How to Get Your Sweet Fix Without Sabotaging Your Health
Issue #2310
- WEALTHY: The housing bottom is here! Or is it? (Charles Delvalle)
- HEALTHY: More energy, increased libido, improved memory, and much more? (Shane Ellison)
- WISE: Dr. John Yudkin on sugar
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Did ETR purposely mangle Ben Franklin’s maxim? (Michael Masterson)
- Don’t be among those who misuse this word (Don Hauptman)
- It’s Fun to Know… about wisdom teeth
- Add "philter" to your vocabulary
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- Patrick Coffey
The Housing Bust Is Still Kicking
The biggest drag on the stock market this year can be summed up in one word: Housing. Because home prices have dropped, banks have cut back lending. Which, in turn, is slowing down the economy. And though many gurus are trying to call a bottom in the housing market, they’re dead wrong. I continue to see home prices dropping.
Last year, you couldn’t find a decent condo in West Palm Beach, FL for less than $200,000. But for the past two months, I’ve been seeing them at drastically reduced prices. I’m talking about 2/2s for under $100,000. That’s a 50 percent price drop - far greater than the five percent drop government reports would have you believe.
And in South Florida, the market is still falling. This year, we’ll see a huge spike in foreclosures. As banks try to offload those foreclosed properties, neighborhood prices should drop even further. That means there’ll be a lot of opportunities here if you’re looking to buy a home in six months.
That also means housing won’t stop dragging the market down for some time. You can continue to expect a bear market in stocks, so stay away. Instead, buy the Ultra Short Dow Proshares ETF (DXD), which gives you a two percent return every time the Dow Jones drops one percent.
Buying this ETF is easy too. All you have to do is contact your broker (or get an online brokerage account) and follow their instructions.
[Ed. Note: Charles Delvalle is a contributing editor to ETR’s Investor’s Daily Edge newsletter, and a regular contributor to INCOME. INCOME lets you in on the safest high-dividend-paying companies, with the goal of providing you with a total return (dividends plus capital gains) of at least 14 percent per year.]
"If only a small fraction of what is already known about the effects of sugar were to be revealed in relation to any other material used as a food additive, that material would promptly be banned."
John Yudkin, MD
How to Get Your Sweet Fix Without Sabotaging Your Health
By Shane "The People’s Chemist" Ellison
If you could make one simple change in your diet to help you melt fat, sleep better, and improve your memory … wouldn’t you do it? What if that same simple dietary change could increase your energy, conquer depression, save your eyesight, restore your mental alertness, get your bedroom energy rockin’, and increase your lifespan?
This may sound too good to be true. But it’s not. And you don’t have to take drugs. Nor do you have to try some newfangled experimental supplements. Or stop eating. Or even give up the foods you love.
It’s as simple as reducing the amount of sugar you eat.
This is not a trick. I said you don’t have to give up the foods you love. And that includes sweets. You can actually give up sugar and keep your sweet tooth happy. This is the greatest health secret of all time. And I’m gonna teach you how to incorporate it into your life.
Before I tell you how, I want you to know just why you should give up sugar.
It’s not just because of all the aforementioned benefits. It’s because sugar can have serious health consequences.
Have you ever been plagued by hard-to-diagnose health problems? You know something is wrong, but your doctor can’t seem to figure out what’s causing them? You…
- can’t lose weight, no matter how hard you exercise or diet
- feel depressed, even though you’re typically a happy person
- can’t get a solid night’s sleep
- feel sluggish at work
- lack mental focus
- have lost your libido
- suffer from rising blood pressure
Well, it’s not all in your head. It could be your sugar addiction.
My six-year-old can recite all the dangers of sucrose (table sugar) in a matter of two minutes. She can also warn you of the risks associated with those artificial sweeteners in pretty packets. And because she still likes to get her "sweet fix," she can tell you which natural sweeteners are best to use in tea, cookies, and cake. Not bad, considering that the self-appointed custodians of our health - physicians - are totally clueless about the sweetener epidemic that is sabotaging us.
If a first grader can master the problems with sugar and understand how to choose the right alternatives, you can too.
We all have the need to get a sweet fix. It’s part of our biological makeup. When consumed, sweets elicit a chemical cascade of events that lead to the triggering of feel-good receptors within the brain. If this happens repeatedly, an emotional bond between happiness and sugar is formed. We become fully dependent on sweets.
