photo credit: miss karen

Many people have switched to agave from table sugar. No wonder why they’ve found it equally as sweet — because it is. Agave was introduced to the natural health market as a replacement for sugar, but as it turns out, it’s just as bad for you.

Agave is a succulent plant, mainly found in Mexico, but also grows in southern and western United States and in central and tropical South America.

A leading maker of agave sweetener, Madhava, states, “Limiting glucose consumption is a contemporary concern for many people. The introduction of this new sweetener is timely as it has a relatively low glycemic index due to its higher proportion of fructose and lower levels of glucose. This fact should prove attractive to those with special diet considerations or who monitor glucose intake.”

But recent research is showing that agave isn’t a health product by any means. Although agave is indeed an ancient plant, the truth is that the agave nectar used as a sweetener was invented in the 1990s.

Journalist Rami Nagel, who has spent some time investigating agave, concludes,”The retail refined agave syrup label does not explain that it goes through a complicated chemical refining process of enzymatic digestion, which converts the starch into the free, man-made chemical fructose that has a direct link to serious the degenerative disease conditions so prevalent in our culture. While high fructose agave syrup won’t spike your blood sugar levels, the fructose in it will cause: mineral depletion, liver inflammation, hardening of the arteries, insulin resistance leading to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and may be toxic for use during pregnancy.”

Princeton University research team, including (from left) undergraduate Elyse Powell, psychology professor Bart Hoebel, visiting research associate Nicole Avena and graduate student Miriam Bocarsly, has demonstrated that rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup -- a sweetener found in many popular sodas -- gain significantly more weight than those with access to water sweetened with table sugar, even when they consume the same number of calories. The work may have important implications for understanding obesity trends in the United States. (Photo: Denise Applewhite)

A sweet problem: Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain
by Hilary Parker

A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.

In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States.

“Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn’t true, at least under the conditions of our tests,” said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. “When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they’re becoming obese — every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don’t see this; they don’t all gain extra weight.”

In results published online March 18 by the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, the researchers from the Department of Psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute reported on two experiments investigating the link between the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup and obesity.

The first study showed that male rats given water sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup in addition to a standard diet of rat chow gained much more weight than male rats that received water sweetened with table sugar, or sucrose, in conjunction with the standard diet. The concentration of sugar in the sucrose solution was the same as is found in some commercial soft drinks, while the high-fructose corn syrup solution was half as concentrated as most sodas.

The second experiment — the first long-term study of the effects of high-fructose corn syrup consumption on obesity in lab animals — monitored weight gain, body fat and triglyceride levels in rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup over a period of six months. Compared to animals eating only rat chow, rats on a diet rich in high-fructose corn syrup showed characteristic signs of a dangerous condition known in humans as the metabolic syndrome, including abnormal weight gain, significant increases in circulating triglycerides and augmented fat deposition, especially visceral fat around the belly. Male rats in particular ballooned in size: Animals with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained 48 percent more weight than those eating a normal diet.

“These rats aren’t just getting fat; they’re demonstrating characteristics of obesity, including substantial increases in abdominal fat and circulating triglycerides,” said Princeton graduate student Miriam Bocarsly. “In humans, these same characteristics are known risk factors for high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, cancer and diabetes.” In addition to Hoebel and Bocarsly, the research team included Princeton undergraduate Elyse Powell and visiting research associate Nicole Avena, who was affiliated with Rockefeller University during the study and is now on the faculty at the University of Florida. The Princeton researchers note that they do not know yet why high-fructose corn syrup fed to rats in their study generated more triglycerides, and more body fat that resulted in obesity.

High-fructose corn syrup and sucrose are both compounds that contain the simple sugars fructose and glucose, but there at least two clear differences between them. First, sucrose is composed of equal amounts of the two simple sugars — it is 50 percent fructose and 50 percent glucose — but the typical high-fructose corn syrup used in this study features a slightly imbalanced ratio, containing 55 percent fructose and 42 percent glucose. Larger sugar molecules called higher saccharides make up the remaining 3 percent of the sweetener. Second, as a result of the manufacturing process for high-fructose corn syrup, the fructose molecules in the sweetener are free and unbound, ready for absorption and utilization. In contrast, every fructose molecule in sucrose that comes from cane sugar or beet sugar is bound to a corresponding glucose molecule and must go through an extra metabolic step before it can be utilized.

