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Artificial Sweeteners Are Not For Fat Loss

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The sweet flavor from a dessert adds insulin to the blood, making weight loss difficultArtificial sweeteners are not for fat loss.

There is a concept in Chinese Medicine that refers to the energetic impact that the flavor of food imparts. The ancient doctors called this the impact of the Five Sapors (Wu Wei), or flavors. This idea has been essentially ignored in “the west” until recently. If you are trying to lose weight (fat) or are diabetic you will want to take note. You will see why diet drinks and artificially flavored foods are not your friends!

The ancient Chinese identified five flavors and associated these with the energetic system that they most affect:

  • Sour – Wood
  • Bitter – Fire
  • Sweet – Earth
  • Pungent – Metal
  • Salty – Water

For example, this means that if I eat a sour food that it will increase the Wood energetics in my body. They went further than this to say that the taste of the food, without even swallowing it, would immediately start to impact the body.

Flash forward a few thousand years to 2008 where a study was conducted on “Cephalic phase insulin response after taste stimulation“. In the study human volunteers tasted various solutions which contained either sugar, artificial sweetener, plain water, starch, etc. The subjects then spit out the solution.

Chinese Medicine would predict that the sweet solutions, the sugar and artificial sweetener, would impact the Earth energetics resulting in increased insulin release and other earth-related effects. So what did they find?

A significant increase of plasma insulin concentration was apparent after stimulation with sucrose and saccharin. In conclusion, the current data suggest that the sweeteners sucrose and saccharin activate a CPIR even when applied to the oral cavity only.

Surprise, surprise. As soon as the tongue sensed the sweet flavor, even if it was from an artificial sweetener, the pancreas started dumping insulin into the blood. This is one of the reasons artificially sweetened foods aren’t especially helpful for people looking to reduce fat on their bodies and loose weight. Your body doesn’t much care if it is getting real sugar or fake sugar. Extra insulin will be released and that’s going to make you hungry. Your body will require that you eat those missing calories one way or another. Sweet is not your friend if you are looking to loose fat.

To see if acupuncture might be right for you, give us a call at our Durham location or you may call us at 919-228-8448. If you find it easier to make an appointment online, you can simply click here to use our online schedule to set up a free face-to-face consultation.

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Food for Energy

Food for Energy

A neat blog I follow bodyhacker recently blogged about 7 Foods for an Energy Boost. Being married to Melissa, The Avocado Queen I am a huge fan of food, so I took particular interest in that post. I don’t always agree with what I read on bodyhacker (this article being no exception), but like many of their articles, it does provide “food for thought”, so to speak.

In this bodyhacker post, in particular, I take exception to the number of fruits on the list. Fruits have lots of simple sugars (fructose mostly- as in “high fructose corn syrup”), which can lead to an energy crash after eating them. It is true that most fruits compensate in the body through their high fiber content. Still, I wonder if there aren’t other sources of these energy boosting vitamins and minerals that don’t contain so much fructose and might be better candidates for this list.

For vitamin C sources I suggest bell peppers, broccoli, brussel sprouts, and cabbage. For potassium consider spinach and mushrooms. For dietary fiber, how about dark leafy greens, broccoli, and cabbage?

Details aside, it is easy to forget how much our food effects our health. From our energy to our skin to our mood to our stress levels to our sleep, we are deeply affected by our food.

Eat well, folks! Use food for energy.

To see if acupuncture might be right for you, give us a call at our Durham location or you may call us at 919-228-8448. If you find it easier to make an appointment online, you can simply click here to use our online schedule to set up a free face-to-face consultation.

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