What's Your CRP Number?

CRP stands for C-Reactive Protein.  It is a simple blood test that measures the level of inflammation in your body.  If you've read many of my blog articles you know I harp on chronic inflammation being the cause of all disease.  It is the beginning.  Of ALL disease.  Every one.  Ok, you might get an argument for a few about some disease or another.  But even conventional wisdom says the chronic preventable things all have an inflammatory component.  When your immune system is cranked up and stays in high gear 24/7 from the things that you eat and the lifestyle choices you make, inflammation starts to damage organs and systems.  Period.

So the following snippets are from a marketing research group Saurange, at this website: http://saurageresearch.com/bullets-january-2013/

• The United States is the only industrialized country in the world without a universal health insurance system. (nih.gov)
• 75% of all health care dollars are spent on patients with one or more chronic conditions, many of which can be prevented, including diabetes, obesity, heart disease, lung disease, high blood pressure, and cancer. (cdc.gov)
• There are four times as many health care lobbyists in Washington as there are members of Congress. (sickothemovie.com)
• An estimated seven to 10 million people worldwide live with Parkinson’s disease. In the United States, as many as one million individuals live with PD, which is more than the combined number of people diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy and Lou Gehrig's disease. Approximately 60,000 Americans are diagnosed with Parkinson's disease each year, and this number does not reflect the thousands of cases that go undetected. Incidence of Parkinson’s increases with age, but an estimated four percent of people with PD are diagnosed before the age of 50. Statistics have shown that men are slightly more likely to have Parkinson’s disease than women. (Parkinson's FAQ)
• The flu kills about 36,000 people each year in the US—90% of those who die of the flu are 65 or older. (cdc.gov)

All those diseases are avaoidable.  Nothing jumps out and gets you.  You ask for it.  Literally.  Read more about inflammation in my ebook, all over the web, several popular books, tho some have missed the boat in a few places....

 

Take the CRP test.  Go to your doc and ask for it.  If your number is higher than 1, you are at risk and you are causing damage somewhere in your body even if you do not currently have symptoms.  And get your Vitamin D level checked while you're at it. 

 

Best,

Ellie

What does "No Wheat" do for you?

Yesterday Novak Djokovic won the Austrailian Grand Slam for the third time.  He went gluten free two years ago and his career in tennis took off like a shot. Not that he was a bad player before going gluten free.  But he is now number 1 in the world.

Tennis is very physical, of course.  It also is very much a mental game.  Gluten can affect mental stamina and clarity as well as physical.  Clearly, Djokovic's mental and physical games have improved.

I just mention the above for it's nice to find some media mention about devil wheat, rather than always touting the healthiness of whole grains.  They are not.  Humans have several million years of living with no grain in their diet.  They were strong and robust.  With the advent of agriculture, humans get smaller, less robust and less healthy.  But lots more of them.  With the advent of agriculture, the soil that animals, nature and weather had created over millenia, started eroding away.  With the advent of agriculture, humans went to war to get more land to denude since all they had was no longer productive.  Strong case I think.  It is outlined comprehensively in "The Vegetarian Myth." 

So what can getting off gluten (and grains) do for you?  Probably you do not want to win any grand slam tennic matches.  But do you want to be mentally sharper?  Would you like to have less painful joints?  Would you like to lose weight?  Lower Blood pressure?  Get off medications?  Getting off wheat (and other grains) might do some of those for you.  I found arthritis abated dramatically.  And I was so sure wheat was not a problem for me.

There's invisible stuff too.  Wheat ties up minerals so your body cannot use them.  So while all the conventional wisdom touts the minerals in wheat as one of the healthy things about it, they do not do YOU any good.  Wheat and baked good and other cereals are just very condensed packets of sugar.  They raise your blood sugar, trigger insulin release, make you hungrier, and thereby contribute to a host of the diseases of civilization.

What do you have to lose?  A 2 week elimination diet of no wheat or grains costs you nothing, absolutely cannot hurt you, and might make you feel a whole lot better and be a whole lot healthier.  Not particularly easy, I admit, for wheat is in everything it seems.  And I hear this so often--"Well what do you eat then???"  Wow, if wheat is the staple of your life, I guarantee you're not doing as well as you should--both mentally and physically.  Eat more protein, vegetables, animal products, some fruit and nuts.  There is a lot of great food that is not grain!!!  Try it, you'll like it!