Got Pain? Sick? Is What You Eat Causing Problems For You?

Ever wondered whether food could cause your headaches, diabetes, overweight, body pain or other problems?

Years ago, when I suffered seriously from migraines, I became aware of the cause and effect that food can have. After I eliminated trigger foods, my migraine headaches became much less severe and frequent.

My brother recently gave me some packets of honey from a well-known fast-chicken place. (That’s like fast food, but it’s chicken.)

I was going to put some honey in my tea, until…

I noticed that the label said “Honey” in large letters and “sauce” in little letters.

So I flipped it over to read the ingredients. Now, wouldn’t you think that something that says “honey” would actually be honey?

But, nooo…

Ingredients: high fructose corn syrup, sugar, corn syrup, honey, caramel color.  (Pssst–caramel color isn’t the caramel you make on your own stove with sugar and butter.  Nooo.)

Not just honey.

Honey in the ingredients list was #4, after 3 sweeteners.  🙁

Bad.

I don’t know whether anyone has told you yet, but high fructose corn syrup is a killer. A slow killer.

Honey is a natural product. Sugar is a natural product. Sure, too much can cause problems, but a bit is fine.

High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is made by splitting corn syrup into parts. It is the sweetest part. It is extremely sweet. It is no longer a natural food.

Many, many manufacturers of “food products” use HFCS instead of honey, sugar or even whole corn syrup because it is cheaper to use.

It’s one of the franken-foods.

Sounds scary, doesn’t it? It is.

Because it is not real, and because it’s so hyper-sweet, it messes with your pancreas and insulin level. HFCS is a primary cause of diabetes and obesity.

Don’t think so?

How come we Americans are the ones with the most sugar diabetes and the fattest kids?

You know it’s not “genetics” because we come from a huge gene pool from all over the world. Are the people where we came from fat and sick?

Only the ones who are starting to eat “Americanized” food are getting sick and fat.

Read the label on your bread, on your hotdogs, lunch meat, catsup…you’re gonna find it all over the place.

You’ll find it in places you’d never expect. Check out your ice cream, your kids’ lunch foods, puddings, fruit roll ups, cereals, chocolate milk and syrup…

Some companies have their own product lines and are putting good and real ingredients into many of their branded foods. Meijers has a Gold and an Organic line, both of which have pretty nice ingredients.

There are a few cereals with some real sugar in them, and a few with no sweeteners (hey, add your own if you need a little bit.)

Want to stop being a sucker for the food industry to make a profit from, at the expense of your health?

Read labels.

Buy food that is as close to real as you can. (Hint: Check out the fruit and vegetable aisles, beans, nuts, seeds and whole grains.)

Eventually, the food industry (it is a huge industry) will get the message.

“Because You Deserve To Feel Better!”

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Uncommon Migraine Pain Relief Tips

Your head may actually pound. Light hurts your eyes. Every sound is noise and the noise is all too loud. You might even throw up.

You feel bad, and you look bad, too.

I really can’t think of anything worse than a really bad migraine.

A broken leg may keep you from moving but a migraine headache keeps you from being!

Migraines come in variations. Some are worse than others and some are merely horrible. They affect every system in your body.

Some people believe that headaches and migraines are closely related.

I’m one of those people. For years and years, I never had “just a headache.” Each time I started with a headache, I ended up with a migraine.

The best way to avoid migraines is to have perfect posture.

For those of us who are prone to headaches and migraines, any little strain on the muscles around our neck or head can, and will, cause pain.

Keeping a strong back, including the muscles in the back of your neck, helps hugely.

Learning how to have perfect posture will make a big difference in the frequency and severity of your head pain. It’s really important that you have good posture when you sit, when you stand, and you even need your neck and head propped correctly when you sleep.

Avoiding the foods that cause migraine pain for you helps, too. I had a friend who would get instant migraine when she ate an orange. After a while, she started avoiding oranges. Other times, it is not an instant reaction but may take a couple of days.

A varied and healthy diet with lots of fruits and vegetables helps for many reasons.

One of the reasons is that constipation can create conditions for a migraine. It may be the pressure from the packed intestines on the blood vessels in the abdomen that causes a migraine, because migraines are vascular headaches. That means they are related to what is happening with blood vessels.

“Keeping things moving” through your intestines with a good diet helps prevent migraine. You might consider taking additional fiber from a bottle to avoid constipation.

Also, many headache and other medicines actually cause constipation.

Avoiding a migraine in the first place is a much better strategy than trying to get rid of it after you are already hurting.

But, when a migraine sneaks up, or flat out attacks, despite your best efforts, here are a few tips to help ward off or lessen your pain.

* Ice. Ice the base of your skull. Use a cold pack and put yourself in the most comfortable position you can. Use a thin towel between your skin and the cold pack. You can ice and use the next tip at the same time.

* Cold. Place a cold, almost dripping wet, cloth on your forehead and eyes. You can flip it over as it warms up from your heat. You can keep a pan of ice water next to the bed to re-wet and re-chill the cloth. You can use put a plastic bag under a towel behind your head. That will keep your bed dry.

* Compress. Wrap your head in a long towel so that it is like a turban. Cover your eyes and ears with the turban, too. The idea is to compress your head, to squeeze it. This is comforting, blocking out noise and light, and helps reduce the pain.

* Alka Seltzer. Aspirin does not touch a migraine, but…two tablets of Alka Seltzer, if taken at the beginning of a migraine attack, often knocks out the migraine. I suspect that this happens because it is a large dose of aspirin all at once, rather than gradually.

You can find more information and ways to get rid of head pain naturally in Head Pain Natural Relief, at Amazon or your local library.

Check out Simple Strengthening for help to fix your posture. Good posture will help reduce your headaches.

“Because you deserve to feel better!”

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