WARREN KING, L.Ac.

How Intestinal Bacteria Can Cause Weight Changes

(and how sugar can change intestinal bacteria)

A high-fat, high-sugar diet does more than pump calories into your body. It also alters the composition of bacteria in your intestines, making it easier to gain weight and harder to lose it, research in mice suggests. And the changeover can happen in as little as 24 hours, according to a report Wednesday in the new journal Science Translational Medicine.

Many factors play a role in the propensity to gain weight, including genetics, physical activity and the environment, as well as food choices. But a growing body of evidence, much of it accumulated by Dr. Jeffrey I. Gordon of Washington University in St. Louis, shows that bacteria in the gut also play a key role.

Humans need such bacteria to help convert otherwise indigestible foods into digestible form.

Ninety percent of the bacteria fall into two major divisions, or phyla: the Firmicutes and the Bacteroidetes. Previous research had shown that obese mice had higher levels of Firmicutes, and lean ones had more Bacteroidetes.

Analyzing the genomes of the bacteria, Gordon and graduate student Peter Turnbaugh concluded that the Firmicutes were more efficient at digesting food that the body can’t.

Animals that have a higher proportion of Firmicutes convert a higher proportion of food into calories that can be absorbed by the body, making it easier to gain weight.

When the researchers transferred bacteria from obese mice into so-called gnotobiotic mice, which were raised in a sterile environment and had no bacteria in their guts, the mice gained more weight than did those receiving a similar amount of bacteria from lean mice, even though they were fed the same diet.

Gordon and Turnbaugh found that they could transfer bacteria from human intestines into gnotobiotic mice, which were fed a low-fat, plant-rich diet in the weeks before the bacteria were transplanted and for a month afterward.

After the bacteria were transplanted from a lean human donor, the colonies in the mice had a high proportion of Bacteroidetes and a low proportion of Firmicutes. But within 24 hours after the mice were switched to a high-sugar, high-fat diet, the proportions of the two phyla were reversed.

With time, the mice also grew fatter than their littermates who did not receive the human bacteria.

The Zone Diet, the popular diet by Barry Sears, is also commonly referred to as the 40/30/30 diet. “40/30/30″ refers to the proportion of each food group in the diet. In this case, 40% of daily caloric intake comes from carbohydrates, 30% comes from protein, and 30% from friendly fats.

The Zone Diet is all about getting into that mysterious place Sears calls “the zone.” According to Sears, this is the place where athletes perform better, where mental focus is enhanced, and life is generally a better place. Getting there is a simple matter of changing your eating patterns to reflect the 40/30/30 ratio, which, Sears argues, is the best way to stabilize blood sugar, promote general well-being, and encourage weight loss.

Why 40/30/30? What’s the rational behind this ratio of macronutrients?

The whole point of this 40/30/30 ratio is to balance two main metabolic hormones – insulin, which promotes the storing of excess calories as fat, and glucagon, which promotes the burning of fat. Sears also claims The Zone diet also promotes a positive balance of the body’s microhormones (called eicosanoids). 

As a weight loss book, “Enter the Zone”, isn’t too bad a read. Although his discussion of eiconsanoids can be boring.

If you’re going to give this diet a shot, it’s essential you read and understand chapter 7 – “Boundaries of The Zone.” In this chapter Sears maps out the entrance points to “The Zone.” It’s crucial that you know this “40/30/30 ratio” is only the mid-point of this entrance-way. You will- and this is important-have to adjust your carbohydrate intake according to your personal sensitivity to them in order to find your personal entrance to the “zone”.

The main problem for the average dieter will be finding this sweet spot (i.e. your unique entrance point to “the zone”). This is crucial to the entire plan — if you don’t find it, you won’t lose weight. And if you’re hypoglycemic or hyperinsulinemic, it’s likely that 40% of total daily calories from carbs is too much! If this is the case, I recommend you start with a smaller percentage of daily caloric intake from carbs, and increase them only if you can.

Some benefit of the Zone Diet

1. Since you are not significantly restricting any one food source in Sears’ diet, you are never totally deprived of the foods you love.

2. If you successfully find your entrance to “The Zone” you will experience slow, gradual, and permanent weight loss.

“The main purpose of this diet plan, that of balancing insulin and glucagon, is fundamentally correct!

He also talks about the importance of a proper omega 3 to omega 6 oil balance in the diet

All in all, I’d have to say Barry Sears’ diet is probably worthwhile buying – if, and only if, you can read it from cover to cover.

