 It is the nature of humans to create some form of balance in their diets as it is absolutely essential to health. The problem is that, very often, the form this balance takes is a very extreme one. Often, choices are based on subconscious factors such as habit, familiarity, and sentimental feelings, rather than real need. Usually when we eat something from one extreme end of the scale, we unconsciously balance it out by eating something from the other far end of the scale, for example, meat and alcohol, or salty food and sugary desserts. And so on, back and forth in big swings.
If the body can't keep up with all the overtime work required of it to process the load, it finds some convenient way of sloughing off the work. It will call the immune system to get up a little fever to burn off some of the excess, or a runny nose, or a pimple or two, or a headache or an infection at a weak point. Sometimes, especially in people of strong constitution, the body just keeps finding places to store the excess baggage and life goes on as normal until one day, a more serious illness develops. This, in fact, is the main cause of our civilisation's rampant degenerative diseases. For some people, extreme dietary balance expresses itself in big emotional swings, depression, or hyperactivity. We often consider disease of any sort as an enemy, but in most cases it is simply the body's way of doing its best to localise, expel, and balance extremes.
When you make balance in a way that is appropriate to your own condition, to external factors like the climate and the type of work you do, your body feels naturally fit and strong. There is no need for special 'dieting', you are energetic, have good stamina, are expressive, and inspired. Maybe not always (no one is perfect), but always more often.
Observing the Effects of Certain Foods
Do you ever find yourself on a rollercoaster ride? Emotionally and energetically up at one moment and down at the next ? Along with the blood sugar levels, energy rises sharply when given boosts of refined sugar or fructose. It stays up there a short while and shoots back down again, waiting for another shot of chocolate, or sugar, or other strong stimulant like coffee. At the same time, consistent use of these types of food results in a loss of minerals (necessary for the breakdown of the sugar). Lack of minerals leads to fatigue and emotional weariness also known as " The Sugar Blues."
Do you know anyone who seems to butt his or her way through life, always in a hurry, sort of the Bull-in-a-China-Cupboard syndrome? Red meat, eggs, and heavily fried foods can have this effect on people. Football players deliberately beef up before games to prepare for short sprints, aggression, and collision. Meanwhile, long distance runners, basketball players, swimmers, in fact all sports of endurance, focus on high-carbohydrate training diets. They are aware that grain is best for evenly burning energy and long term endurance.
Ever have that nervous, can't keep still feeling? An observant special-education teacher once pointed out to me that she had noticed increased hypertensive behaviour in certain students after their mid-morning and lunch breaks. Kids consuming candy bars came back to the classroom ready to fly rocketships to the moon. The combination of highly refined sugar, chemical additives, and preservatives in candy are bad enough, but couple that with regular meat consumption and you have a person with an urgent need to burn off a lot of excess energy.
If runny noses, colds, earaches, pimples, fever, or infections are a common occurrence in your household take special notice of the level of dairy food consumption. Dairy foods, cheese, butter , milk, and yogurt are all high in fat and cholesterol. It all has to go somewhere and in general we overdo it on these things, consuming far more than we can burn off efficiently. Out of season foods, particularly tropical fruits in cold months, can also be a cause of some of these discomforts.
These are just a few of some of the most easily observed and commonly occurring food-related symptoms. Although 'external' factors, such as the environment one lives and works in, pollution, stress, noise, quality of relationships, and so on play a definite role in one's health, the place to look first is closest to home, i.e., what we put in our mouths. The following chart gives an abbreviated list of possible food-behavior-health correlations. You may find that some correlations work for you, while others may not. Some may be so at one time and different at another. The purpose here is to provide a starting point of observation of the energetic effects of food.
© Copyright Marlise Binetti-Kupper & Katriona Forrester 2002
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