Summit Total Health

Milk - Does the Body Good?

For years milk has been promoted and accepted as a healthy supplement to the American diet. With $180 million spent annually on advertising in the dairy industry, we have been told time and time again how important milk is for our health. For the most part the dairy industry has succeeded, the average person in America consumes over 600 lbs of dairy products every year. Milk commercials are seen more as a public announcement than a business advertisement. But is milk all it’s put out to be? Let’s look at some health research.

The Missing Vitamin in Heart Disease

15 million people suffer from heart failure worldwide. Half of these people die within the first 5 years they are diagnosed. This is bad news for young and old. But there’s good news. Researchers from the Journal of the American College of Cardiology have recently done a study of heart failure. What they discovered was interesting. In a group of patients with chronic heart failure, the vitamin D in their blood happened to be 50% lower. They found a correlation between the severity of heart disease and vitamin D deficiency.

Good Fat vs. Bad Fat

Contrary to popular belief, fat is not always bad. In fact some fats are required to prevent and even reverse degenerative problems like heart disease and cancer. There are undoubtedly bad fats which can deter health, but what people fail to realize is that there are fats which are essential to our health. Just as the wrong kind of fats can harm us, essential fats, used in the right ratio, can be used for weight loss and the improvement of our overall health.

The Detox Diet

The Detox Diet is a diet designed to eliminate the foods which are introducing toxicity and inflammation to your body. After a period of elimination, we will slowly reintroduce various food groups. If you are journaling you should be able to identify foods that are triggering inflammation in your body. I will list a group of foods that we will initially avoid. You should focus more on the included foods but a list to avoid is necessary.

Many of the foods listed will not be a problem for you. The only way to discover the foods that trigger reactions in your body is to stop them during this phase 1 portion of the detoxification diet. Other foods such as artificial sweeteners should never be reintroduced.