4

health foods that are

making you sick, tired, and fat

Modern threats to your bodys natural blueprint

CHRIS KRESSER, M.S., L.AC

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Table of Contents

Were getting sicker and fatter every year It doesnt have to be this way! What is a toxin? Cereal grains: the unhealthiest health food on the planet? Industrial seed oils: unnatural and unt for human consumption Fruit juice: natural is not always healthy Soy: another toxin promoted as a health food Summing it all up About the author

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Disclaimer
This program manual is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of medical advice and treatment from your personal physician. Readers are advised to consult their own doctors or other qualied health professionals regarding the treatment of medical conditions. The author shall not be held liable or responsible for any misunderstanding or misuse of the information contained in this program manual or for any loss, damage, or injury caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by any treatment, action, or application of any food or food source discussed in this program manual. The statements in this program manual have not been evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

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Were getting sicker and fatter every year

Our health continues to deteriorate at an alarming pace, and the incidence of chronic, degenerative disease is skyrocketing each year. Consider the following: Diabesity (obesity + diabetes) aects more than one billion people worldwide, including 100 million Americans and 50% of Americans over 65. More than half of Americans are overweight, and a full one-third are clinically obese. Recent reports suggest that onethird of people born in 2010 will develop diabetes at some point in their lives. 9 out of 10 Americans will develop high blood pressure before they die. 4 out of 10 people who die each year in the U.S. die of heart disease, and rates of heart disease are projected to double in the next 50 years. Rates of infertility are expected to double in the next decade. According to the World Health Organization, depression is now the leading cause of disability, aecting more than 120 million people worldwide.

I could go on but I think you get the point. Our health is getting worse, not better. Over the last 50 years the medical establishment has vigorously promoted a low-fat, high carbohydrate diet, claiming that it would protect us from heart disease and diabetes and make us healthier and happier. How has that worked out for us? The statistics above make it clear that the conventional approach has been a dismal failure that has not only failed to protect our health, but has directly contributed to the epidemic of modern disease.

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It doesnt have to be this way!

As common as all of these problems are, they are not normal. Theres a big dierence between the two. Imagine, for a moment, a world where: diabetes, heart diseases, autoimmunity and other modern diseases are rare or dont exist at all we are naturally lean and t we are fertile throughout our childbearing years we sleep peacefully and deeply we age gracefully without degenerative diseases like Alzheimers and osteoporosis

While this might sound like pure fantasy today, anthropological evidence suggests that this is exactly how human beings lived for the vast majority of our evolutionary history. Today, most people accept diseases like obesity, diabetes, infertility and Alzheimers as normal. But while these diseases may now be common, theyre anything but normal. Humans evolved roughly 2.5 million years ago, and for roughly 84,000 generations we were naturally free of the modern diseases which kill millions of people each year and make countless others miserable. In fact, the world I asked you to imagine above which may seem preposterous and unattainable today was the natural human state for our entire history on this planet up until a couple hundred years ago. What was responsible for the change? What transformed us from naturally healthy and vital people free of degenerative disease into a world of sick, fat, infertile and unhappy people? In three words? The modern lifestyle. And though there are several aspects of our current lifestyle that contribute to disease, the widespread consumption of food toxins is by far the greatest oender. Specically, the following four dietary toxins are to blame: Cereal grains (especially rened our)
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Omega-6 industrial seed oils (corn, cottonseed, saower, soybean, etc.) Excess fructose (especially high-fructose corn syrup) Processed soy (soy milk, soy protein, soy our, etc.)