This creates a fascinating puzzle. The rats in the Princeton study became obese by drinking high-fructose corn syrup, but not by drinking sucrose. The critical differences in appetite, metabolism and gene expression that underlie this phenomenon are yet to be discovered, but may relate to the fact that excess fructose is being metabolized to produce fat, while glucose is largely being processed for energy or stored as a carbohydrate, called glycogen, in the liver and muscles.

In the 40 years since the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup as a cost-effective sweetener in the American diet, rates of obesity in the U.S. have skyrocketed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1970, around 15 percent of the U.S. population met the definition for obesity; today, roughly one-third of the American adults are considered obese, the CDC reported. High-fructose corn syrup is found in a wide range of foods and beverages, including fruit juice, soda, cereal, bread, yogurt, ketchup and mayonnaise. On average, Americans consume 60 pounds of the sweetener per person every year.

“Our findings lend support to the theory that the excessive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup found in many beverages may be an important factor in the obesity epidemic,” Avena said.

The new research complements previous work led by Hoebel and Avena demonstrating that sucrose can be addictive, having effects on the brain similar to some drugs of abuse.

In the future, the team intends to explore how the animals respond to the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in conjunction with a high-fat diet — the equivalent of a typical fast-food meal containing a hamburger, fries and soda — and whether excessive high-fructose corn syrup consumption contributes to the diseases associated with obesity. Another step will be to study how fructose affects brain function in the control of appetite.

The research was supported by the U.S. Public Health Service.

Boulder, Colorado is recognized by many as the capital of good health. The city is consistently in the top ten of healthiest, happiest and fittest people in magazine polls. And people love to eat organic foods in Boulder, with more than ten food stores offering organics to serve a little city of less than 150,000 residents (including university students). Plus, there’s a relatively new trend: local restaurants are advertising that they serve organic foods. But I’ve found that this is a big fat lie!!

My wife and I went to Bacco Trattoria, an Italian restaurant in North Boulder, primarily because they advertise on their menu in bold letters that they serve “organic ingredients whenever possible.” I noticed this same statement on several other Boulder menus, and was encouraged to see the trend in serving healthful foods. But hold your horses. It seems to be just lip service to fool health-minded people into eating crappy food. This isn’t just deceptive, it’s criminal. It’s like telling a diabetic that your food contains no sugar when you know you’re lying.

When the waiter came to our table, I asked him, “What on tonight’s menu is organic?” He told me that the beets are organic then tried to change the subject to tell me they have locally grown something or other. I steered the conversation back on track and he told me that they can’t get organics this time of year. Another MAJOR LIE. No less than one mile away is a store that sells a variety of organic produce and dry goods. Three miles away is an organic grocery store that contains every fruit, vegetable and meat product that are all certified organic. And the most profitable Whole Foods store is literally up the road. So for this restaurant to claim that it offers  organic ingredients “whenever possible,” but not to have any in the kitchen is more than a disservice.

Why the big deal?

Nonorganic food is poisoned with pesticides, synthetic fertilizers and herbacides. Non organic meats are tainted with steroids, hormones and antibiotics. Lying about your food means poisoning your patrons.

My advice: When a restaurant advertises that it offers organic ingredients, ask the waiter what ingredients are organic as you’re sitting there waiting to be seated. And if you have enough moxie, when he tells you that there’s nothing, then get up and leave after telling him you came in for the healthful food they’re advertising.

Is it really possible to be healthier in a month? How many times have we heard that you can lose weight in three days or cure acne in two? Such claims are outlandish, but I stand by the fact that you can be healthier in a month. Why do I say this?

If today you give up all the artificial ingredients and sugar in your diet, you’ll be healthier in a month. You have to get a big box, or two, and throw out all the nonfoods in your kitchen. My wife and I did this twenty years ago and never looked back. You know why? Because the first phase of cleaning out your body is CLEANING OUT YOUR PANTRY AND FRIDGE.

Artificial ingredients — from hidden MSG in sauces to preservatives in baked goods to artificial sweetners — are destroying your health. And they’ve built up a home inside your body over the years.

This is a challenge FOR your health. Get a box and get to work. You’ll feel better right away.