Sugar Addiction

When Unhealthy Foods Hijack Your Brain

In a recently published book, former FDA chief Dr. David Kessler brings to consumers the disturbing conclusion of numerous brain studies — some people really do have a harder time resisting bad foods.

At issue is how the brain becomes primed by different stimuli. Neuroscientists increasingly report that fat-and-sugar combinations in particular light up the brain’s dopamine pathway — its pleasure-sensing spot.  This is the same pathway that conditions people to alcohol or drugs.

The culprits foods are “layered and loaded” with combinations of fat, sugar and salt, and they are often so processed that you don’t even have to chew much.

Overeaters must take responsibility, too, and basically retrain their brains to resist the lure, says Kessler.

Many people can relate to what David Kessler, the former FDA chief, calls “conditioned hypereating” — a drive to eat sugary, greasy processed foods that has nothing to do with hunger.

It can happen when you walk by a vending machine, drive by one of your favorite restaurants or bakeries, or even when you’re sitting at home watching TV. Suddenly you get a craving for something you know isn’t good for you — cookies, French fries, ice cream, potato chips, that sort of thing — and your willpower seems to crumble.

This is an epidemic problem, as in the United States 90 percent of the money Americans spend on food is for processed food, and junk food is available just about everywhere, including in hospitals and schools.

It’s clear that something about these foods is able to wield an incredibly strong force over many of us, to the point that obesity has been named the fastest growing health threat in the United States, and two-thirds of adults are already overweight or obese.

So what is going on here? What about these foods compel people to overeat them at the expense of their waistline, and more importantly their health?

Why It’s So Easy to Be Addicted to Junk Food and Fast Food

Taste, convenience and cost certainly play a role in making junk foods appealing, but there’s more to it than that. The large amounts of sugar, salt and grease in junk foods are clearly addictive.

In one study, rats fed a diet containing 25 percent sugar became anxious when the sugar was removed — displaying symptoms similar to people going through drug withdrawals, such as chattering teeth and the shakes.

A link was found between opioids, or your brain’s ‘pleasure chemicals,’ and a craving for sweet, salty and fatty foods. It is thought that high-fat foods stimulate the opioids, as when researchers stimulated rats’ brains with a synthetic version of the natural opioid enkephalin, the rats ate up to six times their normal intake of fat.

Further, long-lasting changes in rats’ brain chemistry, similar to those caused by morphine or heroin use, were also noted. According to researchers, this means that even simple exposure to pleasurable foods is enough to change gene expression, which suggests an addiction to the food.

Your Genes Remember When You Eat Sugar

When you eat sugar, not only do your genes turn off controls designed to protect you from heart disease and diabetes, but the impact lasts for two weeks!

Even more concerning, if you eat poorly for a long time your DNA may become permanently altered and the effects could be passed on to your children and grandchildren.

In other words, you are born with a set of genes, but the expression of those genes is not set in stone. Your genes can be either activated or silenced by various factors including your diet and even your mind. It is not your genes that dictate your future health, but rather the expression of those genes that matter.

So in the case of eating sugar, it’s now known that this switches off good genes that protect your body from disease. This is just one of many reasons why you may want to seriously limit or eliminate sugar from your diet.

Sugar is Incredibly Addictive

Another reason we know that people’s love for sugar goes far beyond taste is because of its addictive properties.

Refined sugar is far more addictive than cocaine — it is one of the most addictive and harmful substances currently known. In fact, an astonishing 94 percent of rats who were allowed to choose between sugar, water and cocaine, chose sugar.

Even rats who were addicted to cocaine quickly switched their preference to sugar, once it was offered as a choice.

The researchers speculate that the sweet receptors (two protein receptors located on your tongue), which evolved in ancestral times when diets were very low in sugar, have not adapted to modern times’ high sugar consumption.

Therefore, the abnormally high stimulation of these receptors by our sugar-rich diets generates excessive reward signals in your brain, which have the potential to override normal self-control mechanisms, and thus lead to addiction.

Your Emotions Play a Major Role, Too

As Kessler said, “Once you know what’s driving your behavior, you can put steps into place” to change it.

What this means is whenever you feel the desire to binge on junk foods, it’s necessary that you have a system in place to help curb those cravings.

Cancer, diabetes, depression, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s—these seemingly diverse diseases are increasingly thought to have a common denominator: inflammation. We can do something about this major player in disease.

Normally, inflammation is part of a healthy immune response, an orchestrated onslaught of cells and chemicals that heal injury and fight infection—think redness, pain, swelling. But the process also has a quiet, dark side. Chronic “hidden” inflammation occurs throughout the body when something kick-starts the immune system and disengages the shut-off button. I think that something is toxicity.

