CBN News shares a video that helps us understand why a diet that avoids excess amounts of sugar is better for you - and what sorts of decisions you can start to make today.  According to CBN News:

Do foods like skim milk and balsamic vinegar seem healthy? The amount of sugar in these foods may surprise you.

Many so-called health foods are loaded with sugar. These hidden sugars are part of why so many people are unhealthy.

Damaging Sugar Spikes

Americans consume a shocking amount of sugar. Many people eat and drink the equivalent of an entire cup of sugar every day! That's double the amount of sugar average Americans consumed 100 years ago.
All of that sugar can be deadly. Dr. Gerald Edelman, a Dallas oncologist and author of the book, Sugar Rehab, has seen firsthand the damaging effects of too much sugar. He says sugar stimulates cancer cells directly and indirectly.

"In prior years it wasn't quite as clear as it is now, that there is a direct link between sugar spikes during the day and cause of cancer," he said.

Find out what foods have the least sugar impact, on Lorie's latest Healthy Living blog.

He adds cancer survivors who are also diabetic have a much higher chance of their cancer coming back than people with low blood sugar.

Edelman points out that too much sugar can cause obesity, a known risk factor for many health problems, from heart disease to high blood pressure as well as the common cold.

"These sugar spikes, which really means an elevation in your blood sugar level, what that does is it causes an inflammation state in the body. It's very harmful to your body," he explained.

"So the inflammation state, with all the chemicals that cause inflammation that are secreted as a result of all these high blood sugars, they can cause a lowering of your immune system," he continued.

"So high blood sugar is an immuno-suppressant effect. It suppresses your immune system, so you're more susceptible to the flu, you're more vulnerable to inflammatory diseases, such as arthritis," he said.

John Speanburg is one of Edelman's patients. He has Hodgkins lymphoma, cancer of the blood. After following Edelman's advice to slash the sugar, he lost weight and has been cancer-free for nine years.
"I love yogurt," he said. "But when you start realizing there's nine grams of sugar in a cup of yogurt, I started cutting out my yogurt."

Sugar Addicts

Edelman suggests an easy way to curtail sugar intake. 

We are happy to have found some really amazing information to help you on your walk toward wholistic health.  The video to the right features Dr. Alan Christianson sharing some important information about types of nutrients to look for and types of supplements that may be harmful.

A healthy body is an important part of a well managed and destiny driven life.  Doing all you can to take care of yourself is simply wise stewardship of the life you have been given.

The information below is an accompanying article that reiterates and reinforces the information shared in the video.  Enjoy this while learning many important insights to better love yourself.

Hi there. Dr. Alan Christianson here and I want to tell you about the Calcium paradox. There is so many really good questions we get about Calcium. Do we need it? How much? What types? What about the heart attacks? How does it absorb? All these relevant factors and they are very important. I am super jazzed to give you all some clarity on this and make better sense out of it all. A lot of this was spawned by a study from the last year that shows that vitamins raise the risk of heart attacks. That's a pretty shocking headline and rightfully so. The sad thing is that it is data that is not new. Vitamins can cause heart attacks. To be very specific, insoluble versions of calcium can cause heart attacks. So calcium does two very different things in the body.

One is really good and one is awful. The good one we call mineralization. So calcium is an important part of forming bone tissue. Helping our muscles work right. Helping our nerves to conduct signals properly. When we lack it we can have more muscular tension. More fatigue. More stress. So it is a really critical thing.

So now the calcifying. That is like a pearl forming in an oyster. When there is irritation. When there is inflammation in the body calcification can grow around that and it can cause masses to form. Calcified masses. Some of these are small. Some are more significant in size. Even the small ones can be critical. So when there is irritation in the blood vessels that calcium growth creates calcification. That is a big part how plaque forms in the body and that is how heart disease sets up. That is why studies have shown that many vitamins cause heart attacks. Because those that have the insoluble calcium will cause more plaque to form.

Calcification is also a bad deal for your joints. When we talk about joint calcification with arthritis. Its the same process. Its an area that is chronically inflamed. Its calcified. Its material built around that. This is also the process behind kidney stones and gall stones. There are many ways it can go wrong.

So why does calcium do bad things sometimes and good things other times.