Scientific findings show that artificial ingredients, refined sugar and bad fats cause artery deterioration, joint problems, headaches, sexual dysfunction, skin problems and a lot more. If this is all new to you, my professional advice is to replace all your foods with ones that do not contain anything artificial. Organic is your best bet. If your bread lists a slew of chemical additives that you can be sure it’s not meant to be eaten, so DON’T EAT IT. There are organic replacements for your favorite chips, cereal, soup in a can, chocolate bar, ice cream and crackers.

Once you make the replacement by getting rid of foods with toxins, your body can get to work getting rid of the toxins stored within you from eating artificial and processed ingredients for years and years. This will make you at least a degree healthier. The next step after this is to start eating several helpings of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds every day. But first thing’s first — get rid of the artificial ingredients and you’ll be healthier within a month.

For nutritional supplements without artificial ingredients, CLICK HERE.

Making predictions is not my forte. However, it seems pretty inevitable that the present generation is on a crash course with disease. And I’m not talking swine flu, small pox or AIDS, although these apply as well.

People now in their 80s and 70s were raised on real foods from farms and clean soils. Processed foods were not yet the standard fare. Now look at us! Baby Boomers, by and large, were brought up eating processed foods loaded with artificial ingredients that can lead to every illness from skin rashes to cancer. But today’s youth are really up the proverbial creek. Hence my dark prediction.

When we consider the scientific fact that our bodies MUST HAVE food nutrients in order to prevent illness by building our immune systems, the strength of tissue linings and the optimal functioning of organs, glands, nerves, muscles and brains, then you’ll see why I say this generation is headed for a waterfall. Young people, from age one to forty, have been raised on fake foods, artificial ingredients, junk food, fast food, and worthless calories. Their DNA have not been fed the raw ingredients necessary for warding off disease. In fact, BAD FOODS BUILD DISEASE far into the future.

Even worse, prescription drug usage among today’s youth is outrageous, with the majority of school kids being on one pharmaceutical or more. And this is taking its toll on the immune system day after day, throughout their lives. Antibiotics are destroying the good bacteria that support the immune system and aspirin is destroying cell linings. Anti-depressants used on teenagers are leading to suicide.

Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said, “In recent years, many patients who have toxic reactions to antidepressants are misdiagnosed as bipolar and put on powerful anti-manic drugs because the pharmaceutical industry has not adequately educated doctors on how to recognize antidepressant toxicity. For years the pharmaceutical industry denied antidepressant-induced suicidality, saying it was the patients’ underlying depression. In effect, this was blaming the victims. Now that the FDA has officially warned that antidepressants may make patients suicidal, the pressure to diagnose patients who do poorly on antidepressants as bipolar is the latest variation on this theme of blaming patients rather than the drugs.”1 Dr. Glenmullen tells us that THERE IS NO WAY TO DIAGNOSE bi-polar, but people are put on drugs for this anyway.

Bad foods in the diet lead to physical and mental problems. Drugs do not cure anything. Nutrition must come first.

The only way to begin to turn this around is by eating as many natural, organic fruits, vegetables, seeds and nuts as possible while forgoing all the destructive foods I just mentioned. The sad fact is that there are no antioxidants in potato chips, no carotenoids in a McDonald’s burger and Coke, no chlorophyll in a serving of Cheese Whiz. With this present generation, we now have the latest threat — Frankenfoods (Genetically engineered foods) which are untested and sure to cause health problems, according to scientific sources. Today’s kids have no nutrients to get them through their lives in good health. While modern medicine is keeping people alive longer by patching damaged bodies with drugs and surgery, it is not addressing the nutrient deficit that shall take its toll in greater numbers in coming generations. Eat organic, real, whole foods, because man-made, artificial ingredients are toxic to the human organism.

1. ABC News, Q+A: Antidepressant Side Effects, Primetime Live Report, Dec. 15, 2004

Your body isn’t simply a vehicle for transporting your head from place to place. While it DOES perform this function, there’s actually quite a bit more important things it’s good for, as you already know. But when you don’t feed your body the right foods, it’s revolting — in more ways than one!

How does your body revolt? With symptoms and diseases. Modern medicine says drugs and surgeries are the answers, but we in natural health care say this still doesn’t provide the nutrients your cells are starving for. If you had the right nutrients, the drugs and surgeries would be unwarranted. While it’s commonly thought that being sick is a terrible thing, when you really take notice you’ll realize that this is how your body tells you that it needs nutrients. It often means you are STARVING for nutrients, even if you are way overweight! How is this possible?

