Calcium [I AM NEW! PLEASE HELP!

[Guest guest]

Hi Kim!

 

" whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right... "

 

author forgotten..

 

encourage you to work on re-orienting thinking...

 

re: Milk <== don't do it!

 

here's some more info on milk/calcium/osteporosis...

 

Calcium: White Gold

You may be interested to know that after I stopped eating chicken and

fish, for the first six months I felt like I wasn't getting enough

protein. I felt tired and out of gas. How can one feel

protein-deficient? Weight loss that isn't caused by starvation is

basically a loss of water and fat. Muscle deterioration comes with

disuse, not protein deficiency--anyone who's ever worn a cast knows

that. Feeling tired has to do with fuel, not parts. If your car is out

of gas, do you drive to an auto parts store?

This feeling of not getting enough protein shows how strongly I was

brainwashed into thinking protein was fuel. My mother, my school, and

everybody else had always told me to get enough protein. But now I

know why I felt so run-down. I had become the dreaded lacto-ovo

vegetarian: one of the most misinformed groups in town. I was trying

to eat complete proteins to replace those I thought I was missing. I

was concocting meat-substitutes to get that all-important protein the

government said I needed. So I was drinking milk and eating cheese.

Lots of cheese. Have you noticed how many vegetarian cookbooks rely on

dairy products to make their recipes taste good? Even more important,

I wasn't getting the carbohydrates I needed, so my muscles were

starved. I was drinking two or three glasses of milk a day.

Sorry, Rudy, but milk is a concentrated source of protein, fat, and

sugar, designed to help babies grow at the time in their lives when

they need the most protein.

 

Can you think of one other species on the planet that drinks milk

after infancy? Cow's milk is great, if you are a calf. In humans, even

skim milk does more harm than good. Of course, the more saturated fat

a dairy product has, the worse it is. A woman's risk of getting breast

cancer rises with her intake of saturated fats. Breast cancer affects

2.8 million women in this country, accounting for $6 billion in

health-care bills. According to the Physicians' Committee for

Responsible Medicine, milk has no place in anyone's diet, especially

pregnant and nursing mothers.

I gave up dairy about five years ago. At first, it was " difficult. "

Then I realized it was all in my head. I could just let go of all that

protein brainwashing. After a few months, I stopped craving cheese and

my face stopped looking puffy. Your face will look less puffy, too,

after you give up dairy products completely.

Milk is only good for one group of people. Dairy farmers and their

families. To them, milk is white gold.

The Calcium Connection

 

We all need calcium. Every cell in our bodies needs calcium. Would you

be surprised to learn that this goes for all mammals? Where do you

think elephants, especially pregnant or nursing elephants, get enough

calcium? Calcium is an element, like iron. You can't turn it into

anything,and you can't destroy it. The amount of calcium going out

always equals the amount coming in, unless there is a deficit or a

surplus. There's more than enough calcium in the grasslands of the

African savannah to support all the animals living there. All animals

need calcium, because we naturally lose it, but humans on high-protein

diets are especially good at losing calcium, which is why they have to

consume so much just to stay even.

At the Mayo Clinic, a four year study conducted by Dr. B. Lawrence

Riggs concluded: " There is a large body of evidence indicating no

relationship between calcium intake and bone density; We found no

correlation at all between calcium intake levels and bone loss, not

even a trend. "

Any diet with more than ten percent of its calories as protein will

contribute to calcium and bone loss, leading to osteoporosis in older

people. The more dairy in your diet, the more calcium comes in, and

the more calcium goes out. Drink as much milk as you want-you'll lose

calcium. Osteoporosis is a rich-person's disease. Osteoporosis and

consumption of dairy products go hand-in-hand.

What is it about excess protein that causes loss of calcium? Your

kidneys, which did not evolve to handle more than ten percent of your

calories as protein, especially after you are weaned, get rid of

calcium as a reaction to excess protein in a process called

" buffering " . Your kidneys eliminate calcium through the urine. Too

much protein also triggers the release of iron, magnesium, zinc,

potassium, and many other minerals. By now you won't be surprised to

learn that people with high-protein diets get kidney stones, and

vegetarians rarely do. The trick is to use what you get, not pour more

in just because you've found a leak.

When you think of calcium, think of elephants and cows. There is

plenty of calcium available in a fresh, green, low-protein diet. Dr.

John McDougall-a doctor who's written several books I think are

helpful-writes: " Calcium deficiency, caused by an insufficient amount

of calcium in the diet, is not known to occur in humans. " The minimum

daily requirement (thanks to our pals at the NRC) is completely skewed

from data presented in the '50s and '60s.

