Tuesday, July 11

Dr. David R. Seaman

Author of The DeFlame Diet

Are you a “dietary crackhead”?

According to estimates, almost 60% of all calories consumed by Americans come from refined sugar, refined flour, and refined oil.

Unfortunately, despite tasting good, these calorie sources have absolutely no nutritional value.

Even more unfortunately, foods created from these calorie sources, (like bread, cereal, cookies, crackers, cakes and pies), trigger an immediate inflammatory reaction in the body – and this diet-induced inflammation, over time, leads to aches, pains, depression, fatigue, general ill-health, as well as  the development of chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, premature aging, Alzheimer’s, erectile dysfunction, irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, and others.

“For many people, eating just one donut will trigger immediate low-grade inflammation,” says Dr. David R. Seaman, author of the book The DeFlame Diet.  “You may not feel it, but your body reacts as if a physical injury were taking place; as though you had sprained your ankle.” Dr. Seaman refers to the phenomenon as “dietary injury”.

Dr. Seaman says the goal of staying healthy by avoiding dietary injury from refined sugar, flour and oils is made extremely difficult by the fact that foods created from these calorie sources are physiologically addictive.

“It turns out that the human body has an immediate addiction response to the foods that cause disease,” says Dr. Seaman. “This is why I refer to these calorie sources as “dietary crack”. And since these calorie sources are craved by almost all of us, this makes us all dietary crackheads.”

Dr. Seaman says vested interests are making big money from America’s addiction to dietary crack:  “Meat is expensive to produce; but sugar and flour cost just pennies,” says Dr. Seaman. “If food producers can convince you to eat less meat and more sugar and flour, they will generate more profits at the expense of your health.”

With our health and longevity at stake, how do we “kick our dietary crack habit” and stop the diet-induced inflammation that most of us suffer from?

“By using the food choices outlined in The DeFlame Diet we can “de-flame” ourselves and create an anti-inflammatory state of body metabolism: a healing state,” says Dr. Seaman

As for those of us who might already be feeling withdrawal pangs at the idea of giving up our morning sweet rolls or lunch-time Twinkies, Dr. Seaman has some good news:

“You don’t have to go “cold turkey” on this diet.  Just by lowering your “Twinkie count” a little each week you’ll be able to lose weight, reduce inflammation, and improve health,” says Dr. Seaman.

David R. Seaman, DC, MS, DABCN, is a Professor of Clinical Sciences at National University’s Florida Campus in Pinellas Park, where he teaches evaluation and management courses for the musculoskeletal, cardiorespiratory, gastrointestinal and genitorurinary systems. He is also a faculty member for National’s Masters of Science program in Advanced Clinical Practice.

Dr. Seaman is a graduate of Rutgers University and New York Chiropractic College. He then received a Masters degree in Nutrition from the University of Bridgeport and a diplomate in neurology through Logan College of Chiropractic.

Dr. Seaman has authored a book on clinical nutrition for pain and inflammation, and has written several chapters and articles on this topic. His academic and clinical interest is focused on how pain and symptom/disease expression can be modulated with lifestyle choices and manual/rehabilitative interventions.

 Show highlights:

-Wanted to understand why responses to chiropractic treatments were inconsistent.

-Role of the Nocebo  – our pain sensing system.  Pain pathways are influenced by nutrition.

-Diabetes is an inflammed pancreas.

-Not all inflammation is accompanied by swelling and heat.  These occur only with robust injury.

-Overeating calories from any source puts on body fat.  Accumulated body fat is a source of inflammation.  With too much body fat, the body behaves as if it had a low grade infection.

-Body prefers to be in slight caloric deficit, but can adapt to a little excess body fat.  Body fat over a person’s threshold is associated with classic markers of inflammation, as seen in levels of fasting blood glucose, triglycerides, LDL, HDL, CRP.

-Everyone’s response to food varies.  Post-prandial glucose levels show what foods you react to.

-Kitavans ate a diet high in complex carbs of sweet potato, yams, taro, and fruit.  Had good health, no obesity, long-lived.

-Overeating is the issue.  When in caloric deficit, we heal and restore our mitochondria.

-High sugar, flour, and oxidized fatty acid foods trigger immediate inflammation.  Cells get washed in sugar and will kick out inflammatory chemistry.

-Check blood glucose 2 hours post-prandial.  Want to be below 140.  If above, indicates carbohydrate intolerance.

-Mainstream is on a campaign to diss coconut oil.  Saturated fatty acids raise both LDL and HDL.  Sugar, flour, trans fatty acids raise LDL and lower HDL.

-Atherosclerosis is always in areas of turbulence.  Blood samples are taken from the veins.  Same amount of cholesterol in arteries is also in the veins.  But we don’t have atherosclerosis in veins, only in the arteries.  Aortic artery is in an area of high turbulence.

-After diabetes and metabolic syndrome onset, LDL and HDL get inflammed.  Soft and buoyant particles become small, dense, hard and oxidized.  LDL becomes a free radical, an autoantigen.

-Insulin is a hormone that stimulates the hormones that make cholesterol.  HMG-CoA reductase is turned on by insulin and turned off by statins.

-Excess glucose in sugar and flour becomes body fat and high cholesterol.  Statins are given to counter too much flour and sugar in the diet.

-Oxidized cholesterol is an irritant to the endothelial cells of the blood vessels.  Accumulation reduces blood flow.

-Tissues never heal properly if the body is hypercaloric for a long time.

-We normally produce more LDL than HDL.

-2 part cholesterol series on YouTube at DeFlame Nutrition

-Chronic dietary injury from too much flour, sugar, and refined oils.  The body never has a chance to heal with that chronic inflammation.

-Juan asks: What are the most potent anti-inflammatory foods?   Look at what to eliminate rather than what to take.  Most important, stop overeating.  Stop the inflammation train.  Replace with green vegetables, ginger, turmeric, most fruits.

-66% of US population is overweight or obese.

-Doris wants to know if there’s any problems with having fat and fruits together.  People in tropical islands eat coconut and fruit together.

-Healthy stuff won’t hurt you unless you’re eating excess amounts of healthy stuff.

-Illiterate people in primitive societies stayed lean, free of heart disease and diabetes.  It’s the misinformation permeating the literature that misleads.

-Arteriosclerosis is chronic inflammation of the arteries.  Put that same inflammation in the joints and you have osteoarthritis, in the brain- Alzheimer’s, in the pancreas – diabetes.

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Dr. David Seaman, Chiropractor and Nutritionist on the inflammation process and being overweight, July 11, 2017