Balance is required for good health
lynnea / Pixabay – Balance in dietary choices is much easier than many think.

I believe we all live our lives out of balance.  Balance is a hard thing to achieve – to balance that right amount of time and effort so that we live in harmony.  It is relatively easy to balance a checkbook. Account for the deposits and withdrawals and the leftover is your operating capital for another period of time.  Balancing time is probably the hardest.  We don’t choose our distractions very well.

Somewhere between the checkbook and time are other important priorities in our lives.  Family and health are two of them (there are many more).  Allow me to concentrate on the health aspect of balance for a moment or two.

Wheat is a serious health risk
herryway / Pixabay – Wheat is a serious health risk and most of us don’t know it.

Most of us have heard about gluten, the protein in wheat.  It affects some of us very dramatically – Celiac disease, for example.  However, the insidious thing about gluten is that it affects all of us. Maybe not in out gut, but in our brains and other parts of our bodies.  As a result, the food industry came up with the ‘gluten-free’ option.  And, many of us have latched onto it without understanding the consequences.

Sugar and flour are a harmful mix
RyanMcGuire / Pixabay – The dynamic duo of poor health – sugar and flour.

Glycation is the result of a sugar molecule bonding with a protein. Glycation increases the rate of loss of telomere length and hence, reduces our longevity. In our bodies, glucose forms new molecules when it combines with proteins. They are called advanced glycation end products (AGEs). They affect every area of our bodies. They accumulate and are irreversible. Dietary choices affect the level of AGEs in our bodies. All carbohydrates increase the level of blood glucose. Removing carbohydrates from our diet choices reduces the level of AGEs in your body.

The glycemic index ranks foods on a scale from 1 to 100. It is based on the effect in the human body of increasing blood-sugar levels. A piece of white bread ranks the highest. Wheat permeates our lives. It is responsible for many health issues, but the FDA and other government, professional and health organizations do not recognize the impact that wheat, more correctly, gluten, has on the disease processes within the human body. Even gluten-free options raise the level of AGEs equal to wheat. Some gluten-free examples are rice flour, corn flour, tapioca, and potato flour.

 

 

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