Blood Pressure Meds Are Fat Fertilizer

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.
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Not all prescription drugs are bad. Some are really bad, like the drugs used to lower blood pressure. Among the top 10 drugs prescribed in the U.S, blood pressure (hypertension) medications ensnare millions into the prescription drug trap. That trap kills 200,000 and injures close to 2.2 million Americans every year. Fortunately, you can beat dangerous blood pressure levels by improving your lifestyle habits and turning to natural medicine.

Like Miracle Grow on plants, drugs such as Toprol-XL, Lopressor (metoprolol), Tenormin (atenolol), and Coreg (carvedilol) serve as fat fertilizer for the human body. A family of receptors - "beta-receptors" - activates your fat metabolism. Like a lock that has been broken, many blood pressure drugs jam beta-receptors and prevent them from responding to your own fat-burning molecules (the keys to the lock). Your body then begins to store fat and use carbohydrates (sugar) as fuel.

Once sugar becomes the primary source of fuel, your body begins screaming for it. Sugar addiction sets in. Fat gain ensues. And Type II diabetes follows. Patients who "follow doctor's orders" and swallow beta-blockers and diuretics are at a 28 percent to 50 percent greater risk of suffering from Type II diabetes - the greatest health challenge of the 21st century. Diabetes can eliminate a whopping 11 to 20 years from your lifespan.

Unfortunately, taking blood pressure medications can lead to many other serious and even deadly side effects. For instance, calcium channel blockers such as Adalat, Procardia (nifedipine), and Norvasc (amlodipine) are not safe alternatives. By blocking calcium from entering the heart, users are at greater risk of dying from heart failure.

The Fabricated Illness

High blood pressure - as defined by the drug industry and medical doctors - is not an instant death sentence. The goal of maintaining a blood pressure at or near 140/80 (or, more recently, 115/75) is based on drug company hype, not science. These numbers are designed to sell drugs by converting healthy people into patients.

Rising blood pressure is a normal process of aging and does not require drug intervention - even when it reaches 140/80. Medical literature shows that blood pressure rises slightly as we age - probably to accommodate an increased need for oxygen and nutrients. And this increase does not put us at any risk of early death.

If high blood pressure were dangerous, then lowering it with hypertension drugs would increase lifespan. Yet, clinical trials involving hypertension medication show no increased lifespan among users when compared to non-users.

Minimizing sugar and eliminating artificial flavors are two of the best things you can do to maintain a relatively normal blood pressure. Replacing carbohydrate (bread, pasta, desserts, and excess fruit) consumption with healthy fats (such as coconut oil, eggs, grass-fed beef, wild salmon, avocados, seeds, and nuts) will also help control your blood pressure... plus, it can eliminate unsightly belly fat. And, finally, interval training one to three times per week is vital for a healthy cardiovascular system.

Stopping Heart Disease With Artery-Preserving Molecules

Blood pressure can rise to temporary extremes in response to stress, infection, fasting, dehydration, or simply from the anxiety of walking into a doctor's office. Of course, these temporary instances of high blood pressure do not rationalize a lifetime of drug use.

It's prudent to be concerned should you experience chronic high blood pressure - which can be dangerous. This usually occurs when blood vessels become stiff due to hardening of the arteries (heart disease), causing your blood pressure to skyrocket to 200/100. Fortunately, you don't need blood pressure drugs to handle even these worrisome levels.

situations where high blood pressure might become life threatening, cardiovascular nutrients such as L-arginine, magnesium aspartate, and a 95 percent grape seed extract can be potent natural remedies based on Nobel Prize-winning science. These nutrients increase the production of nitric oxide, a molecule that allows for the dilation and relaxation of arteries. Using them can prevent heart attack and stroke that may result from impeded blood flow or inflammation caused by rising blood pressure.

Blood pressure medications are made to sell, not heal. They cater to fear rather than health. If you understand this, you'll avoid the deadly prescription drug trap and keep yourself safe and healthy.

[Ed. Note: Shane "The People's Chemist" Ellison is an internationally recognized authority on therapeutic nutrition and the author of The People's Chemist Foundational Health Education program. Save 10 percent and learn how to beat heart disease, obesity, and diabetes naturally by clicking here. You can also read Shane's insights into what you can do to lead a healthier life by signing up for ETR's FREE natural health e-letter here.]
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God bless,
Steve

Let's see...butter or margarine on my potato?

Next time you reach for the margarine, consider these facts........

The difference between margarine and butter?

