Simplistic Rules for Shopping

January is the time when many will spend a lot of money on things they perceive as healthy.  They will join gyms, buy equipment, and set lofty goals to do a 30, 60, or 90 day challenge; then once done will revert back to before and be back to where they started.   Ironically many do this year after year.  Health is not complicated; it is simple, you just have do it.  The thing that you have the most control over is what you eat and what you feed your family.  The following is what we do.  Really there are only two rules that I follow when I do the grocery shopping.

Rule #1: If it has sugar added to it, don’t buy it.  

Like every parent today, there has never been a time when I was worried that my children were getting enough sugar.  Manufacturers put sugar in almost everything, doubt me? Go and read the labels on the food in your home.  For as simple as this rule sounds, as you start to read labels, you will see how hard this is to follow.  Know that this also includes anything that is a sweetener which would include things like high fructose corn syrup, sucrose, honey, maple syrup, and all of the other natural and artificial sweeteners.  Why do this you ask?  This ties back to the Warburg Effect talked about in the last post.

Rule #2: If you can’t read it or don’t know what it is then don’t buy it.

Since you are already reading the label to see if it has sugar and you come across an ingredient that looks like it should be given in the national spelling bee, then chances are it is not all that good for you.  If you don’t know what the ingredients are then don’t buy it.  For me, if the list of ingredients is really long I don’t even bother to read them, I just put the item back.  The simpler the better.  The litmus test is being able to read the ingredients, however as you go along you will find many things are renamed or called something that is readable.   Be wary of descriptions that are vague–like natural favors, spices, or caramel coloring.   If need be take your phone out of airplane mode and search for the ingredient listed.

If you are trying to apply these rules at all times, then the places that you can eat out at and also the items that you can eat from there just became very, very small.  Traveling was and is the hardest thing to do because of the way we eat.   However, with a little forethought you can avoid having a hungry, angry family.




Otto Warburg

In the early part of the last century Otto Warburg made an important discovery.  One that was the basis for the way that we treated Kyanna’s cancer, and really how we live our lives now.  Know as “the Warburg effect”, Otto Warburg noticed that cancers cells, even in the presence of oxygen would ferment glucose.  Explained in the most basic of terms, cancer cells use sugar as their fuel.

Your body’s cells have two ways that they can produce energy.  One is through aerobic respiration (with oxygen), the other is anaerobic respiration (without oxygen, ferments sugar).  Under normal circumstances your cells will use aerobic respiration, however in times when you need more energy, your cells will use anaerobic respiration, which is much less efficient but can give you the energy you need in times of need.  Times this is important could be things like running for your life from something, exercising hard, or just under constant stress.  Normally your body will shift between these two modes, but with cancer it seems that it will get stuck in the anaerobic respiration as Warburg found.  The question then becomes how do you get the cells back into aerobic respiration?

With any living organism, if you take away its food source it will have two options, one is die and the other is adapt and eat something else.  For a cell this would mean going back to aerobic respiration.  How do you starve a cancer cell?  In this case you stop eating sugar, anything that will turn into sugar (carbs), and things that are naturally high in sugar (fruits).   Besides cancer cells, your body also needs sugar.  Namely, your brain needs sugar to operate.  However referring back earlier in the paragraph, in the absence of sugar your body will adapt and will produce what are called ketones.  Ketones then act as the sugar that your body needs, and the beauty is that cancer cells are not able to use ketones.  This is the reasoning behind why our family did the Ketogenic Diet, and to some extent continues to do so.  Not only can this diet be helpful for cancer, but also epilepsy and weight loss (since your body is converting fat you eat as well as the fat you have stored into fuel).   You can easily find if you are in ketosis with a simple monitor that will analyze your blood with strips, much like a diabetic strips.  This is something that we monitored with Kyanna every couple of days.

Electromagnetic fields and frequencies (EMFs) in the most simplistic explanation can cause stress on the body.  The stress it causes will range per individual, because everyone reacts to stress differently.  Electromagnetic fields and frequencies are everywhere.  They are inundated in our lives and can be a constant form of stress for people.  It is then best if you can mitigate your exposure as much as possible.   Please refer to previous posts regarding how to mitigate EMFs.  Since there is more than one way to deal with a problem, I am going to address many of the other things that we did with Kyanna and by and large still do.  Many of these are simple things with the hardest part being that you actually have to do them.  This will include such things as diet, therapies, and detoxing that we did and still do.  These are are things we did after we found out Kyanna had cancer.  I wish we had done all these things before Kyanna got sick.  Then if she still would have gotten brain cancer we would know we controlled what we could have controlled.  In my opinion, the best way to prevent cancer would be to act like you already have it.  Make the changes now because these are all things that you can control.  Do not wait until there already is a problem.

For much more information on Warburg’s theory, how it corresponds to current theories, and newer research efforts in cancer research because of it, I would suggest reading Tripping Over The Truth by Travis Christofferson.