Hi, It is that time of the year when some of us start to feel the coming of new life, from daffodils making their way out to greet the sun through to longer day light. Bring it on!
I read an article a few days ago about ‘a diet of junk food lowering the IQ of toddlers at a later stage in life’. I really had to just sigh and think, did they have to spend that much money to state the obvious? Could this money not be used to actually educate children on healthy eating even if the parents don’t hear it?
Only yesterday I was working away on my lap top in a local café and in came a group of mums with their toddlers. The toddlers were going wild grabbing and screaming for every cake, biscuit , drink in sight and within minutes there was an unusual sense of ‘peace’ (not to be expected when a group of toddlers are around). When I looked to see what was going on, I realised that each toddler (and there were 6 !) had a low fat skinny muffin each! I was literally gob-smacked more so due to the size of the muffins, even I would not be able to eat a whole one of those. These were ‘educated’ mums just trying to get together and have a coffee morning. …with some peace and quiet, totally reasonable right?
I was ‘mystified’ but held back..as that monster of a nutritionist was trying to rear its ugly head. Eventually one of the mums approached me and asked if I was a nutritionist! Ouch did she see the ‘ugly head’ ? Much to my relief she saw my brochures on the coffee table, phew! We got talking and I came out of that café having booked a workshop on healthy eating for toddlers for the café mums…hhmmm
But why am I sharing this with you when you may not have toddlers or children for that matter. Well it may be that one day you may find this information useful either for yourselves or a family member or a friend….who knows? ..although I am not going into junk foods specifically I am going to write a little about that sugar.
Did you know that sugar in general is used as a substitute for suppressing feelings of pain, whether that pain comes in the form of hurt, anger, jealousy, rage, etc? We just have to look around (just like in the café) as soon as the toddlers got their ‘sugar fix’ all went quiet…why because sugar ‘numbs pain’. It has an opiate like effect.
Have you ever heard a parent or granny or even yourself say ‘well if you behave yourself I will get you a treat’? Or ‘if you just listen to me and do what I say I will give you a treat?’ The treat, referring to something sweet. It is never a bag of seeds and/or nuts right? Instantly that child ‘calms’ down or tries to in order to get that ‘treat’. But the child may be having a low moment (seen as behaving badly) as he misses his grand ma who just left after a long weekend. So by giving ‘sugar’ to ‘fix’ the ‘low feelings’ …only suppresses whatever the child is feeling. Later in life when that child is an adult and feels ‘pain’ (low feelings) they may reach out for pain killers, binge eating, anorexia, self harm, drugs, etc to ‘suppress’ the pain…as they did not have the opportunity to feel and express the pain. After all we have to ‘behave well’ right? Try going to a restaurant in the UK with children ..anyone would think you had walked in with several ugly heads let alone one!
Now I am not saying that every child who has been bribed with ‘sugar treats’ will end up with some kind of long-term condition requiring intense therapy (so you can take a deep breath in before reading on) but they do not learn how to deal with ‘hurt/painful’ feelings. Let ‘s try and avoid using ‘junk sugar laden’ foods to push that pain inwards. ..I will give you an example of a boy (now a fully grown man) ….
In clinic one of my most prescribed homeopathic remedies is ‘sugar’…yes literally a remedy made from pure sugar. I have used this in conditions varying from depression, bulimia through to childhood tantrums. One case that really had ‘stretched’ my professional creativity (putting it nicely, more like pulling my hair out) was a 42 year old male lawyer.
His presenting complaint was ‘itchy groin area, bone aches, athletes foot, abdominal bloating and systemic candida (thrush)’. He had been on a very clean sugar free, yeast free, wheat free, vinegar free and alcohol free DIEt for 4 years. However, within a week of being off the DIEt all his symptoms came back (makes you want to weep right?).
Also he was spending about 116 Euros a month to keep this candida at bay. Having gone through his health history and time line, it turned out that not only was he ‘craving sweet foods he was feeling bouts of rage since his teens’ and the only way he kept these ‘rageful’ feelings under control was by eating sugar loaded carbohydrates (Dr Atkins would be turning in his grave). To cut a long newsletter short he started to use sugar (in various forms from alcohol through to bars of chocolate) to control these feelings from his teen years (stemmed from his move to boarding school). He was your typical ‘high flying super successful lawyer’ (somehow this does not sound right) ..and he came to our ‘hocus pocus’ clinic (as labeled by his work colleagues) after he was advised to lower his blood pressure otherwise he was going down the medication highway!
I started with the standard way of prescribing but two sessions later we were not really moving a great deal forward. However, his anger was now being expressed vocally rather than being ‘suppressed’ with crazy gym work outs (just have to imagine a sweat drenched treadmill!) What did the ‘job’ was adding homeopathic sugar to his ‘bag of tricks’ (no pun intended) and viola within 5 weeks not only had his itching dissipated, blood pressure reduced. athletes foot ‘cured’ and bloating gone, he actually no longer felt ‘angry let alone rageful’ and the greatest news of all for him was that he did not need to follow such an ‘eye watering emotion depriving DIEt!’
To hocus pocus and jiggery pokery !
Khush
PS. I will be running a 2 day health work shop in March (how to use natural alternatives to antibiotics, calpol, pain killer medications etc) for more details drop me an email.