The facts on Butter...
Both have the same amount of calories.

Butter is slightly higher in saturated fats at 8 grams compared to 5 grams.

Eating margarine can increase heart disease in women by 53% over eating the same amount of butter according to a recent Harvard Medical Study.

Eating butter increases the absorption of many other nutrients in other foods.

Butter has many nutritional benefits where margarine has a few only because they are added!

Butter tastes much better than margarine and it can enhance the flavors of other foods.

Butter has been around for centuries where margarine has been around for less than 100 years.
Now for Margarine...

Very high in Trans Fatty Acids, which triples the risk of Coronary Heart Disease.

Increases total cholesterol and LDL (this is the bad cholesterol)

Lowers HDL cholesterol, (the good cholesterol), which increases the risk of cancers by up to five fold.

Lowers quality of breast milk , which decreases immune response.

Decreases insulin response.

HERE IS THE PART THAT IS VERY INTERESTING!

Margarine is but ONE MOLECULE away from being PLASTIC...

This fact alone was enough to have us avoiding margarine for life and anything else that is hydrogenated (this means hydrogen is added, changing the molecular structure of the substance).

YOU can try this yourself: purchase a tub of margarine and leave it in your garage or shaded area.

Within a couple of days you will note a couple of things: no flies, not even those pesky fruit flies will go near it (that should tell you something)

... it does not rot or smell differently

...because it has no nutritional value, nothing will grow on it

...even those teeny little microorganisms will not a find a home to grow.

Why?

Because it is nearly plastic.

Would you melt your Tupperware and spread that on your toast?

From the American Heart Association dietary guide

God bless,
Steve

Thank a soldier

The next time you celebrate the rights and freedoms you enjoy, remember that freedom isn't free and it rides on the backs of those who stand in the gap for us.

God bless our soldiers.

God bless you,
Steve

10 simple ways to save yourself from messing up your life

I found this article somewhere on the net a few weeks ago and thought it was pretty informative, concise and accurate. You read them and judge for yourself.
God bless,
Steve
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1. Stop taking so much notice of how you feel. How you feel is how you feel. It’ll pass soon. What you’re thinking is what you’re thinking. It’ll go too. Tell yourself that whatever you feel, you feel; whatever you think, you think. Since you can’t stop yourself thinking, or prevent emotions from arising in your mind, it makes no sense to be proud or ashamed of either. You didn’t cause them. Only your actions are directly under your control. They’re the only proper cause of pleasure or shame.
   
2. Let go of worrying. It often makes things worse. The more you think about something bad, the more likely it is to happen. When you’re hair-trigger primed to notice the first sign of trouble, you’ll surely find something close enough to convince yourself it’s come.
   
3. Ease up on the internal life commentary. If you want to be happy, stop telling yourself you’re miserable. People are always telling themselves how they feel, what they’re thinking, what others feel about them, what this or that event really means. Most of it’s imagination. The rest is equal parts lies and misunderstandings. You have only the most limited understanding of what others feel about you. Usually they’re no better informed on the subject; and they care about it far less than you do. You have no way of knowing what this or that event really means. Whatever you tell yourself will be make-believe.
   
4. Take no notice of your inner critic. Judging yourself is pointless. Judging others is half-witted. Whatever you achieve, someone else will always do better. However bad you are, others are worse. Since you can tell neither what’s best nor what’s worst, how can you place yourself correctly between them? Judging others is foolish since you cannot know all the facts, cannot create a reliable or objective scale, have no means of knowing whether your criteria match anyone else’s, and cannot have more than a limited and extremely partial view of the other person. Who cares about your opinion anyway?
   
5. Give up on feeling guilty. Guilt changes nothing. It may make you feel you’re accepting responsibility, but it can’t produce anything new in your life. If you feel guilty about something you’ve done, either do something to put it right or accept you screwed up and try not to do so again. Then let it go. If you’re feeling guilty about what someone else did, see a psychiatrist. That’s insane.
   
6. Stop being concerned what the rest of the world says about you. Nasty people can’t make you mad. Nice people can’t make you happy. Events or people are simply events or people. They can’t make you anything. You have to do that for yourself. Whatever emotions arise in you as a result of external events, they’re powerless until you pick them up and decide to act on them. Besides, most people are far too busy thinking about themselves (and worry what you are are thinking and saying about them) to be concerned about you.
   