Sugar addiction is best illustrated by children who break down with temper tantrums if not given sugar, women who consume chocolate in times of stress, and men who suck down soda to make it through the "afternoon blues." In a study comparing the addictive properties of sweeteners, saccharin and sucrose proved more addictive than cocaine!
The irony is that your body doesn’t actually need any sugar. What you do need is glucose for energy. And you can obtain it from fruit and vegetables.
If left unchecked, an addiction to sweets spikes blood sugar and the fat-storing hormone insulin, disrupts satiety (causing users to overeat), and gives rise to age-accelerating molecules known as AGE products (advanced glycation end products). These aging molecules are responsible for causing wrinkles and age-related blindness, as well as premature heart attacks and stroke.
Over time, "sweetener addiction" leads to the hard-to-diagnose symptoms listed above, and a host of dreaded diseases like insulin resistance, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. To avoid the sabotage, you must understand how to get your sweet fix without becoming addicted.
Years ago, people didn’t eat much sugar - as little as 10-15 pounds per year. And their health was much better for it. As time passed and sugar production became easier, people gave into their sweet cravings and began to overindulge. Today, the average consumption of sugar is a whopping 160 pounds! It’s suicide in slow motion. Sugar addicts eliminate 11-20 years from their lifespan.
Few people realize how much sugar they are putting into their body. They are simply giving into an addiction while slowly ruining their health. To judge whether or not you are at risk, read your food labels for one day and count how many grams of sugar you are eating. Insert that number into my People’s Chemist Death by Sugar Calculator. Watch as the graph calculates how many pounds of sugar you are stuffing into your mouth annually.
But that doesn’t mean you should replace sucrose with artificial sweeteners to get your sweet fix. Artificial sweeteners are nothing more than drugs in disguise. Splenda is a perfect example.
Splenda contains the drug sucralose. Invented in a pesticide lab, this chemical is 600 times sweeter than sugar. To make sucralose, chlorine is used. Chlorine has a split personality. It can be harmless or it can be life threatening. In combo with sodium, chlorine forms a harmless ionic bond to yield table salt. When used with carbon, the chlorine atom in sucralose forms a covalent bond. The end result is deadly organochlorine, known simply as RNFOC (a Really Nasty Form of Chlorine). Unlike ionic bonds, covalently bound chlorines are a big no-no for the human body. They yield insecticides, pesticides, and herbicides - not something you want in your sports drink or your child’s lunchbox.
Think aspartame (Equal, Nutrasweet) is safe? Think again. As an organic chemistry teaching assistant, I taught my students how to identify the active ingredients in soda using a technique known as TLC (Thin Layer Chromatography). The byproducts of sodas containing aspartame are all known poisons (that would slowly kill you): methanol, phenylalanine, and aspartic acid. I never saw my students with a diet soda after that.
Safe alternatives to artificial sweeteners are abundant: erythritol, stevia, agave, xylitol and luo han guo.
Choosing which natural sweetener to use depends on which one tastes best to you. Agave nectar usually wins. It stimulates taste buds exactly the same way sucrose does. But unlike common table sugar, very little of its active ingredient - inulin - is absorbed. Therefore, you are protected from the dangers of sugar addiction.
As a "nectar," agave is a bit harder to bake with. This is where erythritol wins.
All natural sweeteners are known to help control appetite, keep insulin and blood sugar low, and prevent the formation of AGE products. None of them are addicting, nor will they diminish your lifespan.
Getting your sweet fix doesn’t have to be deadly. If you learn to gauge your sugar intake with The People’s Chemist Death by Sugar Calculator and start using natural sweeteners, you won’t be plagued by hard-to-diagnose health problems. And you’ll have more years to enjoy life and those you love.
[Ed. Note: Shane Ellison (www.thepeopleschemist.com) is an author, organic chemist, and contributor to ETR’s free natural health newsletter. He is an internationally recognized authority on therapeutic nutrition and the founder of The AM-PM Fat Loss Discovery package. Click here to learn more.]
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Dear ETR: "Why is ETR’s slogan ‘Wealthy, Healthy, and Wise’ instead of ‘Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise’?"
"Why is ETR’s slogan ‘Wealthy, Healthy, and Wise’ instead of ‘Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise’? Does this mean you think wealth is more important than health?"
- J. W.