Your body needs nutrients for eating, sleeping, resting, laughing, crying, driving, running, thinking, drinking, tinkering, making waste and snickering. You need nutrients for losing weight, gaining weight, talking to your accountant, riding your bike, screaming at your kids and for having sex. So where do YOUR nutrients come from? Your diet?Really?

The average diet in the western world lacks enough nutrients to fuel a body and keep it healthy and vibrant. That’s sad, because the average westerner has access to food, when you compare their situation with inhabitants of third world nations. So what’s gone haywire?

People are eating  KINDS of foods that are breaking down their cells. I call these DESTRUCTIVE FOODS. As a result, their bodies revolt with flu, colds, sores, allergies, headaches, cancer, stiff joints, bad teeth, camel breath, depression, asthma and poor vision. The answer? Fill your diet with more fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. Take a healthy dose of whole food supplements before you start your day! These are the only foods that contain life-supporting nutrients. All the other stuff — commercial breakfast cereals, cookies, pasta, potato chips, canned peas, margarine, fried chicken and Coke — break down your cells faster than you may realize. There’s really no secret here. It’s just a matter of giving your cells some real foods to work with.

The answer is clear with your car, so why not with your body?

It is undisputed that when caffeine is in your diet, it keeps calcium from making its way to build and support your bones.

According to the National Institutes of Health, however, you can make up the difference by merely adding calcium to your daily diet. The real problem, say government researchers, is not caffeine consumption, but rather “substantially less than optimum calcium intakes.”

I disagree with this approach. It’s simply illogical to consume something good just so you can keep consuming something that’s bad for you. That’s like taking your car to the auto body shop so you can start fresh when denting it up tomorrow.

If you are postmenopausal, say researchers at Creighton University (Omaha), too much caffeine may increase bone loss. This is especially of concern for women with a tendency toward osteoporosis. Among 96 healthy women in their 60’s and 70’s, those getting more than 300 milligrams of caffeine daily (about three cups of coffee) lost more bone from their spines over three years than women consuming less.

We know that caffeine can lead to bone loss, so why consume it?

But even knowing this, if you can’t give up your daily cup of joe, there are two things you can do to lessen the impact on your bones:

1. Switch to decaf organic
2. Simply drink less coffee and tea

(By the way, the consumption of cola has also been shown to be associated with lower bone mineral density.)

Are human beings, like you and your family, meant to eat bug sprays and deadly chemicals saturated into your food? Would you spray some Raid on your tomatoes and green beans then eat them? Well, this is what the nonorganic farmers are doing to your food.

A recent column by Mark Morford in the San Francisco Chronicle told it like it is about organic foods…

One large study has dared come forth to claim that organic food is really no better for you than “regular” food, implying that the organic thing is all a big sham, a multibillion-dollar lie, that the giant, watery, flavorless Safeway tomato doused in chemicals and gene-spliced goodness is really no worse for you than that fragrant, delicious, organic heirloom from Rainbow Grocery, or that the chem-blasted asparagus shipped in from Mexico in November has the same nutritional value as the organic goodness you should be getting in April from the local farm.

Is it tempting to believe? Not in the slightest. For one thing, going organic is only partially about basic, keep-you-alive nutrients. It’s just as much about the various toxins, chemicals, refined sugars and hormones slapped all over corporate foodstuffs in general; not to mention the brutal, earth-stabbing, industrial manufacturing and farming practices that go into most crappy mainstream foods.

In other words, yes, in terms of basic nutritional values, maybe some organic foods are no better for you than their “normal” industrial-produced equivalents. Unless you count the vicious environmental impact. And the chemicals. And the cancer. And the death. Otherwise, same.

Dammit. Wait a second. It also turns out that “USDA Certified Organic” label is just all sorts of mealy BS, too, and can’t really be trusted. Turns out the USDA has been so pressured by various industrial food titans to loosen the definition of “organic,” that the label has been rendered, if not meaningless, then more watered down than that same Safeway tomato. Are the USDA’s standards still a huge improvement over what came before? Hell yes. But they’re far from ideal.