What is a toxin?
At the simplest level, a toxin is something capable of causing disease or damaging tissue when it enters the body. When most people hear the word toxin, they think of chemicals like pesticides, heavy metals or other industrial pollutants. But even benecial nutrients like water, which are necessary to sustain life, are toxic at high doses. In their book The Perfect Health Diet, Paul & Shou-Ching Jaminet apply the economic principle of declining marginal benets to toxins: It implies that the first bit eaten of any toxin has low toxicity. Each additional bit is slightly more toxic than the bit before. At higher doses, the toxicity of each bit continues to increase, so that the toxin is increasingly poisonous. This is important to understand as we discuss the role of dietary toxins in contributing to modern disease. Most of us wont get sick from eating a small amount of sugar, cereal grain, soy and industrial seed oil. But if we eat those nutrients (or rather anti-nutrients) in excessive quantities, our risk of developing modern diseases rises signicantly. Thats exactly whats happening today. These four food toxins rened cereal grains, industrial seed oils, excess fructose and processed soy comprise the bulk of the modern diet. Bread, pastries, muns, crackers, cookies, soda, fruit juice, fast food and other convenience foods are all loaded with these toxins. And when the majority of what most people eat on a daily basis is toxic, its not hard to understand why our health is failing. Lets look at each of these food toxins in more detail.

Cereal grains: the unhealthiest health food on the planet?

The major cereal grains wheat, corn, rice, barley, sorghum, oats, rye and millet have become the staple crops of the modern human diet. Theyve also become the poster children of the low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet promoted by organizations like the American Heart Association (AHA) and American Diabetes Association (ADA). If you say

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the phrase whole grains to most people, the rst word that probably comes to their mind is healthy. But the fact is that most animals, including our closest relative (the chimpanzee) arent adapted to eating cereal grains and dont eat them in large quantities. And humans have only been eating them for the past 10,000 years (a tiny blip of time on the scale of evolution). Why? Because plants like cereal grains are always competing against predators (like us) for survival. Unlike animals, plants cant run away from us when we decide to eat them. They had to evolve other mechanisms for protecting themselves. These include: producing toxins that damage the lining of the gut; producing toxins that bind essential minerals, making them unavailable to the body; and, producing toxins that inhibit digestion and absorption of other essential nutrients, including protein.

Gluten: the worst oender?

One of these toxic compounds is the protein gluten, which is present in wheat and many of the other most commonly eaten cereal grains. In short, gluten damages the intestine and makes it leaky. Why is that a problem? Because one of the main jobs of the gut is to determine what gets into the bloodstream and what stays out. Nutrients from food that have been properly digested and broken down should be allowed in, while food and environmental toxins and undigested proteins shouldnt be. When the gut becomes permeable, or leaky, these harmful, foreign substances are able to enter the bloodstream. And when that happens, the body mounts a powerful immune response that can lead to autoimmune disease, allergies and more. In fact, researchers now believe that a leaky gut is one of the major predisposing factors for conditions like obesity, diabetes and even heart disease.

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Celiac disease (CD) a condition of severe gluten intolerance has been well known for decades. Celiacs have a dramatic and, in some cases, potentially fatal immune response to even the smallest amounts of gluten. But celiac disease is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to intolerance to wheat and other gluten containing grains. Celiac disease is characterized by antibodies to two components of the gluten compound: alpha-gliadin, and transglutaminase. But we now know that people can and do react to several other components of wheat and gluten. The diagram below shows how wheat and gluten are broken down in the body:

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Current laboratory testing for gluten intolerance only tests for alpha-gliadin and transglutaminase, the two components of gluten implicated in celiac disease (highlighted in red in the diagram). But as you can see, wheat contains several other components including lectins like wheat germ agglutinin (WGA), other epitopes of the gliadin protein like beta-gliadin, gamma-gliadin and omega-gliadin, another protein called glutenin, an opioid peptide called gluteomorphin, and a compound called daminated gliadin produced by the industrial processing or digestion of gluten. Studies now clearly show that people can react negatively to all of these components of wheat not just the alpha-gliadin and transglutaminase that celiacs react to. And the worst part of this is that virtually no commercial labs outside of research settings test for sensitivity to these other subfractions of wheat. This means, of course, that its extremely likely that far more people are intolerant to wheat and gluten than conventional wisdom would tell us. In fact, thats exactly what the latest research shows. Dr. Kenneth Fine, a pioneer in gluten intolerance research, has demonstrated that 1 in 3 Americans are gluten intolerant, and that 8 in 10 have the genes that predispose them to developing gluten intolerance. This is nothing short of a public health catastrophe in a nation where the #1 source of calories is rened our. But while most are at least aware of the dangers of sugar, trans-fat and other unhealthy foods, fewer than 1 in 8 people with celiac disease are aware of their condition.1 A graphic from a 1999 paper in the British Medical Journal illustrated this well:2

