When we eat or give to our children white rice, white bread, white sugar or totally white salt it puts an absolute demand that we supplement with magnesium and other minerals.
One hardly needs to have a magnesium test if patient’s diet consists of any of the prominent white processed foods. White rice, white sugar, white bread and white pasta are white because they are stripped of their mineral, vitamin and fiber content. These are actually poisonous foods because of the consequences of them starving us of magnesium but it will be thousands of years before scientists and medical officials wake up to that fact.
When consumed these foods and thousands of processed foods on the supermarket shelves, which are made with white sugar and white flour, demand that we supplement with magnesium or we are destined, without doubt, to breakdown and get sick. En mass we have sold out our health to a type of civilization that poisons its water and food and deprives the public of basic nutrition requirements. Yes we can eat these foods with less stress on bodies if we supplement heavily with lost vitamins and minerals but there is no way to make up lost fiber; and billions of people around the world cannot afford supplements.
Refining and processing of cane sugar and whole grains has had far-ranging detrimental effects on the health of the entire western civilization. This has resulted in losses of minerals, vitamins, enzymes, fiber, antioxidants, probiotics, proteins, essential fats and phytonutrients. It renders the food into an “empty calorie” source with little or no nutritional value. Ninety percent of Americans’ household food budget is spent on processed foods, the majority of which are filled with additives and stripped of nutrients.
Choosing refined grains such as white bread, rolls, sugary low-fiber cereal, white rice, or white pasta over whole grains can boost your heart attack risk by up to 30 percent. At least seven major studies show that women and men who eat more whole grains (including dark bread, whole-grain breakfast cereals, popcorn, cooked oatmeal, brown rice, bran, and other grains like bulgur or kasha) have 20 to 30 percent less heart disease. In contrast, those who opt for refined grains have more heart attacks, insulin resistance, and high blood pressure.
When rice is made, it goes through a variety of processes, including going through a husker to remove the grain husks. Once that process is done, brown rice is made. However, to make white rice, there are added steps that are needed. To get white rice, the inner husk (or bran) is removed and the grain is polished using glucose. This may not seem like much of a difference, but it removes several important nutrients. To get those nutrients back, many companies then reintroduce those same nutrients from synthetic sources. Those lost nutrients are not put back in so we can expect to see deficiencies in Vitamin E, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Folacin, Potassium, Magnesium and Iron from those who consume white rice. The dietary fiber of white rice is a quarter of what is in brown rice.
Everything has sugar in it. It is the cheapest preservative the food industry uses to increase the shelf life of processed foods. This highly refined substance we call sugar is devoid of any of the essential elements necessary for its efficient metabolism by the organism. To compensate for this, the body borrows B vitamins from the reserves in the tissues. This weakens the nervous system causing hyperactivity in children and more involved disease problems for adults.
A diet filled with refined sugars is one cause of behavior problems, moods swings, and attention deficits in young children. Sugar is, by far, the greatest addiction in the United States. It is far more excessive than all other forms of substance abuse combined. Consider that in 1895 the average American consumed 3 to 4 pounds of sugar per year. Today, the average American consumes his or her own bodyweight in sugar every year. All of this highly refined “rocket fuel” must be metabolized rapidly by the pancreas. The pancreas must produce insulin, the hormone responsible for converting blood glucose into the stored form glycogen and eventually triglycerides.
Old time mills ground flour slowly, but today’s mills are designed for mass-production, using high-temperature, high-speed steel rollers. The resulting white flour is nearly all starch, and even much of today’s commercially processed whole wheat flour has lost a fair amount of nutritional value due to these aggressive processing methods. Nearly everyone knows that white flour is not healthy for us for so much is lost in the refining process:
Half of the beneficial unsaturated fatty acids
Virtually all of the vitamin E
Fifty percent of the calcium
Seventy percent of the phosphorus
Eighty percent of the iron
Ninety eight percent of the magnesium
Fifty to 80 percent of the B vitamins
There are also chemical treatments in the processing that result in the formation of alloxan in the flour. Alloxan, or C4 H2O4N2, is a product of the decomposition of uric acid. According to Dr. Hari Sharma’s Freedom from Disease, alloxan causes free radical damage to DNA in the beta cells of the pancreas, causing them to malfunction and die. Scientists have long known that alloxan produces selective destruction of the beta cells of the pancreas, causing hyperglycemia and ketoacidosis in laboratory animals. Alloxan is structurally similar to glucose, which might explain why the pancreatic beta cells selectively take it up.
