Hormones. We hear the word all the time. “Hormonal acne”, “woman’s hormones”, “stress hormones “, almost every measurement of health is impacted by these ubiquitous biochemicals. And when it comes to health, no aspect of our biochemistry is more relevant than the efficient and effective function of hormones.
While there are various classes of hormones, including “exocrine hormones” that work through the skin and the digestive tract (those produced in the pancreatic sweat and salivary glands for example) and “paracrine hormones” (prostaglandins and interleukins are classic examples), whose activities are restricted to the microscopic regions around a cell, the most commonly recognized hormones are part of what is known as the “endocrine system”. These hormones, with names like cortisol, testosterone and insulin, travel throughout the body via the blood, where they exert their effects by seeking, contacting and activating the cells of various structures and organs throughout the body.
Hour 1
Hour 2
Dr. Peter Glidden, a naturopathic physician and lecturer, discussed the body and its ability to benefit from natural healing instead of modern medicine. He detailed various natural remedies and supplements that can aid in the body's recovery of many ailments that affect us today. We don't have a free medical market in the United States-- your medical doctor may be a good person but they only know what they've been trained in, which is just one piece of the health puzzle, he asserted. "We have become...socialized into believing that the medical doctor owns the secret decoder ring to all things medical and everybody else practices substandard alternative back-of-the-bus medicine," which is just nonsense, he continued.
He listed a number of foods to stop eating, including grains such as wheat, barley, rye, and oats (which contain gluten), all bottled oils, fried foods, well-done meats, and carbonated beverages with a meal (the carbon dioxide interferes with digestion). He commended a caller who ate a vegan diet, yet cautioned him that he still needs to get mineral supplementation, as the soil where the produce is grown doesn't contain all the necessary nutrients. Glidden connected the problem of obesity to people eating foods with low nutritive quality, and thus they keep eating more, trying in vain to get what the body needs.
Food represents the most important chronic offending agent. Even good foods activate a defensive response scientists call “post prandial leukocytosis” (post meal white blood cells proliferation). The intestine is packed with responsive immune system cells that can initiate inflammatory chemistry. When activated chronically as a result of repeated ingestion of triggering foods, the net result can be a permanent inflammatory condition and a breakdown in the digestive lining or “Leaky Gut”.
Once food particles sneak through the broken down intestinal barrier and enter into the circulation, a defensive reaction within the blood is initiated. The circulatory system is the sacred space of the body and kept secure by traveling immune system “scout” cells. When these cells spot an invader, a reaction is initiated that includes the formation of inflammatory factors. As these protective molecules proliferate and circulate and form complexes with food particles, eventually they contact various organs, ultimately resulting in the symptoms of disease.