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Patients with clinically obvious celiac disease (observable inammation and destruction of the gut tissue) comprise only 12.5% of the total population of people with CD. 87.5% of those with celiac have no obvious gut symptoms. For every symptomatic patient with CD, there are 8 patients with CD and no gastrointestinal symptoms. But does that mean patients with CD without gut symptoms are healthy? Not at all. It was long believed that the pathological manifestations of CD were limited to the gastrointestinal tract. But research over the past few decades has revealed that gluten intolerance can aect almost every other tissue and system in the body, including the: brain; endocrine system; stomach and liver; nucleus of cells; blood vessels; and, smooth muscle,

just to name a few! This explains why CD and gluten intolerance are associated with several dierent diseases, including type 1 diabetes, thyroid disorders, osteoporosis, neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimers, Parkinsons and dementia, psychiatric illness, ADHD, rheumatoid arthritis, migraine, obesity and more. The table below from the same 1999 BMJ paper depicts the increased incidence of other diseases in patients with CD:3 As you can see, up to 17% of people with CD have an undened neurological disorder. But even that alarmingly high statistic only accounts for people with diagnosed CD. We know that only 1 in 8 people with CD are diagnosed. We also know that those

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with CD represent only a small fraction of the population of people with gluten intolerance. With this in mind, its not hard to imagine that the number of people with gluten intolerance that have undened neurological disorders (and other associated conditions on the list above) could be signicantly higher than current research suggests. Finally, we also now know that when you are gluten intolerant which 33% (if not more) of you are you will also cross-react with other foods that have a similar molecular signature to gluten and its components. Unfortunately, the list of these foods (shown below) contains all grains, which is why some medical practitioners (myself included) recommend not just a gluten-free diet, but an entirely grain-free diet. As you can see, it also contains other foods like dairy (alpha & beta casein, casomorphin, milk butyrophilin) and coee (which is a very common cross-reactant). alpha-caesin beta-caesin casomorphin milk butyrophilin cows milk american cheese chocolate coee all cereal grains quinoa amaranth buckwheat tapioca rice potato corn sesame

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Gluten isnt the only toxin in grains

Thus far weve been discussing the toxic eect of gluten in gluten-containing grains like wheat, barley, rye and oats. However, there are several other toxins in grains that can produce harmful eects. Phytic acid is the principal storage form of phosphorus in many plant tissues, especially the bran portion of grains and other seeds. The problem with phytic acid is that it readily binds with other minerals, such as calcium, magnesium, iron and zinc, decreasing their absorption in the body. But phytic acid not only binds other minerals, making them unavailable, it also inhibits the enzymes we need to digest our food, including pepsin (needed for the breakdown of proteins in the stomach), and amylase (needed for the digestion of starch). Phytic acid is found in the greatest amounts in seeds and bran. This is why the common advice to eat high-ber cereals and other whole grain products is a recipe for bone loss, malnutrition and other problems associated with mineral deciencies. In fact, in populations where cereal grains are regularly consumed, diseases like rickets and osteoporosis are common. Lectins are proteins found in grains, beans and other foods. Lectins are known as hemagglutins because of their ability to agglutinate - or glue up - blood. Among other things, lectins bind to the villi and crypt cells of the small intestine, where they can contribute to cell death, shortened villi, a diminished capacity for digestion and absorption, cell proliferation in the crypt cells, interference with hormone and growth factor signaling and unfavorable population shifts among the microbial ora.4 Lectins also harm the gut by causing undesirable shifts in the gut ora, including overgrowth of pathogenic varieties of E. coli, streptococcus, and lactobacillus.5 Saponins are bitter, biologically active components that foam up like soap suds in water. Saponins are found in oats, alfalfa, soybeans, chickpeas and other foods. Studies show that saponins can damage the intestinal mucosa, causing leaky gut. The eect of saponins alone is probably minimal, but other food toxins in grains like gluten and lectins also wreak havoc on the gut (as weve already discussed), suggesting a cumulative risk.