Alloxan is a poison that is used to produce diabetes in healthy experimental animals so that researchers can then study diabetes “treatments” in the lab. Alloxan causes diabetes because it spins up enormous amounts of free radicals in pancreatic beta cells, thus destroying them. There is no commercial application for alloxan — it is used exclusively in the medical research industry because it is so highly toxic.
Pure sea salts contain as many as 92 essential minerals; however, refined common table salts contain only 2 elements, sodium and chloride. In June of 2006, citing increased risk of hypertension, heart diseases and stroke, the American Medical Association issued a call to have salt removed from the “generally recognized as safe” food ingredient list.[1] Citing increased risk of these chronic diseases, the American Medical Association issued a call to have salt removed from the “generally recognized as safe” food ingredient list. But what the AMA is too dim-witted to say is that it is the highly processed table salts that are poisonous to human health, not real whole sea salt with all the minerals still intact.
The truth is that table salt is not healthy not because of all the sodium but because it’s presented for consumption without the normal mineral balance. Refined cocoa is cocaine; refined poppy is heroine, all three create addictions. Salt is a learned taste, not a natural one. Just watch a baby’s facial expression of disgust when they’re first given salt.
Whole sea salts have those important minerals such as potassium and magnesium still intact. The synergistic effect of all the minerals in whole, unrefined salt helps the body to stay in balance. It is best to use natural sea salts (gray, pink, course, fine, etc.) in moderation for ones salt needs. Common table salt unfortunately contains aluminum used as an anti-caking agent. Aluminum is a toxic metal that has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease and has no place in a healthy diet.
Sodium is crucial for maintaining the health of the human system. It permeates the fluid between cells. Besides being a component of extracellular fluid that bathes every living cell, sodium is important in our blood and our lymphatic fluid. It is also necessary for the production of hydrochloric acid, the digestive enzyme secreted by the stomach in order to digest protein. Along with potassium, sodium is required for the proper functioning of our nerves and the contraction of our muscles. (The heart, as you may know, is our hardest – working muscle.) Finally, sodium is necessary to maintain several kinds of equilibrium – fluid balance, electrolyte balance and pH (acid/alkaline) balance – which are all of the utmost importance to the body.
Unrefined salt does not cause high blood pressure whereas regular refined salt does. All the scientific studies that have been done showing that salt “causes” high blood pressure were done on people, who took regular, refined salt. In the early 1980s, one Harvard researcher studied the blood pressure of people who follow the macrobiotic diet. He found that macrobiotic people, despite eating a fairly salty diet with generous amounts of miso, shoyu, salty pickles, etc, had very healthy blood pressure levels of about 10 points below the national average.
The most important macro nutrient we need to recover inside of ourselves and our patients when we eat white and processed foods in general is magnesium but all the minerals processed out of white foods are important. Minerals provide the spark for most of the body’s cellular processes and keep them running efficiently. Inorganic mineral nutrients are also essential in the structural composition of hard and soft body tissues and are necessary in processes such as the action of enzyme systems, the contraction of muscles, nerve reactions and the clotting of blood. Humans need a wide range of minerals to maintain good health and we need them in the right amounts and relations to each other (co-action). Small variations in established minerals levels can cause pathological states to occur.
Our body relies on ionic minerals and trace minerals to conduct and generate billions of tiny electrical impulses every second of our existence.
Mineral nutrients consist of two classes: the major elements such as calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, iodine, and potassium; and trace elements such as copper, cobalt, manganese, fluorine, zinc and many others. All of these must be supplied in our diet because the body is unable to manufacture its own, and can only maintain its mineral balance for short periods of time. When the intake of minerals in our system becomes depleted, it draws from stores laid down in the muscles, the liver and bones.
Magnesium supplementation is the single greatest thing we can do to help people avoid serious diseases or recover from the ones they already have. Dr. Frank D. Gilliland, professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine, and his colleagues monitored more than 2,500 pre-teens and teen-agers in a dozen Southern California communities, tracking what kids eat and measuring lung function (how well their lungs work). The team has found that children who eat lots of antioxidant-rich fruit and juices-as well as those who get an abundance of magnesium and potassium-perform better on lung function tests than children who eat less of the nutrients.[2]
One has to wonder what health and medical officials are thinking when it comes to nutrition and these basic foods that have become the staples of modern man’s diet. They never seem to understand or know that the cause of most chronic diseases starts with the foods people are eating. Typically, if you are a mainstream allopathic physician, preventive medicine is limited to elective stress testing, mammography, screening for prostate-specific antigen, periodic lipid profiling and giving some kind of lip service to life-style changes and diet. This kind of medicine though offers only a shadow of preventive medicine.
