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Sugar Drops Your Immune System By 75%
What Happens When You Eat Sugar
80% Of Your Immune System Is In Your Gut
Boosting your immune system is one of my favorite things that cultured foods do. Your gut is responsible for 80 percent of your immune system. The more good bacteria you have, the better your immune system will function. Viruses run around looking for a human host to inhabit. When it finds one, your body has special helpers designed to seek and destroy this invader. One of the things that can affect your immune system is eating sugar. Let's talk about this in regards to vitamin C.
Vitamin C
On a daily basis, our body uses antioxidant vitamins to boost the immune system. One of the most important antioxidants for this is vitamin C (sometimes known as ascorbic acid). Studies have shown that vitamin C helps reduce cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, stroke and improves prenatal health problems, eye disease, and even skin wrinkling. We don't have the ability to make this special vitamin in our bodies, so we must obtain vitamin C from the diet. One of the best ways to do this is through cultured foods - especially cultured vegetables. Lactic acid fermentation increases the micronutrient profile of foods. Not only does vitamin C increase when you ferment foods, but many other vitamins, too, such as A and B vitamins. All of the essential nutrients boost our body's ability to fight infections and invaders and keep our adrenal glands running at optimal levels.
Take Vitamin C For A Cold — Theory
In the 1970s, Dr. Linus Pauling - one of the greatest researchers in the field of microbiology - discovered that vitamin C helps the body combat the common cold. But what he also found was how sugar can do the opposite. This is very important to know, as using this information can prevent illness and dramatically assist healing. Because the idea that sugar is "bad" for you is becoming pretty well known, I am going to give you a quick journey through your own immune system so you can see for yourself what Dr. Pauling discovered.
Dr. Pauling discovered that vitamin C is needed by white blood cells to engulf and absorb viruses and bacteria. In fact, a white blood cell has to contain 50 times the concentration of vitamin C as would normally be found in the blood around the cell. That's how we came up with the "take vitamin C for a cold" theory. In order to continue to desťroy bacteria and viruses, the white blood cells have to accumulate vitamin C all the time to keep up the 50-times concentration. Vitamin C is water soluble and so we need to constantly acquire more vitamin C to keep our cells in balance throughout the day. When we have too much vitamin C it is excreted through the urine. So, vitamin C is being moved through the cell membranes into the white blood cells all over your body, all the time. That's why it's important to have plenty of vitamin C available to your body.
The Body Mistakes Sugar For Vitamin C
Glucose, or sugar, and vitamin C have a similar chemical structure. So similar, in fact, that when a white blood cell tries to pull in more vitamin C from the blood around it, glucose can get taken in by mistake. If the concentration of glucose in the blood goes beyond a certain amount, the white blood cell's 50-times vitamin C concentration can start to drop because of the large amount of glucose it's pulling in instead of the vitamin C.
So, as your blood sugar starts to rise from eating sugar and gets to 120 units or above, the white blood cell's ability to absorb and destroy viruses and bacteria is reduced by 75%. This blood sugar level would be easily obtained by any normal person eating some sugar (cake, cookies, candy, soda, or even drinking fruit juice). It can take four to six hours for the vitamin C concentration in the white blood cells to reach the optimum 50-times concentration again. I want to tell you that one of the fastest ways to get vitamin C is from cultured veggies. They contain over 700 milligrams in one cup, but it can't get into your cells if your blood is filled with sugar. As you can see, it's not a great idea to eat any kind of sugar if you're sick, even if you're consuming extra vitamin C. This is because it won't help if the white blood cells can't get past the sugar to use the vitamin C. If you were on a program of health improvement or healing from an injury of any kind, sugar should be your Number One Enemy! White blood cells and other phagocytes remove dead tissue as well as other types of waste associated with injury healing. So have I scared you?! It's okay! I'm just trying to help you understand what I have been learning for years because its gonna set you free. Here is what is so cool about this. Every time you eat sugar you know it is depleting your cells of vitamin C and it's gonna start bugging you. This little bit of knowledge will start to change your mind and it can effectively start a change in you that otherwise might have never happened. Your mind will help you change the habits that your body has on autopilot and you will start to change. Maybe not all at once - it takes a lot of courage to make changes; but when you change your life, you change everybody around you.
Cultured Foods Boost Your immune System
Having lots of vitamin C in your diet is a great way to keep your immune system healthy. Did you know that one cup, or the juice, of cultured cabbage can have as much as 700 milligrams of vitamin C, while un-fermented cabbage only has 70 milligrams of vitamin C. Impressive, right?! You have more bacterial cells than you have human cells in your body, so eating probiotic cultured foods is a no brainer. These are some of the most powerful reasons you need to eat cultured foods to help boost your immune system. I'm not just giving you facts and figures, I have actually lived these results and seen so many others do the same. They work, they do the job, and you will receive the benefits. It will make you a believer. Eat your cultured foods: kefir, kombucha, and cultured vegetables. They talk to your immune system and keep you strong.
Start your day with kefir. Then consume a glass of kombucha for lunch or dinner, if at all possible. Add in a spoonful of cultured veggies as a side dish and perhaps some minerals, too. Sugar depletes your minerals and you'll need extra. And if you're going to eat sugar, have a cultured food before or after so it can consume some of the sugars. Limit your sugar up your cultured foods and watch what happens. It will make you a believer, too. Food is powerful and cultured foods are mighty heroes in my life. What would I do without them? I did try to eliminate them for a short time, but that didn't turn out so well. That's another story, and I'm thankful for the lessons that turned to wisdom.
"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
Aristotle
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One of my favorite things that cultured foods do is to boost your immune system. Your gut is responsible for 80% of your immune system. Find out how sugar can drop your immune system by 75% and how cultured foods can help.
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