This discussion on the chemistry makeup of sugar is to empower you to eat with knowledge. It is a foundational look at sugar and how it is recognized by the body. It is not a lecture on how much sugar you eat, but to give you insight on how sugar bonds with other nutrients and is absorbed.

Sugar makes us feel good because it activates the dopamine hormone, and processed sugar goes more immediately and acutely. A shot of processed sugar gives us quick energy, like if you drink a soda, but then a crash of tiredness comes. This is because sugar’s original bond has changed.

 A sugar molecule is C₁₂H₂₂O_11.                  

Carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen.  We are bombarded with opinions and misdirection that how you eat sugar whether natural or processed, the chemical makeup is the same. Sugar found in natural form, like an apple, is encased with elements like calcium, phosphorus, and magnesium. So when you bite into an apple, you get a slew of elements bonded to C₁₂H₂₂O_11.   Cane sugar is unprocessed and wrapped in other elements. When researching what exactly is being stripped away, you find countless blogs stating only “impurities.” Those impurities are other elements bonding with the sugar.  We know the benefits of beets, and beet sugar comes with minerals, nutrients, and vitamins; yet we are taught that sugar is sugar.

The package of how sugar is delivered into our body is different. Our body recognizes sugar in fruits and unprocessed foods. When sugar is stripped of its “impurities,” the body must adjust to utilize this processed sugar. This brings on inflammation and pain causing havoc through the body in ways including high blood pressure, digestive issues, and headaches.

Very different molecules look similar. Like a sugar molecule is C₁₂H₂₂O_11.  A fat molecule is C₅₄H₁₀₈O₆. Caffeine molecule is C₈H₁₀N₄O₂, and a cocaine molecule is C₁₇H₂₁NO_4.

Even the slightest difference in a molecule is important.  Like with the sugar molecule, you cannot extract just the oxygen and use it to breathe, nor the hydrogen and oxygen for water.  3 of the most abundant elements in the universe are carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. They are bonded in an infinite number of ways to create the planets, comets, animals, and life in the universe!

Your body is all about chemistry and natural food bonds should stay together.

Many times, patients tell me they do not think they eat too much sugar. Absolutely I agree. I agree that they don’t realize it.  Pasta, bread, yogurt, cereal, energy bar, salad dressing, instant oatmeal and even dried fruit can have added processed sugar.

Sugar is not the enemy in its natural bond.  Enjoy sugar options like raw cane, beet, molasses, honey, stevia, coconut, monk fruit, maple syrup.

Many people live with chronic heartburn. A cycle of keeping your head up in bed or limiting any of the fun foods like pizza, coffee, spice, tomatoes, carbonation, alcohol….. it is an almost impossible way to live. You torture yourself eating boring foods, and as soon as you eat a “trigger food” are back to pain again.

When You take Antacids it just diminishes the acid temporary, but your stomach need acids. That is how the stomach breaks down food. And if your stomach is unable or insufficient in breaking down your food, nutrients do not get out to the body.

….and there is a reason why your stomach is in an acid war zone.

When you integrate your diet with natural foods and supplements you can have a well run digestive system.  Healing from chronic pain, inflammation, headaches, and sleep issues all start with your stomach health. The digestive system working properly is vital in absorbing nutrients from your food, out to the body.

Food habits can be hard to break… and good news, you probably just need a few simple modifications.

So since acid breaks down our food, then the goal is to not neutralize the acid, the goal is to add other things that also break down food. Understanding your body should be simple. If you research acid reflux, you will get a slew of diagnosis from stress to cancer. But if you think about is basically, acid breaks down food, if you have too much acid, your body is having a hard time breaking down your food. Basically. Things like processed foods and meats require more help to break down food. Some hearty raw vegetables need more to break down also. What we lost in our food refinement and industrialization are digestion catalysts. Natural things in our food to assist in the digestion. Here are 2 vital things to add to your diet everyday, and at least 2 times a day when healing.

Incorporate Food enzymes in your diet. Enzymes break down food.. Foods like bananas, avocado, pineapple, kiwi, papaya, ginger, garlic… garlic for any ailment right?!