The white menances cause degenerative diseases on a massive scale through the creation of nutritional deficiency. Harvard University recognizes this saying that people who regularly eat whole grains develop cancer less often than those who don’t. A 1998 overview of 40 studies that looked at 20 types of cancer linked consumption of whole grains with reduced risks of stomach, colon, mouth, gallbladder, and ovarian cancers.[3]
Magnesium and Cardiologists
It is with no surprise that when one walks into a cardiologist’s office for an examination, the patient will not be asked questions that expose magnesium deficiencies. Can you imagine never checking the oil levels and running your car without lubricant? Well magnesium is the “oil” of the heart and it insures its proper function. One hardly needs to have a test if a patient’s diet consists of any of the prominent white foods. When consumed they demand that we supplement with magnesium or we are destined, without doubt, to break down and get sick.
Case Study: Fifty year old builder and painter complaining about back problems and his doctor’s recommendation to have major back surgery. He is able to work without much problem as long as he does not lift heavy weights but yesterday I saw him lift and move two heavy bags of cement without suffering. His actual complaint has more to do with severe leg cramps though he is not potassium deficient in his diet. Typical third world diet consists of WHITE RICE, WHITE BREAD AND WHITE PASTA. His physician typically does not think about magnesium deficiency and would just cut this gentleman up risking a lifetime of pain and agony, which is a risk of major back surgery. The chance of his obvious magnesium deficiency (no test needed) not being involved in his pain and cramps is ZERO. Magnesium deficiency ALWAYS leads to a breakdown in some organ or system eventually causing pain and discomfort. Cessation of breath ALWAYS leads to death; deprivation of water for ten days will ALWAYS lead to death. Recommendation for this man – heavy magnesium supplementation through oral and mostly transdermal approaches. It is impossible to practice real medicine without practicing magnesium medicine for the vast majority of people suffering from disease are suffering from magnesium deficiency whether their blood shows it or not.
My name is Hallgrimur Magnusson and I am an anesthesiologist in Iceland. The Icelandic medical authorities have canceled my license to prescribe intravenous magnesium. One of the reasons why is that many people came to me and asked for this kind of treatment because many kinds of pain including restless leg syndrome. They said to me that the references I gave them were useless because I bought the book on the internet. I sent them a letter saying that 60 to 70% of people in western countries are magnesium deficient but they could not find references to satisfy themselves of this so their official position is that I took this out of the blue. Incredibly they say they cannot find anything in Medline that support my theories. They say that magnesium has no effect on blood vessels, no effect on muscles and no effect on hemoglobin curvature or the release of oxygen too the cells. They say that giving magnesium intravenously is a dangerous thing to do and outweighs all benefits.
I recently this letter from an anesthesiologist telling me that he routinely used magnesium in his work but is now being pressured to stop. This is part of the dark ages that contemporary medicine is passing through. Its pharmaceutical masters do not want people to get better all they really want is to sell their pharmaceuticals that are profitable. It’s a crying shame.
Reader Comments:
“I’ve been a health coach for over 25 years and have been supporting hospice for those years. We are in the process of raising funds to build an 8 bed stand alone hospice house in California that will not charge any of its residents. Amazingly there are only a couple of hospice houses in all of California! I am also an EFT practitioner and know the power of touch. The emotional component of wellness is a very large. When we are able to reconnect or diffuse that the negative side of that connection healing can begin. Thanks again for your consistent/persistence explaining about the foundation of healing and life. If we would only accept the fact that the footing and foundation of a structure must be in place FIRST before we can expect the structure to stand.”
“I really enjoy receiving your newsletter; however I totally disagree with your opinion of hospice care. In my experience hospice is there to make sure the patient passes on period. I worked many years in allopathic medicine and never considered that my own mother would be put into a morphine coma and given 20 cc of air to stop her heart by the hospice nurse sent to given her at home care after her final radiation treatment. My mother fought this, she wanted to live. Not knowing what hospice had in mind I did not see the signs until the family were asked to leave the room as a pretense to personal care privacy. Then told she was gone moments later. When I questioned the nurse she admitted what she did and said euthanasia is standard hospice practice. Needless to say I was appalled. After this occurred I watched the same kind of treatment being given to other elderly patients whose family turned to them for critical care. They may consider it euthanasia, I consider it murder. Now I no longer work in allopathic care nor accept their services.”
[1] http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=healthNews&storyid=
2006-06-13T214720Z_01_N13444099_RTRUKOC_0_US-SALT.xml&src=rss
[2] Dietary Magnesium, Potassium, Sodium, and Children’s Lung Function. Gilliland et al. Am. J. Epidemiol..2002; 155: 125-131.
[3] Harvard Heart Letter. November 2002
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