According to many scientific studies, the effect of natural health products is questionable, and other scientific studies claim they work, does alternative medicine really work to cure diseases? What about all the nutritional supplement hype, how do you know the truth? In an interview with my friend Josh it is possible to learn a lot from his experience.
Herb: Josh, I am glad you could come to share with us some of your information about health.
So you supposedly had to change your diet and supplement nutrients in order to find relief for epilepsy, and it actually started not by adding things to your diet but by taking whole wheat out of your diet.
Josh: I did start by taking things OUT of my diet but whole wheat was not one of them.
Whole wheat is an example because of its controversy.
You should be warned that you MUST research stuff because what seems healthy is not always healthy, even some herbal cures.
Even though most of them are good and effective, some of them might not be beneficial.
Also, because of the importance of oils in the diet of anyone with nerve problems, it is worth paying attention to whole wheat products because its controversy is due to the oils in the wheat germ and oils are extremely important.
Herb: If you didn't take whole wheat out of your diet, then what DID you take out of your diet? Josh: Putting good stuff into my system was a bit too expensive for me at first so I started by taking stuff OUT of my diet that I realized would cause harm.
Sugar was the first thing I cut back on because of the advice of an M.
D.
that suggested it would relieve arthritis in my thumb.
That worked great! But even MORE importantly I got rid of ALL artificial sweeteners; particularly aspartame.
Artificial sweeteners often trick the body into thinking that it is getting sugar when it is not and the body is reacting to it in a way that expects something it is not getting.
That can be dangerous; especially for us with epilepsy and other nerve problems that are sensitive to chemical changes in our body.
Some sweeteners are even poisonous.
Getting rid of all sugars is almost impossible, but cutting back on it and using honey instead of stronger sugars was a good compromise.
Honey actually contains a lot of nutrients in it and sugar in its raw form is healthy sometimes, but knowing all the details and how it applies to your body requires you to research.
There are many herbs that contain nutrients that will make your body stop craving for sugars.
Herb: So you cut back on sugars but didn't cut out the whole wheat.
Why did you not cut back on the whole wheat if there is a possibility that the oils could be toxic? Josh: It is because of the "one step at a time" principle.
With epilepsy, any drastic changes can throw the body out of balance so a lifestyle change needs to be a slow process.
My main goal at the time was in the areas of sugars.
I cut back on white flour and leaned more toward whole wheat and bran.
Mainly this is because of the sugar issue.
Carbohydrates and sugars are in the same category.
Carbohydrates are digested by the body and break down into sugars.
Then sugar is digested down into alcohols that get used by the brain to create energy or fats that are used for different functions.
Too many carbohydrates means too much sugar.
When white flour is alone by itself it digests straight into sugar but grains that still contain the germ and the bran fibers take longer to digest and therefore it releases less sugars and spreads them more evenly.
The purity of oils was not my main focus at the time so I considered the switch to whole wheat to be a first step toward actual "supplementation.
" I try to not take anything away from my diet without replacing it with something better.
Eventually I started to supplement my body with herbs that are high in nutritional content and dealt with the wheat issue later.