Book Review

Ok so this was supposed to be yesterday's post, but I finished the book yesterday. The book is called Lights Out, I found it to be quite fascinating. It explains (with science and studies) that availability of light (artificial light) 24/7 has transformed human health. We have manipulated our environment so that we are constantly in a summer day (heat during the winter prevents true-winter). Humans originally loaded up on carbohydrates and added a few pounds during the summer because in the winter they went into a hibernative/dormant state when carbohydrates were scarce. Now it is continuously summer and we crave carbs all year long. We aren't overeating veggies and fruits though. We've been told that high carb low fat is the way to go which. Which is the opposite of what need. We constantly spike our insulin levels until we become resistant to it and get diseases like diabetes. The author links all illness (diabetes, heart disease, and cancer to our ready supply of light). Basically overeating carbs and insulin resistance are causing all of our problems. We crave carbs because it's summer, but also because we don't get enough sleep to restore prolactin, which controls appetite. This is the general idea of the idea, although it goes into much further detail, but I'm going to end with some of the notes I took while reading it, but like I said I found it very fascinating (and it supports my beliefs of eliminating grains and sugars to control insulin levels).
• Steadily decreasing our consumption of fat and cholesterol and yet increasing our incidence of obesity, disease and death.
• Long hours of artificial light= summer in your head. Winter signifies famine to your internal controls. Famine on horizon signifies instinctive carbohydrate craving to store fat for hibernation and scarcity.
• Incidence Type II diabetes dropped sharply during WWI and WWII when sugar was rationed.
• We are as addicted to a low-fat, high sugar diet as alcoholics are to alcohol, because high insulin levels creates the same brain state as alcohol does.
• Preventative medicine is thought of as alternative medicine in this country.
• The truth about research is that research isn’t about discovering the truth, it’s about making money (research in US predominately paid for by drug companies and government).
• Definition of life is the ability to learn and change in response to experience.
• Hours light exposure control growth symbiotic bacteria (keys life & death & dress size)
• Circadian rhythmicity (night-day cycles) along with carbs control insulin production.
• Get up with the sun, sleep with the moon, eat only your share and be fruitful and multiply
• Life, without all we do to kill time, is only sleeping, eating, and sex
• Unnatural world endless summer and sugar leptin receptors burned out, and there is no longer a curb on appetite for sugar (leptin resistance- cause fat to get fatter- because fat people are always hungry people); prolactin pushed into daytime by short nights suppressed leptin and left appetite for carbohydrate turned on (summer)
• You should wake up hungry with low insulin and cortisol rising to deal with stress during the day.
• Less sleep at night (therefore less melatonin and less leptin) makes you eat more, day and night.
• Without incoming carbohydrates you will drop 10 or so pounds of retained fluid, dropping your blood pressure and burning your fat base, a process that throws off ketones and reduces your serotonin too, so you’re not as depressed or paranoid.
• Running, jumping=being chased=stress response=cortisol release=blood sugar mobilization=blood sugar up=insulin up= insulin resistance=fat storage and hypertension
• Endothelial cells (line heart) control clotting, over-growth, fat metabolism and blood pressure. You can kill them 4 ways: chronic high cortisol; high levels endotoxin LPS (no sleep); high homocysteine (too much light); shear stress (seasonal high blood pressure- along with “water weight” and serotonin and insulin resistance-that never ends)
• When you eat to much carbohydrate for too many months of the year, never empty your storage sugar, or burn fat to imitate famine, insulin produced by your pancreas day and night in response to all of the sugar, causes rebound addictions and substance abuse through the production of serotonin and dopamine, bipolar behavior (ultimately) and maybe even schizophrenia
• Obesity is simply a different symptom of the same syndrome that causes everything else that plagues modern man
• There are no bread trees or pasta bushes. Breads and pasta do not occur in nature.
• Nine and a half hours of solid sleep at least 7 months out of the year is the minimum required to beat cancer, diabetes, heart disease and depression
• Many “food products” that are labeled “sugar free” contain other sweeteners that will raise your blood sugar and spike your insulin just as real sugar would
• Green vegetables: fibrous content slows down digestive process, which lowers the glycemic index of your entire meal.
• Eat real fats; fats become useless when they are accompanied by sugar or when their chemical structure is changed.