Fermented foods give your body some good bacteria needed to help break down foods… Fermented foods include saukraut, kimchi kombucha, brined vegetables, miso, yogurt. We have trillions of bacteria that live in our digestive system. Publicized that most Americans have 1-3 good strands of bacteria and over a hundred bad strands of bacteria in their digestive system.

Remember heartburn is just one symptom of the problem.

Talk with your physician about supplements to assist you with your heartburn or other digestive concerns.

Trying to find a way to be healthy can be pretty complicated. So many rules and too many blogs from experts that are not experts just opinions that can be based on facts redirected to pursue you. Gosh that sentence was even complicated.Well Traditional Chinese Medicine is not complicated. It gets lumped into a whole category of mystical fantastical medicines. And when renowned Western Hospitals start including Traditional Chinese Medicine, it gets called quackery by some “real doctors.” It is a shame they are so afraid to share the value of healing and discount medicine they don’t understand. As a person with a body, there is room to share healing modalities! So here are 7 misconceptions about Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which includes use of Acupuncture.

1.Traditional Chinese Medicine says we have a magical Qi that is the energy in our body. TCM has been around over 3000 years. Descriptions are going to be different. The fact is we are very electrical. Signals are continuously moving from the brain everywhere in the body. And we know these signals can slow down and get blocked like in conditions of multiple sclerosis, neuropathy, and when intoxicated. So magical Qi? No, it is real energy signals moving through the body. When something as little as a gnat sits on a hair on your arm, you feel it within seconds. You bang your elbow and pain or energy shoots up and down. This is Qi. Not a mystery force. And to follow this is Acupuncture puts a thin lightening rod to signal the brain to say- come here, fix this.

2. Yin and Yang is some mystical force of balance. Yin and Yang is a phrase from thousands of years. In current time you could relate it to if you had 80 percent of a pie left, you ate 20 percent. Together it still makes a whole pie. Yang is the word for the movement and energy, with Yin being the rest and quiet. It is just how to relate anything to each other. We may not relate many things in medicine the same as back then but the philosophy was and is important in TCM. When you have a sore throat, this is excess yang, and most likely yin deficient. Your throat is out of balance and a Traditional Chinese Medicine Doctor will try to help you get it back in balance. It is a philosophy to understand the health condition. Knowing how the body is out of sinc whether deficient, excess hot or cold is important to regain homeostasis.

3. Chinese Medicine gives organs an emotion and is not real medicineTraditional Chinese Medicine did not perform autopsies. They palpated, experimented and asked a lot of questions. In TCM, and in real life, organ systems are affected by emotions. In our culture, we lump anxiety and stress together but they are 2 different feelings that affect different parts of the body. Stress is situational. Like a stressful job. Anxiety is not being able to resolve something. You get anxious because you may not know how to figure out a solution, or maybe their is no solution and the situation stays in your mind day after day, causing anxiety. Many times Anxiety and Stress are going on at the same time. When you are stressed, it affects your stomach. Maybe you have had an acute stressful situation and you had a pain in your stomach. Chronic stress leads to acid reflux, gas, constipation. Then Anxiety. Anxiety grows. So many unresolved situations over the years that play like movie reels in the mind over and over. What happens is adrenal glands produce cortisol to work with the anxiety. Then the liver produces glucose for the adrenal glands. This over taxes the liver.
4. The Mind is not connected to the body for medicine and healing purposes

Comments like this insult who we are. To say we do not have feelings that affect us physically. Like we are superficial robots disconnected. We know when we are sad we barely breathe. When we are happy our energy goes up. And when we are anxious and nervous we can get palpitations, breathing difficulties, diarrhea etc. So if we can work on our emotions, it will help us breathe deeper, relax and digest our meals more efficiently, and reduce pain.

5. Herbal medicine is dangerous and has no value in healing

What an ignorant statement I have seen on the internet many times. I mean aspirin, come on, was derived from willow bark. Western medicine dates the discovery in 1763, but a greater back story is traditional Chinese medicine is willow bark, or liu shu pi, was used for thousands of years. We know herbs are a powerhouse of vitamins and nutrients. Parsley, Oregano, Thyme, to name a few. So Chinese Herbs are what were indigenous and grew in their region. Ginger, ginseng, turmeric.. hundreds of herbs. They all do somethings different. They are food, nutrients, not a hard stretch to understand. The body needs nutrients period. Herbs have particular vitamins and minerals that have been studied for thousands of years! If you believe food heals, herbs are food, they heal.

