunity as well restore hormones.

 

· Honey: There already exists a full file honey.pps in group

files, it can be given to infants also, if diluted in water. Please

ignore some of the comments on the above site that it should not be

given to babies.

 

· Blackberries: These are mentioned here since they are a

diabetic medicine, as well as good for curing jaundice.

 

· Aloe Vera: Use only if you have a plant in your home. Take

with a little turmeric and Saindhav salt on an empty stomach early in

the morning. Wait for an hour before taking anything else. This is a

good remedy for Jaundice, Hepatitis, Cirrhosis.

 

 

The role played by sugars in cellular communication has attracted a

large amount of scientific research in last decade (see

glycoscience.org). Studies on Glyco-sugars is a relatively new science

with considerable clinical research behind it. However, ayurvedic

acharyas have known this topic fully for many centuries. A number of

remedies were developed using honey, dates and raisins, combinations

of haritaki, ginger root and jaggery etc. If a mother finds her

breast milk supply reducing, she will feed jaggery solution in warm

water to the baby and take milk+dates for herself. Many tablets are

made using honey or guggulu as a binder. And when it comes to potent

micro medicines(Bhasmas), taking them in honey is almost a must. Ayurvedic

acharyas were saints and sage, community help their main concern, not

profit motives of modern pharma industry to develop patent products

such as Ambrotose (Mannatech).

 

What we may not be aware of, however is that guggulu also contains

glycosugars, being a natural tree resin. Rasayana means "causing

transport of rasa", and author used to wonder why most rasayana

tablets contain guggulu. This is because it is the glycosugar content

in the guggulu that causes the nutrients to reach the cells. Just as

there are essential fatty acids, essential amino acids and essential

vitamins and minerals needed by the body, so are there essential

sugars that the body needs too.

 

Due to our poor dietary habits and the degeneration of the

environment around the world, our bodies are lacking in some of these

essential sugars. If we are missing four, five, or six of these eight

vitally important sugars, we are always going to be lacking perfect

health because our cells are unable to communicate with each other

without them. The pharmaceutical companies know this and have spent

$billions in an attempt to manufacture synthetic glyconutrient

equivalents. (SCIENCE, March 23 issue, 2001). Our body needs these

biological carbohydrates, (saccharides) also now known as

glyconutrients or Super Carbs, namely: glucose, fucose, mannose,

xylose, galactose, N-acetylglucosamine, N-acetylglactosamine and -N-

acetylneurominic acid. These 8 essential sugars are needed by all of

our trillions of cells in order for them to function.

 

A number of high profile, well marketed diets (such as Low-Carb, Low-

Fat, etc ) have never bothered about these essential truths, possibly

oblivious to the fact that dietary galactose or glucose stimulates

calcium absorption in normal human volunteers, an activity that could

be beneficial in preventing calcium deficiency diseases, such as

osteoporosis. This is the secret of action of a panch gavya medicine

(Nari Sanjivani) for peri and post menopausal women, preventing

osteoporosis by balancing estrogen, restoring skin glow and blood

circulation by increasing the flexibility of the arteries.

 

We need to change our way of thinking, away from seeing carbohydrates

only as a fuel supply, to seeing them as vitally essential biological

carbohydrates. We crave refined carbohydrates and processed sugars

because we are nutritionally deficient in the essential sugars. Just

as children crave mud and ice because they are zinc deficient, salt

because they are sodium deficient and various foods to complete their

mineral, vitamin, amino acid and antioxidant deficiencies, so people

also crave sugar because of their protein deficiencies. Just look at

a this single fact that Cystic Fibrosis-Normalization (i.e. mucus

stops forming) occurs by adding Fucose to the diet. Thats right! No

other medicine is needed to reduce mucus formation! The working of

Green gram malt receipe for children, given in Message# 6572 may also

be clear now. It is a complete diet, consisting of carohydrates,

proteins, vitamins, glycosugars. The green gram proteins which are

easiest to digest. are made more so during the process of sprouting.

And some Vitamins also become more digestible during the process of

sprouting.

 

If we ate a perfectly balanced and healthy diet, we would not need to

obtain glycosugars from supplements. The human body previously had

the ability to manufacture all these essential elements for itself.

 

Biochemical pathways are extremely complex. For example, to produce

one molecule of fucose from glucose, involves 100's of chemical steps

where at any point along the way the process can be modified or

changed if the liver is not functioning at 100% efficiency, resulting

in non-production of this essential molecule which has potentially

serious health implications. However, if liver is detoxified, the

body is pre-programmed to fix itself.

 

We produce 150 billion new cells every day and to do this efficiently

we need 5 - 7 servings of fruits and veggies each day, according to

research reported in JAMA, 2002, 287: 3127 – 3129. Natural fruits,

vegetables and honey etc., can give us everything we might need.

Remember, none of the Pharma laboratories have ever yet been able to make a

single drop of human blood or urine, it always has to be created

solely from the natural foods that we ingest and by the body itself.

 

Many of the plants around the world that have a high glyconutrient

content are known as `healing plants.' These essential sugars are

also found in breast milk, coconut meat, echinacea, maize, pectins

from fruits, some algae, aloe vera, astragalus, saps, gums, garlic,

certain mushrooms, yeasts, husks and certain herbs, including stevia.

 

Finally, author would like to provide a quote from the book 'SUGARS

THAT HEAL' by Emil Mondoa MD:

 

"Even tiny amounts of these sugars - or lack of them - have a

profound effect. In test after test conducted at leading institutes

around the world, these saccharides have been shown to lower

cholesterol, decrease body fat, accelerate wound healing, ease

allergy symptoms and allay autoimmune diseases such as arthritis,

psoriasis, MS, and diabetes. Bacterial infections, including

recurrent ear infections in toddlers, often respond remarkably to

saccharides, as do many viruses, from herpes to HIV. The debilitating

symptoms of chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia frequently abate after

adding these sugars. And for cancer patients, saccharides mitigate

the toxic affects of radiation and chemotheraphy while increasing

their cancer killing effects, resulting in prolonged survival and

improved quality of life."