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Industrial seed oils: unnatural and unt for human consumption

Industrial seed oils (corn, cottonseed, soybean, saower, sunower, etc.) have not been a part of the human diet up until relatively recently, when misguided groups like the AHA and the ADA started promoting them as heart-healthy alternatives to saturated fat. The graph below shows how dramatically seed oil consumption has risen over the past several decades: Throughout 4-5 million years of hominid evolution, diets were abundant in seafood and other sources of omega-3 long chain fatty acids (EPA & DHA), but relatively low in omega-6 seed oils. Anthropological research suggests that our huntergatherer ancestors consumed omega-6 and omega-3 fats in a ratio of 6 It also indicates that both ancient and modern hunter-gatherers were free of roughly 1:1. the modern inammatory diseases, like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, that are the primary causes of death and morbidity today.7 At the onset of the industrial revolution (about 140 years ago), there was a marked shift in the ratio of n-6 to n-3 fatty acids in the diet. Consumption of n-6 fats increased at the expense of n-3 fats. This change was due to both the advent of the modern vegetable oil industry and the increased use of cereal grains as feed for domestic livestock (which in turn altered the fatty acid prole of meat that humans consumed). The following chart lists the omega-6 and omega-3 content of various vegetable oils and foods:

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Vegetable oil consumption rose dramatically between the beginning and end of the 20th century, and this had an entirely predictable eect on the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats in the American diet. Between 1935 and 1939, the ratio of n-6 to n-3 fatty acids was reported to be 8.4:1. From 1935 to 1985, this ratio increased to 10.3:1 (a 23% increase). Other calculations put the ratio as high as 12.4:1 in 1985. Today, estimates of the ratio range from an average of 10:1 to 20:1, with a ratio as high as 25:1 in some individuals. In fact, Americans now get almost 20% of their calories from a single food source soybean oil with almost 9% of all calories from the omega-6 fat linoleic acid (LA) alone! This reveals that our average intake of n-6 fatty acids is between 10 and 25 times higher than evolutionary norms. The consequences of this dramatic shift cannot be underestimated. So what are the consequences to human health of an n-6:n-3 ratio that is up to 25 times higher than it should be? The short answer is that elevated n-6 intakes are associated with an increase in all inammatory diseases which is to say virtually all diseases. The list includes (but isnt limited to):8 cardiovascular disease type 2 diabetes obesity metabolic syndrome irritable bowel syndrome & inammatory bowel disease macular degeneration rheumatoid arthritis
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asthma cancer psychiatric disorders autoimmune diseases

The relationship between intake n-6 fats and cardiovascular mortality is particularly striking. The following chart, from an article entitled Eicosanoids and Ischemic Heart Disease by Stephan Guyenet9, clearly illustrates the correlation between a rising intake of n-6 and increased mortality from heart disease: As you can see, the USA is right up there at the top with the highest intake of n-6 fat and the greatest risk of death from heart disease. On the other hand, several clinical studies have shown that decreasing the n-6:n-3 ratio protects against chronic, degenerative diseases.10 One study showed that replacing corn oil with olive oil and canola oil to reach an n-6:n-3 ratio of 4:1 led to a 70% decrease in total mortality. That is no small dierence.11 Joseph Hibbeln, a researcher at the National Institute of Health (NIH) who has published several papers on n-3 and n-6 intakes, didnt mince words when he commented on the rising intake of n-6 in a recent paper:12 The increases in world LA consumption over the past century may be considered a very large uncontrolled experiment that may have contributed to increased societal burdens of aggression, depression and cardiovascular mortality.

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And those are just the conditions we have the strongest evidence for. Its likely that the increase in n-6 consumption has played an equally signicant role in the rise of nearly every inammatory disease. Since it is now known that inammation is involved in nearly all diseases, including obesity and metabolic syndrome, its hard to overstate the negative eects of too much omega-6 fat.

