Michelle Woodworth

It should come as no surprise in a world where a homeowner can be sued because a careless driver plows into a brick mailbox but even in a profession as altruistic as nutritional consulting knowing the legal boundaries and pitfalls can save your practice and your good nature.

It’s almost as if there’s a competition among acronyms over who gets to do what and the name they use for their technique. That being said, licensed doctors own a monopoly on the terms diagnose, cure, prescribe, and treat. These words have legal meaning in the health care field and if anyone other than a licensed doctor uses them, they are considered to be practicing a regulated profession without a license. One way to avoid stepping on the toes of the licensed medical profession and stay within legal boundaries is to avoid using any terminology that establishes you as a licensed professional.

• Cure, by definition, means to remedy or restore to health. And while we cannot legally use the word cure, we can use remedy, restore, improve, help, or correct. Reverse may even be appropriate in some situations.
• To diagnose is to determine the identity of a disease or illness by medical examination. As nutritional consultants we are not performing any medical examinations or identifying any diseases. What we do is to check, evaluate, or determine.
• Licensed practitioners prescribe courses of action to their patients. Unlicensed practitioners make suggestions or recommendations and advise or offer options to their clients.
• If you are dealing with someone in order to relieve or cure, you are treating them. Since nutritional consultants don’t cure we don’t use the word treat. Instead, we relieve, balance, correct, and remedy.

Though not on the black list like the previous terms, disease is another word best left out of the nutritional consultant vocabulary. Condition or imbalance would be more appropriate. It is also prudent to refrain from naming a specific disease. One might describe the symptoms rather than verbalizing the medical label. Though this may just seem like semantics (and really that’s exactly what it is), in our world today this is a necessary precaution to avoid legal consequences.

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Using the right words,
Michelle Woodworth

Here’s a great quote for you.  This came from a poster that the National Soft Drink Association provided to teachers.  “As refreshing sources of needed liquids and energy, soft drinks represent a positive addition to a well-balanced diet….These same three sugars also occur naturally, for example, in fruits….In your body it makes no difference whether the sugar is from a soft drink or a peach.”  Seriously?

Did you like that last quote?  I have another.  Coca-Cola chairman and CEO, M. Douglas Ivester, defended marketing campaigns in Africa saying “Actually, our product is quite healthy.  Fluid replenishment is a key to health….Coca-Cola does a great service because it encourages people to take in more and more liquids.”  What’s actually happening is that people are consuming sugar, artificial coloring, and caffeine instead of the water that our bodies can’t function without.

I wonder how many people would consider reducing or eliminating the amount of soda they drink if they knew what it was doing in their bodies?

Studies have shown that obesity rates have risen in tandem with soft-drink consumption.  Though carbonated beverages are not the sole cause of obesity, heavy consumption is likely to cause weight gain in many consumers and The National Institutes of Health recommends drinking water rather than sugary soft drinks to those trying to lose or control their weight.  An interesting fact is that there are 3,500 calories in one pound of fat.  If someone wanted to lose one pound a week they would need to cut out 500 calories per day.  Do you know how many calories are in a 20 ounce bottle of Coca-Cola?  250.  So by just replacing a soda a day with water, you could lose 2 pounds a month.

Carbonated beverages are the largest source of refined sugar in the American diet and refined sugar promotes tooth decay.  Regular consumption of soft drinks contributes to cavities because they coat the teeth in sugar-water.  There are 68 grams of sugar in a 20 ounce bottle of soda.  A teaspoon of sugar is 4.2 grams.  That means you are consuming the equivalent of 16 teaspoons of sugar with each bottle of soda you drink.  Might want to put the dentist on speed dial.

Just in case you need a few more reasons to drink less soda. . . Heart disease is the number one killer in America and one of the contributing factors is a diet high in sugar.  Studies have linked carbonated beverages with the occurrence of kidney stones.  And let’s also mention caffeine.  It’s a mildly addictive stimulant drug that can cause nervousness, sleeplessness, headaches, irritability, and rapid heartbeat.   Caffeine also increases the loss of calcium in urine which may contribute to the risk of osteoporosis.

