Section
11
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HYPOGLYCEMIA (Low Blood Sugar)
SYMPTOMS—Confusion, depression, nervousness, anxiety, antisocial behavior, emotional instability, exhaustion, headaches, impatience, inability to cope, fears, craving for sugar, faintness, dizziness.
Symptoms especially occur a few hours after eating sweets or fats. The more that is eaten and the longer the span before the symptoms occur, the worse they are.
CAUSES—The problem is adrenal exhaustion. The cause is too much stress, worry, and an excess of undigested sugars, starches, proteins, and dairy products. The cortin hormone is depleted, so food cannot be digested properly.
People consume large quantities of sugars, caffeine, soft drinks, and alcohol. These all contain simple sugars, and insufficient amounts of complex carbohydrates. Add to this: high stress levels, and the two adrenal glands become exhausted.
Hypoglycemia can be inherited, but more often it is brought on by an inadequate diet (and is then called functional hypoglycemia). However, there are several other physical problems which can weaken adrenal function and help bring on hypoglycemia. These include weaknesses in the thyroid, liver, kidneys, pituitary, and pancreas. Immune deficiency and candidiasis can also lead to it. Other causes include smoking and large amounts of caffeine.
Hypoglycemia is sometimes mistakenly diagnosed as asthma, allergies, fatigue syndrome, stomach, intestinal, weight problems, or mental or nervous disorders.
Half the people, over 50, who have hypoglycemia, are hypothyroid.
TREATMENT—
• Refined starches, sugars, and a high-meat diet wear out the adrenals. Too much sugar shocks the adrenal cortex, and the resulting physical reaction is to crave still more sugar.
• Stop eating or using meat, nicotine, alcohol, chocolate, soft drinks, black tea, and sugared and fat foods. Caffeine, alcohol, and tobacco produce wide swings in blood sugar levels.
• Read the labels at the grocery store, and avoid dextrose, dextrin, lactose, maltose, sucrose, fructose, modified food starch, corn syrup, corn sweetener, cornstarch, and natural sweetener. Only use honey and molasses in small amounts. Also stay away from sorbitol, hexanol, mannitol, and glycol.
• Too much salt also exhausts the adrenals and causes a loss of potassium, leading to lower blood sugar.
• Eat natural foods, the ones you should have been eating to begin with. Whole grains, raw and simply cooked vegetables, some fresh fruit. But eat in moderation starchy foods, such as corn, noodles, pasta, white rice, hominy, and yams.
• Eat a high-fiber diet and vegetables that are raw or steamed. These are good for you: beans, lentils, brown rice, white potatoes, soy products, and fruits.
• Useful fruits include apricots, apples, bananas, grapefruit, lemons, cantaloupes, and persimmons. For example, eat a raw apple instead of applesauce, for the apple has more fiber which will help keep blood sugar stabilized.
• Licorice acts like cortin and helps the blood sugar. Bilberry and wild yam help control insulin levels. Cedar berries help the pancreas. Spirulina tablets, taken between meals, help stabilize blood sugar.
• During a blood sugar reaction, eat something that has both fiber and protein, such as rice or bran crackers with almond butter. Fiber alone (popcorn, rice, oat bran, crackers, ground flaxseed, and psyllium husks) has the ability to slow down a hypoglycemic reaction. A half hour before each meal, eat some of this high fiber, to stabilize blood sugar.
• Once a month, go on a fresh vegetable juice fast for a day. Take enemas with some added lemon juice at that time. If a reaction starts to occur, reach for the fiber, protein powder, or spirulina.
• Avoid stressful situations. You may have a milk allergy, which often accompanies this disease.
ENCOURAGEMENT—Jesus cares for each individual as though there were not another person on the earth. He will help you also, as you seek Him earnestly with all your heart.
ADDISON'S DISEASE (Adrenal Underactivity)
SYMPTOMS—Dizziness, fainting, nausea, loss of appetite, moodiness, decrease in body hair, inability to cope with stress. Slight darkening and discoloration of the skin is more noticeable when body parts are exposed to the sun. This would include forehead, knees, elbows, scars, skin folds and creases (on the palms, etc.). The mouth and freckles may appear darker. The hair becomes darker.
Bands of pigment run the length of the nails.
Reduced adrenal function (resulting either from Addison's or Cushing's Disease) can result in weakness, headaches, memory problems, dizziness, allergies, food cravings, and blood sugar disorders.
CAUSES—Both the adrenal underactivity of Addison's Disease and the overactivity of Cushing's Disease are caused by problems in the function of the adrenal glands.
Continued use of cortisone drugs for arthritis and asthma, etc., damage the adrenals. Those drugs cause them to shrink in size and not work properly. Yet, surprisingly enough, the shrunken glands can still overproduce and cause Cushing's Disease or underproduce and cause Addison's.
There is a way you can pinpoint whether or not your adrenals are functioning normally:
The systolic is the first number in a blood pressure reading, and the diastolic is the second. For example, 120/80. The systolic should be 10 points higher when you are standing than when you are lying down.
Lie down and rest for 5 minutes, and then have someone take your blood pressure. Then stand up and have it immediately taken again. The blood pressure will probably be somewhat higher.
But if it is lower when standing than when laying flat, the adrenals are not working properly. The lower it is, the worse the condition of the adrenals.
You will want to contact a medical professional. Addison's is a chronic condition which needs to be continually worked with. You may moderate the problem, but it is never fully eliminated.
TREATMENT—
• Maintain a good nourishing diet. Include Nova Scotia dulse or Norwegian kelp for trace minerals. Fresh, raw, and cooked greens and garlic should be part of your regime.
• Avoid tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, and soft drinks. Do not use sugar foods, fried foods, processed or junk foods. Do not eat meat.
• Avoid stress! This is very important, for stress is hard on weak adrenals. Take time for prayer and the study of God's Word, the Bible. He can help you solve the problems about you.
• Stress released ACTH through the pituitary, which can raise blood pressure, stores sodium and excretes potassium. Water retention in the tissues is another result.
—Compare the opposite of Addison's Disease, which is "Cushing's Disease" (which see).
ENCOURAGEMENT—All your habits are to be brought under the control of a mind that is itself under the control of God. In the strength which trust in Christ imparts, we can fulfill God's will for our lives.
CUSHING'S DISEASE (Adrenal overactivity)
SYMPTOMS—Rounded "moon" faces, heavy abdomen and buttocks, thin limbs, The muscles seem weak and wasting away. The eyelids may appear swollen and round; red spots may appear on the face. The skin seems to get thinner, and produces stretch marks and bruising.
Body hair grows faster, and women may grow mustaches and beards. Healing is more difficult and illnesses more frequent.
Reduced adrenal function (resulting either from Addison's or Cushing's Disease) can result in weakness, headaches, memory problems, dizziness, allergies, food cravings, and blood sugar disorders.
CAUSES—See "Addison's Disease" for more information.
There are two adrenal glands in your body. One is on top of each kidney. Each one is remarkably small, and weighs only about one-fifth of an ounce.
The outer thick "rind" of each adrenal is the cortex. It produces cortisone. The inner portion is called the medulla; it secretes adrenaline (epinephrine) when stress occurs.
TREATMENT—
• See "Addison's Disease" for more information. The objective is to live better so the adrenals, whether working too fast or too slow, can be helped to normalize.
ENCOURAGEMENT—We have not a high priest who is so high, so lifted up, that He cannot notice us or sympathize with us; but Jesus is one who was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. He can help you fulfill God's will for your life.
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