Osteoporosis

 

Nathan Pritikin studied Bantu women in Africa and found that they bear

nine children and breastfeed them for an average of two years on a

strictly vegetarian diet with about one-third of our Recommended Daily

Allowance of calcium. They are not calcium deficient, never lose a

tooth, and rarely break a bone. Bantus who move to affluent countries

develop osteoporosis just as the local populations do. Pritikin

studied the Bantus to come up with his low-protein, no-fat diet.

Eskimos, on the other hand, get almost twice the recommended daily

requirement of calcium (over 2 grams per day) and have one of the

highest-protein diets in the world. Eskimos also have one of the

highest rates of osteoporosis in the world.

Don't we need calcium supplements? Do cows or gorillas need calcium

supplements? Where do cows and elephants get all their calcium? You

think it's different in cows and elephants than in people? How would

you know? It's not. The calcium mechanism is common to all animals,

some are just better at getting rid of excess calcium than we are.If

we take the blinders off, the Dairy Council and the Tobacco Institute

are about the same, only the Dairy Council is doing a better job.

The most recent studies on osteoporosis, show that calcium loss and

osteoporosis are due to 1) a high-protein diet, 2) inactivity, 3)

smoking, and 4) excess salt. Most books on osteoporosis are based on

outdated studies. Those authors never suspected a protein connection.

The keys to having strong bones all your life are to eat a low-protein

diet with lots of green leaves and get daily weight-bearing exercise.

If you want to avoid osteoporosis, you will have to learn to reduce

your calcium intake, not increase it.

Last year I had a neck operation. I had a diskectomy, which is

removal of a disk. This is also called a fusion, because the two

vertebral bodies rest on each other and fuse bone-to-bone. I took no

supplements, ate a starch-and-salad diet, and my surgeon said, and I

quote: " I've never had a patient heal this fast. " I was skiing six

weeks after the operation. No joke.

Bones and muscles respond to mechanical stress. Normal walking isn't

strenuous enough to build bones. If housework did the trick, we'd know

about it. Strenuous, weight-bearing exercise--the equivalent of a

short hike or an aggressive, vigorous walk every day--adds bones and

muscle. Not exercising loses bone mass. Bones are built the same way

callouses are built up. One of the biggest problems astronauts have is

bone and muscle loss. Vegetarians who run and hike into their eighties

generally do not get shorter or break hips-they hardly lose any bone.

People who take hormones and calcium tablets still have problems.

Where do you get your calcium? I get maybe 300-500mg per day (who's

counting?) from leafy greens, preferably raw. Salad. Dark green and

dark yellow vegetables are loaded with calcium. If you don't lose

much, you don't need much. Contrary to what you may have heard,

spinach has tons of available, absorbable calcium. Go for the dark

greens and chalk up on calcium.

Source: http://www.dsiegel.com/wiwd/diet/calcium.html

 

all the best,

Bob

 

 

 

rawfood , " kicm1tyme " <kicm1tyme> wrote:

> Thank you for your help. I will be reading those articles and

> debrainwashing about protein. I have lots to learn. I have other

> problems as well. Talking about meeting calorie needs, sheesh. See at

> the rate I am going, I don't even know about meeting calories. I seem

> to be leaning towards starvation. LOL I barely ate all week. I don't

> want to eat that many fruits and veges either. I only want to eat maybe

> 1-2 fruits and maybe 1-2 veges. I don't want to eat more than that.

> It's too much. Anything more, it doesn't taste good anymore. It becomes

> a chore. So I don't know what I am going to do. Another problem I have

> is that I love dairy. That is what I mostly was eating/drinking before.

> I may be leading to a dangerous path here because I just won't be

> eating that much if at all and then I will be deficient in everything.

> LOL I don't know. I am going to read those articles though. I do, I

> still have lots to learn. But Maybe I am ahead of myself jumping into

> this kind of diet. I may not be ready for it. I just can't eat that

> much fruits and veges. But thanks for your help anyway!

>

> Kim

>

>

> rawfood , bryan_yamamoto <no_reply> wrote:

> > It is impossible to get too little protein on the raw diet if you are

> > consuming enough calories to meet your caloric needs. This is because

> > the body needs less than 5% of its calories from protein, and most

> > fruits and all vegetables have more than this. The body only loses

> > around 8 grams of protein a day (from hair loss, fingernail, skin,

> > semen, menstrual blood, and cells from the digestive process). The

> > millions of cells in the body that die each day are recycled for their

> > amino acids.

> >

> > There are plenty of articles out there describing the protein myth:

> >

> > http://healthfree.com/Proteinfactorfict.htm

> > http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/protein.htm

> > http://www.dsiegel.com/wiwd/diet/protein.html

> > http://chrysalisyog.homestead.com/nutsprout.html