Fruit juice: natural is not always healthy

About 20 years ago, Nancy Appleton, PhD, began researching all of the ways in which sugar destroys our health. Over the years the list has continuously expanded, and now includes 141 points. Heres just a small sampling: Sugar feeds cancer cells and has been connected with the development of cancer of the breast, ovaries, prostate, rectum, pancreas, lung, gallbladder and stomach. Sugar can increase fasting levels of glucose and can cause reactive hypoglycemia. Sugar can cause many problems with the gastrointestinal tract, including an acidic digestive tract, indigestion, malabsorption in patients with functional bowel disease, increased risk of Crohns disease and ulcerative colitis. Sugar can interfere with your absorption of protein. Sugar can cause food allergies. Sugar contributes to obesity.

By now, most of you know that too much sugar is unhealthy. But not all sugar is created alike. White table sugar (sucrose) is composed of two sugars: glucose and fructose. Glucose is an important nutrient in our bodies and is healthy, as long as its consumed in moderation. Fructose is a dierent story. Fructose is found primarily in fruits and vegetables, and sweeteners like sugar and highfructose corn syrup (HFCS). A recent USDA report found that the average American eats 152 pounds of sugar each year, including almost 64 pounds of HFCS. Unlike glucose, which is rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream and taken up by the cells, fructose is shunted directly to the liver where it is converted to fat. Excess fructose
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consumption causes a condition called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which is directly linked to both diabetes and obesity.13 Excess fructose also elevates uric acid, a chemical in our body that raises blood pressure, damages the kidneys and promotes metabolic disease. Elevated uric acid has been associated with chronic, low-grade inammation, which is the root of all degenerative diseases. Excess fructose promotes weight gain, increases the risk of heart disease and disrupts appetite control. A 2009 study showed that shifting 25% of dietary calories from glucose to fructose caused a 4-fold increase in abdominal fat. Abdominal fat is an independent predictor of insulin sensitivity, impaired glucose tolerance, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high triglycerides and several other metabolic diseases.14 Fructose is found in the highest amounts in sodas and other products containing high-fructose corn syrup. But remember, just because something is promoted as natural, that doesnt mean its healthy or safe. A cola has 45 grams of fructose - far more than the liver can safely process. But so-called natural sweeteners can also be a problem. Agave syrup, often sold in health food stores as an alternative to table sugar (sucrose), is 90% fructose! Nowhere in nature is this ratio of fructose to glucose found. Even high-fructose corn syrup is only 55% fructose. Fruit juice is another natural product thats promoted as a health food. Our ancestors did obtain moderate amounts of fructose from eating whole fruit, but it was never natural to drink massive amounts of fructose in liquid form.

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An 8 oz. glass of orange juice has 24 grams of sugar, which is half the amount of sugar in a cola and 4 times the amount of sugar found in a single orange. Apple juice has the same amount of sugar as OJ, but a higher percentage of fructose - which makes it even worse. The other problem with fruit juice is that it has no ber in it to make you feel full. Its not easy to eat 12 whole oranges in one sitting, but its no problem for most adults (and kids) to drink 2-3 cups of OJ - which contains far more fructose than the body can safely process. In a widely popular talk on YouTube, Dr. Robert H. Lustig explains that fructose has all of the qualities of a poison. It causes damage, provides no benet and is sent directly to the liver to be detoxied so that it doesnt harm the body.

Soy: another toxin promoted as a health food

Like cereal grains, soy is another toxin often promoted as a health food. Its now ubiquitous in the modern diet, present in just about every packaged and processed food in the form of soy protein isolate, soy our, soy lecithin and soybean oil. For this reason, most people are unaware of how much soy they consume. You dont have to be a tofu-loving hippie to eat a lot of soy. In fact, the average American who is most denitely not a tofu-loving hippie gets up to 9% of total calories from soybean oil alone. Whenever I mention the dangers of soy in my public talks, someone always protests that soy cant be unhealthy because its been consumed safely in Asia for thousands of years. There are several reasons why this isnt a valid argument. First, the soy products consumed traditionally in Asia were typically fermented and unprocessed including tempeh, miso, natto and tamari. This is important because the fermentation process partially neutralizes the toxins in soybeans.