These dietary changes don’t have to be forever, but try at least 1 month on this diet to see how well you can feel, then if you add the “avoid” foods back in moderation, your body can tell you what your limits are.

Try to eat only organically grown foods.  Please do not use a microwave oven to cook or reheat foods and beverages.  There is no restriction on the amount of food you may eat, but try to chew well.  The foods listed are only examples of foods to eat except where a specific restriction is noted.

Steamed Vegetables:

The primary reason for using steamed vegetables is that steaming improves the utilization or the availability of the food nutrients allowing the GI mucosa to repair itself.  Raw vegetables may also be eaten as a salad. Other cooking methods such as boiling or baking can also be used.

Eat a variety of any and all vegetables (except tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, and peppers) that you tolerate.  Yams, sweet potatoes, squash are allowed.  Add your favorite spices to enhance the taste of these vegetables.                                             (Look under Recipes for Healing: Creative Cooking with Vegetables)

Grains:

§       Eat one to two cups of cooked grains per day of those you tolerate.

§       Allowed grains include: millet, basmati or brown rice, quinoa, amaranth, oatmeal, barley, buckwheat, rye, spelt.

§       Other grain foods that may be eaten are rice crisps and wasa crackers.

§       (Look under Recipes for Healing: The World of Whole Grains)

Legumes:

§       Eat a variety of any legumes that you are able to tolerate:

§       Split peas, lentils, kidney beans, pinto beans, soy beans, mung beans, garbanzo beans (chick peas), aduki & azuki beans.

§       (Look under Recipes for Healing: Delicious Meatless Protein Recipes)

Fish:

§       Deep-sea ocean (vs. farmed) fish: salmon, halibut, cod, sardines, mackerel, haddock is preferred.  No shellfish.

§       The fish should be prepared by poaching, baking, steaming or broiling.

Chicken/Turkey:

§       Eat only the white meat and not the skin of free-range or organically grown chicken/turkey.
Bake, broil or steam poultry.

Fruit:

§       Eat only 1 or 2 pieces of practically any fruit except citrus.  If possible, it is preferred to eat the fruit baked (such as a baked apple or pear) or apple or pear sauce.

Sweeteners:

§       Very small amounts of maple syrup, rice syrup, barley syrup,agave nectar, honey or stevia may be used.

§       Absolutely no sugar, NutraSweet, Splenda or any other sweetener is allowed.  Sugar acidifies the body, contributing to metabolic acidity.  Artificial sweeteners accumulate in the body and are not eliminated.

§       (Look under Recipes for Healing: Healthy Dessert Recipes)

Seeds and Nuts:

§       Grind raw flax, pumpkin, sesame or sunflower seeds and add to steamed vegetables, cooked grains, smoothies, etc.  You may also eat nut and seed butters: almond, cashew, sesame, etc.  No peanuts or peanut butter is allowed.

Oils:

§       Use extra virgin olive oil for situations requiring uncooked oil or in baking.  Use sunflower or sesame oil for cooking since these oils tolerate higher temperatures.

Spices:

To add a pleasant flavor to your food choices, add whatever spices you enjoy.

Sea Vegetables

Have seaweed every other day: kombu, kelp, nori, wakame, hiziki, arame, agar or dulce. Nori and dulce can be eaten raw, wakame is great in soups, kombu or kelp in beans, arame or hiziki soaked then used in stir fries and agar like jello in desserts.

(Look under Recipes for Healing: Cooking with Sea vegetables)

Herbal teas and good water to drink:

§       Drink a minimum of 6 to 8 glasses of spring, bottled, filtered or reverse-osmosis filtered water every day.

§       You may also choose to drink 2 to 4 cups of caffeine free herbal tea and this will count towards your water consumption.  Caffeine free does not, however, mean decaffeinated.  The decaffeination process uses chemicals that are toxic for human consumption.  Instead, you should use herbal teas that are naturally caffeine free.

For now, avoid the following foods:

• Milk
• Cheese
• Eggs (for some people)
• All wheat products including breads, white flour
• Citrus fruits
• Tomatoes
• Potatoes
• Eggplant
• Peppers
• Corn products
• Peanuts and peanut butter
• All caffeinated teas
• Coffee
• Alcohol
• Meat: red meat and especially pork and pork products
• Sugar, NutraSweet, and all sweeteners except natural sweeteners
• Fried foods (some stir frying ok)
• Any processed food

For years I have heard the same reports from many different patients. They repeated that when they visit Europe that can eat anything and feel good; but when they get home and eat “healthy,” they feel poorly. Well, after finally going to Europe, I can say, it is true.