Solution: Learn to read the ingredients yourself. Figure it out. Understand what you eat, and where it really comes from. It’s not really very difficult. Or, pretend that it is, that it’s too weird and you don’t have the time to care and it’s just too complicated. You are probably lying. But that’s OK.

You go to a restaurant and on the menu there is fish. But where does it come from? The sea, of course, right?? Not necessarily, and in many cases, not likely. The fact about fish is that it is too often factory farmed. What does this mean? It means it’s grown in a pen in the water, like a chicken couped up inhumanely in a cage. Maybe worse. Whole Foods sells a lot of factory farmed fish. So much for being a “health food” store.

A recent article about Chile’s farmed fish factories, in the Huffington Post, by Dan Imhoff, stated:

Salmon are not indigenous to Chile, but grown in crowded cages installed in the bays and estuaries of the country’s otherwise beautiful southern fjord region. These “farmed” Atlantic salmon are fed a steady diet of wild fish—perfectly edible for humans, but more profitable when converted into “value-added” finfish. The approximately three pounds of wild fish needed to produce each pound of farmed salmon has caused some people to refer to finfish aquaculture operations as “reverse protein factories.” Equally alarming, salmon farms have become excessively dependent upon toxic pesticides to combat sea lice and antibiotic medicines to thwart viruses that can run rampant among the high concentrations of rapidly growing, penned fish—not unlike industrial-scale hog, poultry, and cattle CAFOs on land.

The Vegan Society (United Kingdom) doesn’t like farmed fish, or any fish for that matter. But they do serve up some interesting facts:

Fish farms can be as intensive as anything found on terra firma. Up to 50,000 salmon are crowded in a single sea cage where they often swim in constant circles like caged zoo animals. Often suffering blinding cataracts, fin and tail injuries, body deformities, alarmingly high mortality, and infested with parasites, salmon are now raised intensively on the ‘forgotten’ factory farms under the sea. Off the Scottish west coast, for instance, salmon are reared at stocking densities equivalent to each three-quarter metre long (2.5 ft) salmon being allocated a bathtub of water. Crowding and confinement cause the fish to suffer stress, leading to greater susceptibility to disease. Wave after wave of serious disease outbreaks have caused the deaths of millions of farmed salmon, with official figures showing overall death rates of 10-30%. Such high mortality would sound alarm bells in other types of animal farming.

There are two sides to the factory farming, or farm-raised fish, picture. And neither side is very appealing. On the one side is that the fish are mistreated and there’s a tremendous environmental cost, as we discussed. Secondly, there is a cost in terms of your health. Farm raised fish are bad for you! Environmental Working Group reports:

Farm-raised salmon, a popular fish in American supermarkets, is so contaminated with cancer-causing chemicals that people should eat it no more than once a month, a new study says. The 14 chemicals studied, most of them pesticides, all are banned in the United States. But they can linger for decades in the environment and in the human body, and are present in the smaller fish that are ground up and fed to salmon raised in giant ocean cages. Wild salmon have much lower levels of contaminants and are safer to eat, the study found.

The toxic residue in the human body is lingering. To give you an example, If a little girl that’s 10 years old eats salmon [containing these
contaminants], when she’s 20 she’s going to have half that in her body.

ProMin Complex is used by many practitioners as nutrition for teeth, as well as bones, ligaments, cartilage and other musculoskeletal concerns.

SOURCE: UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SCHOOL OF DENTISTRY, UNVERSITY OF WASHINGTON NEWS, LEILA GRAY… Dental disease may be a wake-up call that your diet is harming your body.

“The five-alarm fire bell of a tooth ache is difficult to ignore,” says Dr. Philippe P. Hujoel, professor of dental public health sciences at the University of Washington  School of Dentistry. Beyond the immediate distress, dental pain may portend future medical problems. It may be a warning that the high-glycemic diet that led to dental problems in the short term may, in the long term, lead to potentially serious chronic diseases.

Hujoel reviewed the relationships between diet, dental disease, and chronic systemic illness in a report published July 1 in The Journal of Dental Research. He weighed two contradictory viewpoints on the role of dietary carbohydrates in health and disease. The debate surrounds fermentable carbohydates: foods that turn into simple sugars in the mouth. Fermentable carbohydrates are not just sweets like cookies, doughnuts, cake and candy. They also include bananas and several tropical fruits, sticky fruits like raisins and other dried fruits, and starchy foods like potatoes, refined wheat flour, yams, rice, pasta, pretzels, bread, and corn.