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Second, Asians consumed soy foods as a condiment, not as a replacement for animal foods. The average consumption of soy foods in China is 10 grams (about 2 teaspoons) per day and is 30 to 60 grams in Japan. These are not large amounts of soy. Contrast this with the U.S. and other western countries, where almost all of the soy consumed is highly processed and unfermented, and eaten in much larger amounts than in Asia. How does soy impact our health? The following is just a partial list: Soy contains trypsin inhibitors that inhibit protein digestion and aect pancreatic function; Soy contains phytic acid, which reduces absorption of minerals like calcium, magnesium, copper, iron and zinc; Soy increases our requirement for vitamin D, which 50% of American are already decient in; Soy phytoestrogens disrupt endocrine function and have the potential to cause infertility and to promote breast cancer in adult women. Vitamin B12 analogs in soy are not absorbed and actually increase the bodys requirement for B12; Processing of soy protein results in the formation of toxic lysinoalanine and highly carcinogenic nitrosamines; Free glutamic acid or MSG, a potent neurotoxin, is formed during soy food processing and additional amounts are added to many soy foods to mask soys unpleasant taste; and, Soy can stimulate the growth of estrogen-dependent tumors and cause thyroid problems, especially in women.

Perhaps most alarmingly, a study at the Harvard Public School of Health in 2008 found that men who consumed the equivalent of one cup of soy milk per day had a 50% lower sperm count than men who didnt eat soy.15

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In 1992, the Swiss Health Service estimated that women consuming the equivalent of two cups of soy milk per day provides the estrogenic equivalent of one birth control pill. That means women eating cereal with soy milk and drinking a soy latte each day are eectively getting the same estrogen eect as if they were taking a birth control pill. This eect is even more dramatic in infants fed soy formula. Babies fed soy-based formula have 13,000 to 22,000 times more estrogen compounds in their blood than babies fed milk-based formula. Infants exclusively fed soy formula receive the estrogenic equivalent (based on body weight) of at least ve birth control pills per day. Click here for more information about the harmful eects of soy products.

Summing it all up
While I believe that everyone would benet from removing these 4 food toxins from their diet, its also important to point out that theres more to life than food. The ancient sages of Traditional Chinese Medicine had a saying: Its better to eat the wrong food with the right attitude than the right food with the wrong attitude. Our emotions are powerful and have the ability to aect our physiology as much as the food we put into our bodies. In some cases, an overly restrictive diet can cause stress and social isolation, which in turn can contribute to poor health. This is why I recommend following what I call the 80/20 rule. This means that 80% of the time you avoid these food toxins and eat an otherwise healthy diet, and 20% of the time you can loosen up and just eat what you like. That 20% may happen when youre out with friends, traveling, or when you just need a treat. Unfortunately, the 80/20 rule doesnt apply to those dealing with serious health challenges or allergies or intolerances to specic foods. Its usually not a good idea for someone with Hashimotos disease and gluten intolerance, for example, to throw caution

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to the wind and have a pancake feast. That could trigger an immune reaction lasting several weeks. In these cases a stricter approach may be necessary - at least until the condition is under control.