My son is doing a semester abroad in Zermatt, Switzerland, where the Matterhorn is and we decided to visit for parents weekend (good thing we did, every parent came), so we made a 10 day trip in the Alps of France and Switzerland.

Our first stop was Annecy, France. We happened to be there on the weekend that there was a major festival, called the Alpage, a celebration of the cows coming down from their grazing lands in the mountains to the towns below. Crowds of people are singing and dancing and marching, and some dress in old-style clothing and come through the streets with their flower-strewn cows, geese, sheep and other animals. There are hand-made crafts for sale and lots of fresh food. There was fresh, hand-squeezed apple juice, homemade breads and cheeses, sausages, wine, chestnuts and more. I was led to have a taste of some blood sausage (I saw the guy fill an intestine with what looked like very bloody meat.) I took one bite and immediately felt it strengthen my kidneys, although I found it hard to swallow.

Food in Europe had vitality, it has chi, it has life force. They eat lots of bread and cheese and meat, but although they eat three times the saturated fats as Americans, they have one third the rate of heart disease. I figured out that they balance out their excess cheese intake with lots and lots of wine. The bread is real and takes a lot of chewing before swallowing. They must drink a lot of tea because I have never seen such a variety of bulk teas as I did in the tea shop in Annecy. When they drink coffee, it is often in tiny cups as big as a shot glass.

Food is very expensive there, at the end I was so tired of cheese that I got a burrito with a little rice, and paid $28 for it. But they spend hours at a meal. And strangers are put at the same table with each other if there are open seats. One couple we sat next to explained that small farmers are subsidized, to keep families on their farms (sounds better than in the US where we subsidize the corn, the mega-farms, and all the fast foods that are killing everyone).

There were two other foods that I noticed they eat a lot in Europe that we never eat here. One was chestnuts, in every city they sold roasted chestnuts on the street. There was one dessert I saw everywhere that looked like a soba noodles, but was pureed chestnut…very delicious. There were at least five kinds of chestnut snacks in the health food stores and chocolate-covered chestnuts in the chocolate shops. I believe chestnuts, which look like little brains helps the nervous system. The other food that I was surprised were eaten a lot was mussels. It seemed that every restaurant I went to, the person next to me always ordered the same black pot that was full of what looked to be at least 50 mussels. I think it helps the energy of the body and the sexual energy in particular. It is interesting to try.

When I got home, I was hungry at the airport so I got a chicken wrap from a deli. I was struck by the total lack of energy in the food, it had the vibration of a stone. I started tuning into why American food, even healthy food, makes one feel poorly. I started feeling that all the meat has the same feeling, like the animals are grateful to be dead because their noisy, smelly, crowded miserable lives are finally over. I think much of our food is being irradiated and genetically modified without our knowledge. I have a feeling that food that is labeled organic that is finding its way into the mainstream supermarkets is not as pure as it used to be.

When I got back to work I saw a patient that I have been treating for over a decade. In the testing it showed that although she was eating the healthiest food possible,it was still missing something…vital energy.

So I came up with four foods, that if added to her diet would give her that life force needed to keep her energy up for her busy teaching schedule. They were…fermented vegetables, kefir, miso and kombucha. They all have something in common, they are all naturally fermented foods that have billions of beneficial flora for our digestive tracts, which benefits our entire body. It is literally “living food.” I realized that everyone needs these vitality foods. So I contacted my old friend, Mary Rogers, an expert in living foods and she agreed to do a class for my patients. While all of these foods can be bought in health foods stores, they are so much better, and cheaper, and more satisfying if made at home (except perhaps for the miso).

So mark your calendars for November 21st, and call our office at 952-930-3575, to reserve your place for our living foods workshop on how to make you own cultured foods, including how to make your own kombucha (which may indeed save our culture!)

To Your Health,

Warren King, L.Ac.

WHAT I ATE FOR A WEEK IN AUGUST

Friday

Breakfast: 2 eggs whipped in a bowl with umeboshi plum vinegar, fried on pan with olive oil spray with 3 thin slices of goat cheese and 2 Tbs of fermented vegetables (sauerkraut)

 Lunch: Whole grain bread with hummus, cucumber, lettuce and turkey slices

 Dinner: corn on the cob, boiled broccoli. Stir fried red onion, yellow zucchini with canned azuki beans with tamari, brown rice vinegar with fresh parsley and parsley and a handful of cashews.