6. Acupuncture is a placebo and not real medicine

Acupuncture sends the signal for your body to focus on an area to heal. It causes a micro causation which brings the white blood cells in to heal. Look what they are doing with prosthesis and nerve conductivity. The body has billions of nerves so it is easy to understand how a thin needle placed close to a nerve would draw attention from the body.

7. Cupping marks are bruises and can be dangerous

Bruises are from impact. Cupping is not impact. Cupping lifts the fascia, and lets blood flow move under the skin. Old trauma leaves stagnant blood maybe for years under the skin. The “bruise marks” are actually old blood that gets cupped up to the surface and now able to move through the body and be released. Cupping is great for Chronic issues as well as acute pain.

Like a bottle filling beyond its capacity, negative emotions can reach a point that they have to be released or explode. Many factors lead to this pressure building battle of the mind. It’s a cycle of building, exploding and releasing. Let us discuss what the emotions are that build and turn into anger. How the emotional pain causes physical pain, how a simple and powerful scream can free your pain. A scream can augment the healing of emotional and physical pain, and the best way is to “primal scream”.
Over the years, unresolved emotional pain from decisions and situations can weigh in our minds. As a culture we say we are over it, and it doesn’t matter anymore, but does it? Test this theory with people who have hurt you and you are “over it”, could you walk up and give them a genuine hug? A hug of comfort, without the little distance and a patting on the back awkwardness? Could you hold your father who was never there for you? Unresolved pain can reside and we don’t even realize it. Now add new anxieties beyond your control, some fear, and things like chronic physical pain. To make worse, you lost your job. This is the root of your pain, but anger will show itself in other situations. Are you really mad at
the car in front of you for going too slow, your 5 year old for walking around the house asking you a hundred questions, or your husband for leaving his clothes on the floor? Your bottle is full and agitated, stirring, and anything will make it explode if not resolved. Your body and mind cannot take anymore.

Emotional pain causes physical pain. Many studies and research show chronic pain may not be just from trauma, but from emotional pain. This is proven many times with the Fight or Flight response of the sympathetic nervous system. It was perfectly designed in our bodies for immediate danger. Today we are not the gazelle preyed by the lions, cheetahs, leopards, crocodiles, jackals, African wild dogs, and hyenas (could you imagine), but in constant waves of stress. This gives us higher levels of cortisol, which affects all major organ systems. Continuous stress keeps muscles contracted, causing fatigue and shoulder tightness. In this
situation, think about how good a blast of air through the body would feel to strengthen to rejuvenate.

When the emotional bottle is filled, a long good oxygen filled scream can make you feel better. We can only survive without oxygen for minutes. In our stressful lives, we find ourselves holding our breath or breathing very shallow. Each breath carries oxygen that every cell in the body needs to live. Noticeably when emotions are too much and we can’t fix them, we get angry. When we are angry, we want to yell. We want to scream, but our culture says, bottle it up, suppress it, do yoga. Why would we feel the need to scream and yell unless it was an important tool for healing? I believe the primal scream is a call out to no one, it is a purge of the emotions we have settled in our mind. Along with resolving methods of emotional pain, the scream is an important way our body naturally wants to purge.

The primal scream as defined on merriamwebsterdictionary.com is “a violent outpour of raw emotion.” It is not to be used on another person, but a personal release of everything building up in your body. And when I say body, after a primal scream, besides your head feeling clearer, your shoulders will feel relaxed, your lower back may feel good, your headache gone, and your heart beat may relax. You may feel a warm tingling in your skin like you just sprinted 50 yards.

Rejuvenated. The time to do the scream is when the emotional bottle is about to explode, so notify your family, and quickly find a private place to uncork. The misconception about screaming is that a person is angry. The truth is all the emotions and pain you feel need an outlet. The scream is acute and immediate freedom from emotional stress. The stresses, anxieties, fears, need to be dissected and conquered for long lasting happiness we deserve.

In this beautiful world we have emotional pain. At times we caused our own pain, and sometimes others have. It is in dealing with those tender emotions that we can truly enjoy our life. The physical pains of stress wreaks havoc on our body, and in reaching self-actualization, we need good primal screams along the way.