7. Stop keeping score. Numbers are just numbers. They don’t have mystical powers. Because something is expressed as a number, a ratio or any other numerical pattern doesn’t mean it’s true. Plenty of lovingly calculated business indicators are irrelevant, gibberish, nonsensical, or just plain wrong. If you don’t understand it, or it’s telling you something bizarre, ignore it. There’s nothing scientific about relying on false data. Nor anything useful about charting your life by numbers that were silly in the first place.
   
8. Don’t be concerned that your life and career aren’t working out the way you planned. The closer you stick to any plan, the quicker you’ll go wrong. The world changes constantly. However carefully you analyzed the situation when you made the plan, if it’s more than a few days old, things will already be different. After a month, they’ll be very different. After a year, virtually nothing will be the same as it was when you started. Planning is only useful as a discipline to force people to think carefully about what they know and what they don’t. Once you start, throw the plan away and keep your eyes on reality.
   
9. Don’t let others use you to avoid being responsible for their own decisions. To hold yourself responsible for someone else’s success and happiness demeans them and proves you’ve lost the plot. It’s their life. They have to live it. You can’t do it for them; nor can you stop them from messing it up if they’re determined to do so. The job of a supervisor is to help and supervise. Only control-freaks and some others with a less serious mental disability fail to understand this.
   
10. Don’t worry about about your personality. You don’t really have one. Personality, like ego, is a concept invented by your mind. It doesn’t exist in the real world. Personality is a word for the general impression that you give through your words and actions. If your personality isn’t likeable today, don’t worry. You can always change it, so long as you allow yourself to do so. What fixes someone’s personality in one place is a determined effort on their part—usually through continually telling themselves they’re this or that kind of person and acting on what they say. If you don’t like the way you are, make yourself different. You’re the only person who’s standing in your way.

Puzzlers from Coach John Wooden

• Why is it easier to criticize than to compliment?
• Why is it easier to give others blame rather than to give them credit?
• Why is it that so many who are quick to offer suggestions find it so difficult to make decisions?
• Why can't we realize that it only weakens those we want to help when we do things for them that they should do for themselves?
• Why is it so much easier to allow emotions rather than reason to control our decisions?
• Why does the person with the least to say usually take the longest to say it?

Now you think about that.

God bless you,
Steve

The Wisdom of a Coach

The following is an excerpt from a piece entitled "Words of Wisdom From Coach to Player" by Charles Sykes.

Charles Sykes is the author of "Dumbing Down Our Kids." He volunteered for high school and college graduates a list of eleven things they did not learn in school. In his book, he talks about how the feel good, politically correct teachings of today created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and set them up for failure in the real world. You may want to share this list with your kids.

Rule 1: Life is not fair; get used to it.

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will not make $40,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different term for burger flipping…they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents’ fault so don't whine about your mistakes. Learn from them and move on.

Rule 7: Before you were born your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they will give you as many chances as you want or need to get the answer right. This, of course, doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is NOT divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and VERY few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go get a job.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you will end up working for one.

God bless you,
Steve

21 Patterns and Principles for Success 2

Dr. Edwin Louis Cole was a visionary, a teacher of men. He lived his life according to the patterns and principles of the Bible. He was a warrior for the Kingdom of God. He believed that “Everything in the Kingdom follows a pattern and is based on a principle – act on the patterns and principles and the anointing favor of God will be upon you and fill your life.”

Here are the remaining 11 principles:

11. Champions are not those who never fail; they are those who never quit. It is true of most of the heroes of Hebrews 11…flawed but never quitting.

12. Your care for others is the measure of your greatness. (Luke 9:46-48 TLB) “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” Teddy Roosevelt

13. Your talent can take you where your character cannot sustain you. How often have we seen men rise to great levels, only to fall because they committed to building their talent, but not their character?

14. You are qualified to lead to the degree that you are willing to serve. (Mark 9:35)

15. You know the depth of loving by the degree of giving. (John 15:13)

16. You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.

17. The essence of humility is anonymity. (Matt 18:4; James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5) There is no limit to what a man can do if he doesn’t care who gets the credit. Mark Twain

18. When you are faithful in that which is another’s, then God can give you your own. (Luke 16:12) This is a great key in the mentoring process; many men lose by unfaithfulness.

19. God gave Solomon largeness of heart. (I Kings 4:29) He had to have largeness of heart to handle greatness. (II John 1:9; Rom 2:14; Prov. 9:10 & 3:7)

20. Grace is the right to do what is right for Christ and His Kingdom, not what is right for my personal pleasure.

21. Life management starts with time management. Dr. Cole taught men the value of prioritizing time and to always set the family calendar first.