Saturday

 Breakfast: Trader Joe’s gluten free pancakes made with add eggs, olive oil and rice milk, served with real maple syrup

 Lunch: Wild salmon salad: can of salmon with lemon juice, basil, chives, scallions, baby letuce mix, celery and cucumber on rye crackers. Kale, broccoli and string beans.

 Dinner: Asian Restaurant (Wasabi)

Pad Thai rice noodles with chicken and shrimp. Salad. Miso soup with tofu and wakame seaweed.

(note, felt tired after eating this meal)

Sunday

 Breakfast: Cracked brown rice cream cereal (cracked rice in blender) boiled in water, with homemade cashew milk (cashews, water and maple syrup in blender)

 Lunch: Whole grain bread with guacamole, lettuce, cucumber and pea sprouts.

 Dinner: vegetarian chili, salad with Braggs ginger sesame dressing, broccoli and chinese cabbage and some macaroni.

Monday

 Breakfast: 2 sunny side down eggs

 Lunch: spelt wrap with leftover azuki bean dish from Friday dinner. Miso soup with carrots, corn, celery, collard greans, made with barley miso and wakame.

 Dinner: Salad. Stir fry with chicken, chinse cabbage, carrots, parsley, basil, ginger and rice noodles with umeboshi plum and brown rice vinegars and tamari.

Tuesday:

 Breakfast: Oatmeal with sunflower milk (sunflower seeds, water and agave nectar in blender) topped with Erewhon Crispy brown rice with berries.

Lunch: Coop Deli- vegan minnestrone soup with whitebeans and kale. Greek wrap with olives, veggies and feta cheese

(note, inner lower lips felt irritated afterwards, which is an intestinal symptom)

 Dinner: Amy’s breakfast burrito, pea sprouts and corn on the cob.

Wednesday

Breakfast: 2 scrambled eggs with umeboshi plum vinegar and black pepper

Lunch: spelt wrap with turkey slices, guacamole, pea sprouts, tomato and lettuce. A handful of almonds

Dinner: fresh wild alaskan salmon. Pressure cooked short grain brown rice. Salad with lettuce onion, scallion, lemon basil and parsley and cherry tomatoes with Braggs dressing. Boiled kale.

Thursday:

Breakfast: Barley flakes hot cereal with agave nectar and hempseed milk, blueberries and Crispy brown rice. White tea with peach.

Late Lunch (Early Dinner): Restaurant walnut veggie burger with cheese, corn chips and pickle.

(Note: got stomach ache after)

(Note to self, I feel badly only when I eat out, even healthy food)

The diet changes with the seasons. Nobody likes to spend a lot of time cooking in the hot weather, so most of this food was fairly instant. In the winter there will be more long cooking of soups and stews and baking.

I also ate probably 2 snacks a day, between breakfast and lunch, and lunch and dinner. They were mostly things, like a piece of fresh fruit, a handful of nuts or a natural (sugar free) bar.

The Typical Initial Healing Diet 
By Warren King L.Ac.

The following diet has had positive results for about 70% of the people I’ve seen in my practice. It’s usually followed for the first one to two months of the healing process. Practically anyone who gives it a sincere try for at least three weeks, will notice a great reduction in symptoms.

To receive the greatest benefit from this diet, it is recommended that the guidlines below be followed for at least three weeks. Then, as symptoms are reduced, gradually add the non-recommended foods back into your normal consumption. If you notice symptoms returning, cut back again.

Recommendations:

In general your daily intake should contain about 25% grains, 40% vegetables, 30% protein and 5% other (sea vegetables, berries, vinegar products, etc. See chart below.)

1. Avoid sugar, honey, tropical fruit, red meat, pork, peanuts, artifical colors and flavorings.
2. Reduce the use of fermented foods such as vinegar. Dressings, ketchup, mustard, mayo and soy sauce can contain fermented elements. Also reduce the intake of yeast, mushrooms, pickles, alcohol and aged foods.
3. Only occasionally eat tomatos, potatos, eggplant, peppers and hot spices like chili.
4. When cooking, with oil, use only extra virgin olive oil. Try to use sea salt in cooking instead of table salt.
5. Try to stay away from eating gluten products such as wheat, spelt, kamut and corn during the first three weeks. Instead, eat brown rice, barley, millet, quinoa, buckwheat, amaranth, wild rice, rye, oat and teff.
6. Some of the best sources protein are found in fish, poultry, and eggs. As mentioned earlier, reduce the intake of red meat and pork products.
7. Try reducing or avoiding black tea and coffee. Instead, try kukicha twig tea. Adults should try drinking about seven glasses of room temperature water a day. (Reverse Osmosis is best)