sugar vs fat - splenda, probiotics....

So there's sugar in EVERYTHING its insane sure we all know theres 20lbs of sugar magically crammed into one 12oz coke but shit like bread and ketchup and vitamin water everywhere you look sugar.

one of the things i've changed is the need for everything to taste sweet, sometimes i use splenda to balance the flavors of something spicy or often for that first cup of coffee but even though its 'zero calorie' its got other problems (read this) splenda's not so splendid - does a better job that i can. basically we are all so fat because we have wiped out our good bacteria with things like this and of course antibiotics.  now very recently a doc giving you a zpack might tell at least a woman to just eat some yogurt to keep from getting a yeast infection, what i now understand is that that is like putting on some ray-bans when a nuclear bomb goes off.

yeast going nuts can cause a seemingly unending list of problems and there's little yeast likes more than sugar and hates more than good bacteria and we are all doing a fantastic job giving it everything it wants and its doing a great job making sure we feel like WE want that.  its like when your baby in yer belly demands chocolate milk when you really don't even like that (true story)

this is worth a watch, its splattered with f'ing ads and in the end they want to sell you an expensive probiotic which might very well be worth it but if nothing else its a good education that can lead you to your own research on the subject watch here - candida overgrowth epidemic - .

Dad the baddy when he was 28

Worse than that, in very extreme cases it can actually kill you. 20 some odd years in hindsight lack of good bacteria actually killed my father.  He flew 6,000 hours in a nav chair of C-130 cargo plane, stood with his hands in the air in front of 50 M-16s in bogota, pioneered navigating over the magnetic north pole using only the stars and thats all the stuff we are allowed to know about as he worked for those spookie kinda peeps back in the day that exposed him to god knows what.  17 trips into vietnam taking AA every time and the list goes on.  way too young he got sudden onset acute leukemia.  though he died only 6 weeks from the onset of his first symptoms neither the leukemia or even the chemo killed him.

They kept giving him different antibiotics to make sure he didn't become resistant and get infected and one day when he seemed to be doing okish, program working and probably giving him at least a few more months of life they gave him a new one. suddenly his lungs filled with yeast and they had to intubate by the time I was able to fly in he'd gone from "its not like i'm going to die or anything" to unable to open his eyes or speak ever again, took about 4 days to take down a pretty badass dude.

From what I understand today, a massive dose of probiotics might have actually saved his life.  now this sounds like yet another one of those ooh now you have to take THIS vitamin because its all the rage. but this stuff is normally living in your gut its a massive and critical part of your internal ecosystem and we are killing it.

some of the evidence I have is going on atkins has always and has this time as well totally removed the need to take ranitidine, omeprazole, flovent and albuterol yea, massive acid reflux AND even with that treated COPD, all that shit, gone because I don't eat bread or sugar. (oh yea and major bonus, my blood pressure, heart rate, blood sugar and everything else are all fantastic and i havent even started exercising yet) but wait, there's more! those antacids also are now shown to cause a B12 deficiency and that is shown to cause peripheral neuropathy which i have, diagnosed by the same docs that said taking those antacids til the cows come home was just dandy despite the label. thanks.  anyway, in theory that doesn't ever get better but by stopping those it shouldn't get worse.

on top of that after watching that video I decided to try out some probiotics, they did wonders for my wife and i both, since we were already low carb much of the difference we had already achieved but a very very noticeable shift in digestion and more than that not just energy, not that coffee zing feeling but like alert clarity like a massive fog had lifted.

those were 100 billion live organism 34 strain REFRIGERATED! probiotics, the max out wamma jamma at a whopping $38 for 30 days for one person, ouch! so when those ran out we scored some at costco, non refrigerated, 20billion (10bil is the recommended) for $20something and it was like 3mo supply for 1 person.  I can tell that they are helping and maybe when my body is all the way there those would be good enough to maintain balance but i'd say they are about 1/10th as effective.  key thing is i can really feel it and that is even with the very strong bias of i really want the cheaper stuff to work.  $38 is going to sting but i'm gonna do it.
Here's some i found online that are the ones i'm going to go back to taking come payday, I get them at my local organic grocery, I don't recommend doing online if you can avoid it because the cool pack might not last long enough to really keep all them critters alive, you'll still get some benefit but for starters you really want the max.

sweet in the coffee.  i have to add splenda to my first cup but then i just suffer with bitter.  there's a couple joints around here (seattle area) that do the super duper ultra just roasted action (ahem, hint starbucks aint one of them) they are boutique joints. long story short good beans that were just roasted within the last 5 days (today is better) you wouldn't even recognise.  you can make an espresso straight up with nothing added at all and it is actually very sweet AND creamy tasting.  all that bitter that you are throwing gut wrecking sugar and farty makin milk on comes from the fact that that shit is OLD. blech. well i aint that rich so i've learned to take my drug bitter like a good little boy but if you've got the means, ditch the additives and go for the fresh gold

happy living!