Culinary Choices, Chemical Signals

What if you could send a list of requests to your body to keep it healthy? Your list might read: Keep blood sugar stable, Maintain memory, and Keep cells cancer-free.

These aren’t crystal-ball wishes. They are actionable tasks. The truth is, you can (and do) send these requests to your body… with every bite you take.

When it comes to keeping your cells cancer-free, for example, most risk factors are related to hormone levels. Hormone levels drive cell division and increase the chances for random DNA copying errors to occur. These errors lead to mutations in genes and promote cancer cell growth. And there are two ways your diet affects those risk factors.

First, what you eat influences levels of the hormone insulin. By choosing foods that are high on the glycemic index, you boost blood sugar levels. When this happens, the insulin rushes in to shuttle the sugar into cells. And high insulin levels promote tumor growth.

Next, and more obvious, we get hormones from foods containing hormones. Not only will your body absorb hormones from meats that have been “fattened” with recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), but also from fruits, veggies, and grains treated with pesticides and from other chemicals in the environment that are known “hormone-mimics.” That’s why I always recommend that you choose organic foods.

So, take charge of your health! Choose a low-glycemic diet to keep your blood sugar stable and opt for “wild” and organic foods clean of hormones and hormone-mimics to help stay cancer-free.

[Ed. Note: Choosing low-glycemic, organic foods doesn’t mean that you have to eat rabbit food. In fact, nutrition expert Kelley Herring has created a super-healthy dessert – that’s sinfully delicious. Learn more here.]

Kelley Herring

Kelley Herring is the Founder & CEO of Healing Gourmet – a multimedia company that educates on how foods promote health and protect against disease. As a young adult, Kelley battled a debilitating health condition that went misdiagnosed by multiple doctors for more than a year. Finding no help from “modern medicine”, she turned to her own knowledge of biochemistry and her passion for health research. She soon learned that her symptoms were related to nutrition and within weeks, she charted a course back to health with nothing more than simple lifestyle changes and the power of the plate. The lessons she learned spawned the creation of Healing Gourmet. Kelley is a firm believer in vigorous exercise, moderate sun exposure and delicious, healthy, home-cooked meals. She is also the creator of Healing Gourmet’s Personalized Nutrition Software and Editor-in-Chief of the Healing Gourmet book series published by McGraw-Hill including Eat to Fight Cancer, Eat to Beat Diabetes, Eat to Lower Cholesterol and Eat to Boost Fertility.