Santa Clara, CA
Dear J.W.,
I’m so glad you asked that question. And you’ll laugh when you hear my answer. I have no idea!
If you had asked me what ETR’s slogan is, I would have said, "Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise." That’s what Ben Franklin said, and I think he got the order correct. If you’ve read my past essays on life priorities, you know that I am always making the point that health is more important than wealth.
Why was it changed?
Maybe somebody smart looked at all the essays we’ve published in ETR and saw that 75 percent of the subject matter is about building wealth, while only five or 10 percent is on health. Since ETR is mostly about wealth, this person figured the tagline should reflect that.
Or maybe it was a marketing decision. Although health is more important, most people spend more money on wealth advice than they do for health recommendations. That makes sense too.
When my colleagues at ETR read what I’m saying here, they will probably remind me that I was actually in on the conversation that resulted in the Wealthy, Healthy, and Wise decision. If so, I should remember it. But I don’t!
So when you read my essays in ETR, it looks like you are getting advice from a man whose memory is flawed and whose wit is limited. Still, I think you should continue to read ETR. Most of the other contributors are younger than I and have better memories. They are very good at what they do and, like me, are happy to tell you everything they know.
Whatever you want - health, wealth, wisdom, or all three - you get lots of free advice in ETR. Enjoy it. Use it. Share it with others.
I rarely ask you to do something, but today I’m going to. See that "Forward to a Friend" button up at the top of this issue? Think of one friend who could be helped by ETR… one person who will put this advice to good use who isn’t doing so already… and send today’s issue to them. You’ll be doing them a big favor.
- Michael Masterson
[Ed. Note: Send your questions to AskETR@ETRFeedback.com. Include your full name, your hometown and state, and the ETR team may answer you in an upcoming issue.]
The Language Perfectionist: A Comprise Winner
By Don Hauptman
Among the many misused words in the English language, one of the most common is surely comprise. Consider these examples, found via a quick Internet search:
- "The social theorists who comprise what is today known as the ‘Frankfurt School’ have exerted an unprecedented influence…"
- "What are the three main notes that comprise [Mariah Carey’s] fragrance, M?"
- "Florida is comprised of three main aquifers…"
In the above examples, the meaning of the word is reversed. The whole comprises the parts. The parts constitute (or compose or form or make up) the whole.
Here’s how to use comprise and constitute correctly: A baseball team comprises nine players. Nine players constitute a baseball team.
The meaning of the word comprise is contain, include, embrace. If you’re not sure you’re using comprise correctly, substitute embrace or include to see if the sentence still makes sense.
A similar test works for the passive tense. One would never say "is embraced of." Thus, the frequently used phrase "is comprised of" is always wrong.
Some years ago, I clipped an ad for a book on, ironically, effective writing. The ad claims that the book "covers the big picture of what comprises poor writing." Of course, the word should be constitutes.
[Ed Note: For more than three decades, Don Hauptman was a direct-response copywriter. He is author of the wordplay books Cruel and Unusual Puns and Acronymania, and is writing a new book that also blends language and humor.]
It’s Fun to Know: Wisdom Teeth
In the United States, third molars are popularly known as "wisdom teeth." Here is what they are called in other countries:
- 20-year teeth in Turkey
- Mind teeth in Romania
- Love teeth in Korea
- Unknown-to-parent teeth in Japan
(Source: National Geographic )
When the CAR gets stuck in a rut you can call AAA - But who do you call when YOU get in a rut?
Feeling like your life has stalled? Wondering where all the excitement has gone? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. All of us get dragged down in a rut now and then.
But you’ll get back out on the highway of life a LOT faster if you have a friendly “towing service” looking out for you 24×7.
So put on your seat belts, rev up those engines… and let’s get going with our motivational kick-in-the-pants program.
- Charlie Byrne
Word to the Wise: Philter
A "philter" (FIL-tur) is a love potion or charm. It is derived from the Greek for "to love."
Example (as used by Umberto Eco in Foucault’s Pendulum): "Some things you can feel coming. You don’t fall in love because you fall in love; you fall in love because of the need, desperate, to fall in love. When you feel that need, you have to watch your step; like having drunk a philter, the kind that makes you fall in love with the first thing you meet. It could be a duck-billed platypus."
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker … build your self-confidence and intellect … increase your attractiveness to others … just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR’s new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2008