All that trouble in those brightly colored plastic bottles . . .

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Michelle Woodworth
Opting for a Peach

What do Angelina Jolie, Britney Spears, Brett Favre, Elton John, Dr. Phil McGraw, Martha Stewart, and Batman all have in common? They have all sported a milk mustache for the long-running “got milk” campaign.   It “does a body good”, right?  I mean, if actors, entertainers, and athletes are all drinking milk, it must be good for me too . . .

Did you know that the majority of the human population across the globe does NOT drink or use cow’s milk?  How about that many people can’t drink milk because their body can’t tolerate it, or that our bodies actually produce an antibody against milk?  Some sources say that our bodies lose the enzymes required to digest dairy products by the age of two or three.

Dairy food is a very controversial issue.  Many believe that dairy is not fit for human consumption and numerous studies have documented its ill effects on health.  Yet, dairy farming is a multi-billion dollar government-subsidized industry whose advertising campaigns lead us to believe that we can’t live without milk.

You’ve seen the milk campaigns on television and in magazines. Now I’d like to share with you some of the information that’s not as readily available.

Osteoporosis occurs when bone breaks down faster than it is formed and it affects over 28 million people each year, 80% of which are women.  Most experts recommend drinking lots of milk for calcium, but the more dairy one consumes, the weaker bones can become.  Harvard University’s Nurses Health Study followed 78,000 women over a 12-year period and found that the women who consumed the most dairy products broke more bones than those who rarely drank milk.

Think milk is a natural food?  Fifty years ago, the average cow produced 2,000 pounds of milk annually.  Today, thanks to drugs, hormones, and forced feeding plans, top milk producers are putting out 50,000 pounds per year.  Bovine Growth Hormone, BGH, has actually been banned in many European countries due to safety concerns.

You’ve heard that you shouldn’t give babies cow’s milk until they are at least a year old, right?  Feeding human babies milk that is designed for calves can increase the chances of developing an allergy to cow’s milk.  Some symptoms are diarrhea, vomiting, persistent colic, eczema, hives, bronchitis, asthma, and sleeplessness.  It has even been suggested that some crib deaths can be attributed to dairy allergies.

The conventional food pyramid shows that we should be consuming three servings of dairy products daily for a balanced diet, but milk consumption has been linked to increased risk for cardiovascular disease and breast and prostate cancer.  This is not, as previously thought, due to fat content but to the ratio of calcium to magnesium.  Ideally, you need twice as much calcium as magnesium.  The ratio in milk is 10:1, leading to magnesium (important for bone density) deficiency.

Based on current evidence, dairy products should not be a staple for a healthy diet.  Seeds, nuts, cabbage, carrots, and cauliflower provide calcium, magnesium and other minerals that are more in line with our needs.  You can try substituting soy or rice milk or buying organic milk.  If you think you might have a dairy allergy, cut these products from your diet for two weeks and see if you notice a difference.

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Michelle Woodworth
Getting my calcium from carrots.

I bet you think microwave ovens were invented for the purpose of making your life easier. Defrost some chicken, cook some soup, reheat last nights leftovers. Maybe warm a cold cup of coffee. Well, how about this. The Nazi’s invented the microwave oven to be used for the invasion of Russia. Who would have guessed? There’s more. After the war, the Russians retrieved some microwaves and did testing on their biological effects. What they learned led to a 1976 ban prohibiting the use of microwave ovens in the Soviet Union. (This ban is no longer in effect.)

Now you have a choice to make. You can stop reading and go make yourself some microwave popcorn and remain oblivious to the dangers of microwave cooking or you can read on and make an informed decision about the future of your microwave oven.