God bless you,
Steve

21 Patterns and Principles for Success

Dr. Edwin Louis Cole was a visionary, a teacher of men. He lived his life according to the patterns and principles of the Bible. He was a warrior for the Kingdom of God. He believed that “Everything in the Kingdom follows a pattern and is based on a principle – act on the patterns and principles and the anointing favor of God will be upon you and fill your life.”

The Bible states: “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.” (Proverbs 4:23) Another way to say it is this, “Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts.” By following these 21 patterns and principles you can release into your life a new level of favor, success, increase, power, influence and fulfillment.

Here are the first 10 of the 21:

1) Private philosophy determines public performance. (Col 2:8) The world says that what is done in private has no bearing or merit on our public lives. However, the converse is true. What a man thinks in his heart is what he will become. Pornography, greed, jealousy, anger…all may start privately, but they have a tremendous impact on families, jobs, churches…and your life.

2) When you accept a philosophy that is a rationalization to justify someone’s failure – you accept their failure. This is the constrict of men’s lives… You cannot preach your personal commitments as the doctrine of the Church. We must live by the Word of God, not by the shifting popular opinions of the latest fad, or the traditions of men.

3) The greatest for good or harm is in what you believe…about God, about Self, about Others. (1 John 5:10) Dr Cole taught this as the centerpiece of his ministry.

4) You live either by performance or conviction. Preference weakens under pressure – Conviction grows stronger. You can be negotiated out of your preference – Convictions are non-negotiable.

5) A man’s integrity is shown more by how he keeps his word than anything else. One time Dr. Cole once preached to an athlete’s conference. A coach heard this message and walked away saying, “I need to call men to be keeper’s of their promises.” Because of that, the Promise Keepers organization was born.

6) Prayer produces intimacy…with the one you pray to, the one you pray with and the one you pray for. Dr. Cole was married to his wife, Nancy, for more than 50 years and credits this principle with their closeness and unique relational bond.

7) When you let others create your world for you, they will always create it too small. The creative power of the tongue…speak the Word of God into your life. Let God make you His man!

8) Maturity does not come with age but with the acceptance of responsibility. (1 Cor 13:11)

9) We cannot become responsible for success until we are first willing to be responsible for failure. Success, like any fruit, needs fertilizer for growth. One of the best known “manure’s” for that purpose is failure. When we accept responsibility for our failure, we can make the necessary corrections and adjustments in order to move toward success.

10) God disciples pastor, pastor disciples man, man disciples family. When a pastor fails to disciple a man, he absolves the man of responsibility for the family. When the pastor is the discipler of all, the man can blame the pastor for the issues in his family.

Next time, the final 11...

God bless you,
Steve

Is a calorie just a calorie?

Are all calories REALLY equal? I don't believe so, and here's why:

At the Obesity and Diabetes Research Center at the University of Maryland, this exact question was put to the test.

A group of monkeys grew heavier with an identical diet as their thinner counterparts. The difference was the simple carbohydrate to protein and fat ratio. The same number of calories from simple sugars caused more weight-gain than the same calories from proteins and fats.

Monkeys are not the only ones who demonstrate these characteristics.

As humans our bodies react in much the same manner.

A recent study directed by Penelope Greene of the Harvard School of Public Health found that people eating an extra 300 calories a day on a very low-carb regimen lost just as much during a 12-week study as those on a standard low-fat diet. Over the course of the study, they consumed an extra 25,000 calories. That should have added up to about seven pounds. But for some reason, it did not.

"There does indeed seem to be something about a low-carb diet that says you can eat more calories and lose a similar amount of weight" Greene said.

The bottom line is simply this: a calorie of "this" does not equal a calorie of "that".

This is just one of the many reasons I'm not fond of calorie-counting. I don't want to weigh all my food all the time and count calories every day.

Believe me when I say, I don't, and won't, do it.

I eat a very simple diet -- lower in carbs and higher in protein and fat.

That works for me. It may not work for you, but I promise you this:

The "secret" to fat loss and good health is as simple as

1. Stick to whole, natural foods, avoiding any processed foods that come in a bag or a box.
2. Eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables per day.
3. Eat healthy fats, found in almonds, walnuts, fish, grass-fed beef, and olive oil.
4. Substitute green tea and water for sodas, juices, and other high-calorie beverages.

That has been proven, time and time again, to be a successful, satisfying and fulfilling regimen for effective, permanent fat loss.

God bless you,
Steve