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About the author

My name is Chris Kresser, and Im a licensed acupuncturist and the creator of The Healthy Skeptic blog (now ChrisKresser.com). Ive been interested in health and wellness since I was a kid. My high school basketball coach had our whole team on a special diet, and while most of my teammates couldnt stand it, I actually loved the way I felt when I ate healthy food. I did my undergraduate work at UC Berkeley. There I was introduced to Eastern spirituality and a wide range of health modalities and practices, from nutrition to meditation to tai qi to kundalini yoga to massage. In my early 20s I set out to see the world. A few months into that trip, while traveling in Indonesia, I contracted a mysterious tropical illness. I recovered relatively quickly from the acute phase, but as I continued to travel it became painfully clear that the illness had morphed into a chronic condition. I returned to the U.S. to seek medical care. In the next few years I saw more than twenty doctors around the world and spent thousands of dollars in an eort to diagnose and treat my condition. No one could gure out why I felt the way I did or what to do about it. It became increasingly clear over time that if anyone was going to gure it out, it would have to be me. After all, nobody was even half as motivated as I was to nd the answer! So I educated myself thoroughly about any health condition that resembled my own, and I learned to gather and analyze medical research so I could stay abreast of the latest developments. In doing this research I discovered that many of the ideas and beliefs we hold about health in this society are myths. I began to see that even the most prestigious medical journals have become nothing more than sales brochures for the pharmaceutical industry.
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I saw massive conicts of interest between drug companies, doctors and researchers everywhere I looked. I learned that errors in medical care are the third leading cause of death in this country each year. I decided to do something about it. I considered medical school, with the intention of helping to reform the industry from the inside out. But while allopathic medicine excels at emergency and trauma care, it isnt very good at fostering health. (In fact the subject of health rarely comes up at all in conventional medical textbooks, which are entirely focused on disease.) I chose instead to study Chinese medicine, which has been successfully used for over 2,000 years to promote health and longevity in addition to treating disease. Whereas Western medicine uses powerful chemicals or invasive surgery to achieve its goals, acupuncture works by stimulating the bodys highly sophisticated self-healing mechanisms. This made so much more sense to me especially as I learned more about the dangers of pharmaceutical drugs and the impact of medical errors. I have complemented my study of acupuncture and herbs with a thorough education in functional medicine. Functional medicine is a personalized approach to health care that recognizes the biological uniqueness of each patient. In contrast to conventional care, which is almost entirely focused on suppressing symptoms, functional medicine eliminates symptoms by addressing the underlying cause of a problem. It is an evidencebased eld of health care that views the body as an interconnected whole, and recognizes the importance of these connections in health and disease. In functional medicine, the patient is empowered, educated and encouraged to play an active role in the healing process. I graduated from the Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine College in Berkeley in April 2010. I passed the California Acupuncture Licensing Exam in August of 2010, and I have a private practice in Berkeley, CA. I also consult with patients nationally and internationally.

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1 Wolters VM, Wijmenga C. Genetic background of celiac disease and its complications. Am J Gastroenterol. 2008. http:// www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18184122 2 Feighery C. Coeliac disease - Fortnightly review. BMJ. 1999. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1116331/ 3 IBID. 4 Daniel K. Plants bite back. Weston A. Price Journal. 2010. http://www.westonaprice.org/food-features/1896-plants-bite-back 5 Pusztai A et al. Kidney bean lectin-induced Escherichia coli overgrowth in the small intestine is blocked by GNA, a mannosespecic lectin.
6 Kris-Etherton PM et al.

Polyunsaturated fatty acids in the food chain in the United States. Am J Clin Nutr. 2000. http:// www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10617969
7 Wachter A. 8 Hibbeln JR.

Between Zeus and the Salmon: The Biodemography of Longevity. National Academies Press (October 29, 1997).

Healthy intakes of n-3 and n-6 fatty acids: estimations considering worldwide diversity. Am J Clin Nutr. 2006. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16841858
9 Guyenet S.

Eicosanoids and heart disease. 2009. Accessed from: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/05/ eicosanoids-and-ischemic-heart-disease.html

10 Russo GL.

Dietary n-6 and n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids: from biochemistry to clinical implications in cardiovascular prevention. Biochem Pharmacol. 2009. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19022225
11 Smith SC Jr. et al.

AHA/ACC guidelines for secondary prevention for patients with coronary and other atherosclerotic vascular disease: 2006 update: endorsed by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Circulation. 2006. http:// www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16702489
12 Russo GL.

Dietary n-6 and n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids: from biochemistry to clinical implications in cardiovascular prevention. Biochem Pharmacol. 2009. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19022225
13 Kotronen A.

Fatty liver: a novel component of the metabolic syndrome. Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. 2008. http:// www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17690317
14 Stanhope KL et al.

Consuming fructose-sweetened, not glucose-sweetened, beverages increases visceral adiposity and lipids and decreases insulin sensitivity in overweight/obese humans. J Clin Invest. 2009. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ 17690317
15 Chavarro JE et al.

Soy food and isoavone intake in relation to semen quality parameters among men from an infertility clinic. Hum Reprod. 2008. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18650557

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