Swiss, Russian, and German clinical studies have come to the following conclusions about microwave oven use:

1. Continually eating food processed from a microwave oven causes permanent brain damage by “shorting out” electrical impulses in the brain.
2. The human body cannot break down the unknown by-products created in microwaved foods.
3. Male and female hormone production is shut down and/or altered by continually eating microwaved foods.
4. The effects of microwaved food by-products are permanent within the human body.
5. Vitamins, minerals, and nutrients of all microwaved foods are reduced or altered so that the human body gets little or no benefit.
6. The minerals in vegetables are altered into cancerous free radicals when cooked in microwave ovens.
7. Microwaved foods cause stomach and intestinal cancerous growths (tumors) which may help explain the rapidly increased rate of colon cancer in America.
8. The prolonged eating of microwaved foods causes cancerous cells to increase in human blood.
9. Continual ingestion of microwaved food causes immune system deficiencies.
10. Eating microwaved food causes loss of memory and concentration, emotional instability, and a decrease of intelligence. (GCNM, NC13. Copyright 2010)

If microwave ovens are so dangerous, why are they being used in over 90% of American homes? It’s true they’re convenient and energy efficient but at what cost? Here’s one last bit of information for you to consider.

In 1991, Dr. Hans Ulrich Hertel published a research paper indicating that food cooked in microwave ovens could pose a greater health risk than foods cooked by conventional means. A magazine article was also written which stated that the consumption of food cooked in microwave ovens had cancerous effects on the blood. The cover of the magazine featured a picture of the Grim Reaper holding a microwave oven. Want to know how well that went over?  The Swiss Association of Dealers for Electro-apparatuses for Households and Industry used their influence to have a gag order issued against Dr. Hertel. And in 1993 he was convicted for “interfering with commerce” and prohibited from further publishing his results. Though this decision has since been reversed, it’s interesting to see that commerce took priority over health.

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Michelle Woodworth
Using my microwave as a kitchen clock and lighted bread box.

Okay, is there anyone who hasn’t heard that when Elvis died he had 60 pounds of toxic waste in his colon?  How about John Wayne?  He had 40 pounds of impacted fecal matter in his colon when he died (according to USA Today).  Also, have you ever seen a really thin person who had a “potbelly”?  It’s impossible to have a flat stomach when you have a toxic colon.

It’s estimated that the average American could be carrying between 10-25 pounds of impacted fecal matter in his/her colon.  That’s a person of normal weight!  Imagine what it is for someone who is overweight.  On second thought, let’s not.  .  .

Autointoxication is a fancy word that describes an unhealthy large intestine (colon).  Your colon is about the last 5 feet of your digestive tract.  Its main jobs are water and electrolyte reabsorption and the formation and storage of feces.  Unfortunately, a large percentage of people have a less-than-healthy colon and that can be a factor in such conditions as:

• Constipation, Diarrhea, Abdominal Gas
• Headaches, Hypertension, Insomnia
• Backaches, Arthritis, Hemorrhoids
• Allergies, Asthma, Skin Problems
• Difficulty Losing Weight, Food Cravings
• Depression, Frequent Colds

Here’s an interesting statistic for you.  The Royal Academy of Physicians of Great Britain claims that 90% of all disease and discomfort is related to an unclean colon – due to impacted feces.

The most obvious sign of an unhealthy colon is chronic constipation – matter is packed so tight that you can’t have a bowel movement

I told a friend the other day that a person with a healthy colon should have a bowel movement shortly after each meal.  She told me that her day was full enough without having to spend that much time in the bathroom.  Personally, given the alternative, I’d rather spend the time in the bathroom.

Would you like to know what a healthy bowel movement is like?

• Complete, fast, and easy
• Light brown
• Long
• Large in diameter
• Fluffy
• Floating
• No offensive odor
• Break apart with flushing

So, if you’re only having one elimination a week, you have to sit and strain, it’s pencil thin, and sinks and stinks, then you might want to consider changing your diet and getting on a good detox plan.

This might not be a topic for the dinner table but I think it’s useful to know what it’s like when your body is functioning properly.

In the US, $40 million is spent annually on laxatives.  Digestive disorders are the third most common reason for hospitalization among 15-44 year-olds and the second most common among 45-65 year-olds.  It gets worse, not so much because of age, but because we have had more time to load our bodies with more unhealthy junk.

And here’s the kicker.  Enemas have been documented back to like 5,000 years ago.  Do you think they knew something back then that might benefit us now?  They instinctively knew that an unclean colon could become a source of illness.

Gee, look how far we’ve come.

Michelle Woodworth
Taking Better Care of My Colon

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