One viewpoint is that certain fermentable carbohydrates are beneficial to general health and that the harmful dental consequences of such a diet should be managed by the tools found in the oral hygiene section of drugstores. A contrasting viewpoint suggests that fermentable carbohydrates are bad for both dental and general health, and that both dental and general health need to be maintained by restricting fermentable carbohydrates.

The differing perspectives on the perceived role of dietary carbohydrates have resulted in opposing approaches to dental disease prevention, Hujoel notes, and have prompted debates in interpreting the link between dental diseases and such systemic diseases as obesity, diabetes, and some forms of cancer.

Over the past twenty years or so, Hujoel says, people have been advised to make fermentable dietary carbohydrates the foundation of their diet. Fats were considered the evil food. A high-carbohydrate diet was assumed to prevent a number of systemic chronic diseases. Unfortunately, such a diet – allegedly good for systemic health – was bad for dental health. As a result, cavities or gingival bleeding from fermentable carbohydrates could be avoided only — and not always successfully, as Hujoel points out — by conscientious brushing, fluorides, and other types of dental preventive measures. When these measures are not successful, people end up with cavities and gum disease.

Hujoel observed that the dental harms of fermentable carbohydrates have been recognized by what looks like every major health organization. Even those fermentable carbohydrates assumed to be good for systemic health break down into simple sugars in the mouth and promote tooth decay. All fermentable carbohydrates have the potential to induce dental decay, Hujoel notes.

But what if fermentable carbohydrates are also bad for systemic health? Hujoel asks. What if dietary guidelines would start incorporating the slew of clinical trial results suggesting that a diet low in fermentable carbohydrates improves cardiovascular markers of disease and decreases body fat? Such a change in perspective on fermentable carbohydrates, and by extension, on people’s diets, could have a significant impact on the dental profession, as a diet higher in fat and protein does not cause dental diseases, he notes. Dentists would no longer be pressed to recommend to patients diets that are bad for teeth or remain mum when it comes to dietary advice. Dentists often have been reluctant, Hujoel says, to challenge the prevailing thinking on nutrition. Advising patients to reduce the amount or frequency of fermentable carbohydrate consumption is difficult when official guidelines suggested the opposite.

The close correlation between the biological mechanisms that cause dental decay and the factors responsible for high average levels of glucose in the blood is intriguing. Hujoel explains that eating sugar or fermentable carbohydrates drops the acidity levels of dental plaque and is considered an initiating cause of dental decay.

“Eating these same foods, he says, is also associated with spikes in blood sugar levels. There is fascinating evidence that suggests that the higher the glycemic level of a food, the more it will drop the acidity of dental plaque, and the higher it will raise blood sugar. So, possibly, dental decay may really be a marker for the chronic high-glycemic diets that lead to both dental decay and chronic systemic diseases. This puts a whole new light on studies that have linked dental diseases to such diverse illnesses as Alzheimer’s disease and pancreatic cancer.”

The correlations between dental diseases and systemic disease, he adds, provide indirect support for those researchers who have suggested that Alzheimer’s disease and pancreatic cancer are due to an abnormal blood glucose metabolism.

The hypotheses on dental diseases as a marker for the diseases of civilization were postulated back in the mid-20th century by two physicians: Thomas Cleave and John Yudkin. Tragically, their work, although supported by epidemiological evidence, became largely forgotten, Hujoel notes. This is unfortunate, he adds, because dental diseases really may be the most noticeable and rapid warning sign to an individual that something is going awry with his or her diet.

“Dental problems from poor dietary habits appear in a few weeks to a few years,” Hujoel explains. “Dental improvement can be rapid when habits are corrected. For example, reducing sugar intake can often improve gingivitis scores (a measurement of gum disease) in a couple of weeks. Dental disease reveals very early on that eating habits are putting a person at risk for systemic disease. Since chronic medical disease takes decades to become severe enough to be detected in screening tests, dental diseases may provide plenty of lead-time to change harmful eating habits and thereby decrease the risk of developing the other diseases of civilization.”

In planning a daily or weekly menu, Hujoel suggests: “What’s good for your oral health looks increasingly likely to also benefit your overall health.”