Have you ever wondered what the codes on your produce mean??? ​

See the quick chart below - better yet - print it and put it in your wallet for when you go to the grocery store!  ​

How much water are we supposed to be drinking and what is the best way to consume this amazing liquid?  8 cups, 12 cups, every 20 min, every hour, cold, hot, infused, purified, spring, sip, gulp, the list goes on.  We all have our opinions and to be honest hydration is different for everyone.
Lets start with water itself.  Our bodies are composed of ~70-80% with the highest percentages being in the heart, lungs, blood, brain and muscle.   Every biochemical reaction in our bodies needs water.  It bathes every cell in our bodies and allows life to occur.  It is made up of one positively charged oxygen and two negatively charged hydrogen atoms and because of these charges and the charges between other water molecules it creates an inter molecular force allowing it to "stick" together, able to flow and move as one and send information long distances.  It dissolves nutrients, gases, and wastes and repels fats providing compartments in our body necessary for different purposes.   It, along with fascia create a network allowing for communication between all cells of the body. 

Everyone is going to be different so pay close attention to the signs and symptoms above,, but on average women should aim for 8.5 cups and men 11.5 cups.  A quick rule of thumb is to drink half your weight in ounces so if you weigh 120 lbs drink 60 ounces (7.5 cups) and if you weigh 200lbs drink 100 ounces (12.5 cups) per day. 
The maximum amount the kidneys can process / hour is 1 L. so don't drink all your daily water requirements in one go!  I typically recommend patients to drink a large glass of water first thing in the morning to help the kidneys flush any toxins and wastes your body dealt with over night.  Then during the day  drink about 1/2 - 1 cup / hour (4 large gulps).   If you are exercising intensely you should be having 2-3 cups of water / hour,  drinking every 20 min.    

--> more than 1 liter / hour is too much!  This just causes extra work for your body.  Another thing to watch for is hyponatremia (low salt level in the blood).  If you are sweating extensively you really need to be using an electrolyte solution!  See my post on Rumancik Remedies for an easy to make electrolyte recipe! 

My last blog post was about GMOs and touched on how it might not be the new genetic material causing disease, but rather our current farming practices - high pesticide, herbicide, and fungicide toxic coating our food and leaving soils depleted of any nutrients.   Corn, soy, and canola are the most sprayed, but I also want to touch on the rest of our grains. 

The answer to this again is multi-fold, but I am again going to suggest it is associated with our current chemical dependent farming practices.   I once attended a scientific lecture given by a researcher from Queens university discussing how durum wheat was bio accumulating the heavy metal cadmium instead of calcium.  Another scientific journal I just read showed that if a plant was provided with aluminum and magnesium in the soil it will take up aluminum.  Our minerals are competing with heavy metals for uptake into our plants and accumulating in the seeds.  This is alarming as heavy metals have a similar shape, charge, and properties as our much needed minerals, particularly calcium and magnesium, and plants cannot tell the different.!  No doubt this is why all rice is now found to be contaminated with arsenic and our wheat contaminated with cadmium.   
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Wheat is  another topic that has entire books dedicated to it, Wheat Belly is just one that comes to mind.  Some people have to avoid it altogether, some can only handle it every once in a while, and some cannot eat north american wheat, but are fine when they go to Italy.  Why so much discrepancy? 
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Hair Nutrient Analysis: 
My first recommendation would be to do a hair nutrient analysis.   This involves measuring minerals and heavy metal content in the hair shaft, representative of the past 3 months.   It is a simple test involving cutting new hair growth (the 3 cm closest to the scalp or using pubic hair) and sending it off to the lab for analysis.  See an example of what the test looks like here.  This gives a great starting point to determine if one is getting enough minerals where remember humans are like plants and if there are more heavy metals compared to minerals we will take them up as well. 

Food allergy testing:
​Secondly I would run a food allergy test to determine if one is reactive to any of these grains.  It is a simple blood test and can be done in office where results generally come back within a week or two.  See an example report here.

Celiac testing:
Next, based on severity of symptoms and family history I would recommend doing a Celiac test.,  Some Doctors say only 1% of the population is suspected to have celiac, which I suspect is higher; however, this is 1/100 so in the downtown core of Vancouver alone over 6000 people are suspected to have celiac.  The reason I mentioned that I suspect this to be even higher is because a convention lab test measures for the IgA tissue transglutaminase antigen; however,  1/500 in Canada are suspected to have an IgA deficiency and as such will be misdiagnosed as not having celiac when they actually do; this equates to an extra 1000 people in downtown Vancouver.  Thus, it is good to test for an IgA deficiency along with both IgA and IgG gluten sensitivities.  

​Note: ~50% of people with celiac disease will not show any symptoms, but will still be suffering as they are not absorbing their nutrients.  Eventually years down the road symptoms will develop, particularly fatigue. 
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Want a cheaper way, although much more difficult, to determine if you have an intolerance to different grains?  Simply get rid of grains all together for a few weeks and see how you feel.  If you still feel lousy then lets look at a different food, or at your toxic load, especially heavy metals.  However, if you are feeling better then slowly bring back each grain one at a time and monitor your symptoms - you are your best doctor and it may be a matter of listening to your body more closely. 
Keep in mind I am not recommending to never eat grains - grains are a great source of fiber, minerals, and vitamins when grown in healthy soils.  So, try to buy organic and try "safe" grains, such as quinoa, buckwheat, and millet - these are grains I hear less complaints about and come up much less on food allergy tests and they are actually quite delicious! 

it is also a good idea to flood the body with a high quality multivitamin in the hopes that your body preferentially takes up the minerals instead of the heavy metals found in food.   Binders can be useful as well, but this is a whole other conversation / blog post on how to deal with heavy metals.   
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