 

The Physicians' Desk Reference (PDR) for Non Prescription Drugs and

Dietary Supplements also lists these sugars.

 

"Clinically proven to be absolutely safe, glyconutrients are exactly

the same sugars that your body produces, making it physiologically

impossible for them to interfere with prescription drugs or harm you

in any way."

 

Safe and natural, mother's milk has these same essential sugars.

 

Does anyone have any doubts that mothers' milk is the best for baby,

and she should eat many of these sugars to obtain the best foundation

of health?

 

So diabetes or not, enjoy the good sugars and then you will be able

get rid of the diabetes. Sugars build the "satvic" mind,

leading to the health of the spiritual body which then takes care of

every disease the body might entertain. It was for this reason,

acharyas used to eat fruits vegetables and cereals most of the time.

Milk gave them animal proteins so that their food was then drawn from

all species. If we want to live as a vegan, please know that milk

contains Tryptophan, which is a precursor of serotonin (a

neurotransmitter), melatonin (a neurohormone), and niacin.

 

Tryptophan, found as a component of dietary protein, is particularly

plentiful in chocolate, oats, bananas, dried dates, milk, yogurt,

cottage cheese, sesame, peanuts. meat, fish, turkey, and chicken.

Therefore, milk+dates is a tranquiliser. The appearance of cottage

cheese in Budwig cancer fighting diet and sesame in Sankranthi sweet

may not surprise you any more. And that also tells us how acharyas

new the importance of sweet food items, without coining terms such as

glycosugars, and guarding community health by asking people to eat

Sesame-jaggery sweet (Tilgul) on sankranthi, neem leaves on Gudi

padwa etc. When some practice is built into religious "karma", people

adopt it automatically. This tells us that vaidyas should develop

proficeincy for community health, rather than trying to give

medicines whose formulations are kept secret to develop monopoly.

Indians struck down with cancer, who may find flaxseed oil, flaxseed

and cottage cheese difficult to swallow in the Budwig diet, may

substitute these items with sesame oil and seeds and yoghurt. The

reason that black sesame seeds are frequently recommended with

jaggery for patients suffering from excess bleeding in piles,

menorrhagia may also be clear. These foods energise the pancreas and

cells to utilise glucose in the blood which is why patients who eat

dates remain within normal limits even when fasting/random blood sugars are measured. And though their sugar is seen to be within normal limits,

they still prefer to continue their Panch Gavya medicines in smaller

doses, as beneficial effects are experienced.

 

We end our discussion where we began, with Diabetes.

 

To sum up, glyconutrients are essential in the formation of higher

dhatus, which governs the health of both mind and body. Lack of

higher dhatus leads to infertility. Meda, obesity and infertility are

connected, as observations have shown.

 

Just as no organ works alone, no cell works alone, no system works

alone, and no nutritional element works alone, so people still need

to be more fully aware of this. There is far too much deception out

there about these facts. We can't bake a cake with flour alone. We

need a great many ingredients. Cells too need a great many

ingredients.

 

When all the ingredients needed for optimal nutrition are present,

they kick in a self-healing autonomic system response, so that the

healing physician that dwells within is called into action. This is

the catalyst that ends up triggering our self-healing systems to

repair any cellular damage there might be. And then the symptoms of

cellular damage or cellular malfunction go away on their own.

 

This completes our discussion on cellular nutrition.

 

In the next post in this series, we discuss bio-identical hormones or

hormone-like substances, which are necessary to mitigate the effects

of the chemical sea around us, a need perhaps not imagined by ancient

acharyas but one which has become a vital requirement in the function

of cellular health. Some discussion on Glycosugars will be

encountered there too.

 

Editing help from Jane MacRoss is gratefully acknowledged.

 

Dr Bhate

[Guest guest]

On 5/21/06, Shirish Bhate <shirishbhate > wrote:

>

> Relax! Sugars are good for our health after all!

>

 

 

I think honey is a wonderful medicine. It has gotten to the point that I

will occasionally take a spoonful of it when I am sick, even though I don't

have the urge to add it to food very often. I don't think it takes very much

of these substances to be effective. Our big mistake here in America is

thinking that if a little is good then a whole lot is better. That could be

why we have such high rates of diabetes too, the overeating, overdoing, and

over-the-top types of living.

Darla

[Guest guest]

ayurveda, "Shirish Bhate"

<shirishbhate wrote:

>

> Relax! Sugars are good for our health after all!

>

I am about to go take a spoonful of honey and see if it helps this

strep throat I have. The penicillin should kick in soon I hope, but it

is very uncomfortable. Honey is the best thing I can think of for a

sore throat or cough, next to warm salt water.

Darla

[Guest guest]

ayurveda, "leethe9" <lethe9 wrote:

> I am about to go take a spoonful of honey and see if it helps this

> strep throat I have. The penicillin should kick in soon I hope, but it

> is very uncomfortable. Honey is the best thing I can think of for a

> sore throat or cough, next to warm salt water.

 

Two pinches of dry ginger powder, (and 2 pinches of Vacha powder(Acorus

Calamus)if available in house), mixed into honey will take care of

throat.

 

One wisdom of using honey. More than 15 ml honey is not needed at a

time. HOney goes to blood in 60 minutes and in another 30 minutes, body

throws excess away through urine, as you can check yourself, 90 minutes

after taking: giving rise to amber color urine. If you are recycling

urine through self urine threapy, then it does not matter. Else

precious honey goes waste.

 

Dr Bhate