Do you consume artificial sweeteners over real sugar, thinking you’re doing your health a favor by avoiding the extra calories?

Well be warned that although you may be fooling your taste buds, your brain likely is not buying it. And if your brain is not satisfied, there’s a good chance you’ll go looking for another sweet treat later on, perhaps one that’s even bigger and more calorie-rich than the original version you were trying to avoid.

Why Artificial Sweeteners Can be Detrimental to Your Waistline

The belief that eating artificially sweetened foods and drinking artificially sweetened beverages will help you to lose weight is a carefully orchestrated deception. So if you are still opting for sugar-free choices for this reason, you are being sorely misled.

For years now studies have shown that consuming artificial sweeteners breaks the connection between a sweet sensation and a high-calorie food, thereby changing your body’s ability to regulate intake naturally.

In one study by psychologists at Purdue University’s Ingestive Behavior Research Center, rats that ate yogurt sweetened with an artificial sweetener consumed more calories (and didn’t make up for it by cutting back later), gained more weight, and put on more body fat than rats that ate yogurt sweetened with sugar.

Other studies, too, have shown that eating artificial sweeteners might hinder your body’s ability to estimate calorie intake, thus boosting your inclination to overindulge. Your body and your brain simply do not have the same biological response to artificial sweeteners that they do to regular sugar, and this can pose some serious problems.

Your Brain Can Tell the Difference

You may have convinced yourself that your favorite artificial sweetener tastes the same as sugar, but rest assured your brain is not being fooled.

In one brain-scan study by neuroscientist Paul Smeets, volunteers were given two version of a beverage, one sweetened with sugar, the other with a blend of artificial sweeteners. The brain scans showed that the artificially sweetened beverage failed to activate an area of the brain called the caudate nucleus, which is an area associated with rewards.

A separate study by psychiatrist Guido Frank at the University of Colorado in Denver also looked into your brain’s response to sugar versus artificial sweeteners. Women given a taste of the two said they could not consciously determine a difference. However, a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of their brain responses showed differences indeed.

As in the previously mentioned study, the sugar activated the reward areas of your brain more strongly than the artificial sweetener, suggesting that the latter may not make you feel satisfied the way sugar would.

This is not an endorsement to indulge in sugar; rather it’s a major clue that your body is not being fooled by artificial sweeteners.

Artificial Sweeteners are Toxic

That’s right.

There are more reasons to avoid artificial sweeteners than just their impact on your brain and waistline. In fact, there’s enough evidence showing the dangers of consuming artificial sweeteners to fill an entire book — which is exactly why I wrote Sweet Deception.

When I first started studying natural medicine I did not know which was worse, regular soda or diet soda, but after careful review the answer became very clear that although sugar, especially high fructose corn syrup needs to be avoided like the plague, it is still less damaging to your health than artificial sweeteners.

Take aspartame, for instance. The phenylalanine in aspartame dissociates from the ester bond and increases dopamine levels in your brain. This can lead to symptoms of depression because it distorts your serotonin/dopamine balance. It can also lead to migraine headaches and brain tumors through a similar mechanism.

Furthermore, the aspartic acid in aspartame is a well-documented excitotoxin. Excitotoxins are usually amino acids, such as glutamate and aspartate. These special amino acids cause particular brain cells to become excessively excited, to the point they will quickly die. Excitotoxins can also cause a loss of brain synapses and connecting fibers.

Then the ester bond in aspartame is broken down to formaldehyde and methanol, which have their own toxicities. So it is not surprising that this popular artificial sweetener has also been linked to cancer.

A recent study also found a two-fold increased risk of a decline in kidney function among women who drank two or more artificially sweetened beverages a day.

This just adds to the growing list of serious health risks from consuming these toxic substances, which are deceptively marketed as though they are safe and even healthy!

Unfortunately, most public health agencies and nutritionists in the United States recommend these toxic artificial sweeteners as an acceptable alternative to sugar, which is at best confusing and at worst harming the health of those who take their misguided advice.

How to Address Your Cravings for Sweets in a Healthy Way

If you consume a lot of diet foods and beverages, it’s likely because you have sweet cravings (yet you think you are making a healthy choice by avoiding sugar).

Your body, however, may be craving sweets because you are not giving it the fuel it needs. Finding out your nutritional type will tell you which foods to ideally eat to feel full and satisfied. It may sound hard to believe right now, but once you start eating right for your nutritional type, your sweet cravings will radically decrease and may even disappear.

Meanwhile, be sure you address the emotional component to your food cravings using a tool such as the Meridian Tapping Technique (MTT). More than any traditional or alternative method I have used or researched, MTT works to overcome food cravings and help you reach dietary success.

And, if diet soda is the culprit for you, be sure to check out Turbo Tapping, which is an extremely effective and simple tool to get rid of your soda addiction in a short period of time.

For those times when you just want a taste of something sweet, my sweetener of choice is Stevia.

Stevia is a natural plant and, unlike aspartame and other artificial sweeteners, it is a safe, natural alternative. I prefer Stevia as my sweetener of choice. However, I recommend using Stevia in moderation, just like sugar.

I want to emphasize that if you have insulin issues, I suggest that you avoid sweeteners altogether, including Stevia, as they all can decrease your sensitivity to insulin.

This news came out in Montreal today on CBC:

About 100 Montreal health-care workers must get another H1N1 flu shot because the previous ones were improperly mixed.

One nurse at Centre Le Cardinal Inc. in the city’s east end told CBC News that on Wednesday she had to be vaccinated a second time.

Dr. Mercola has compiled a number of videos and information that I think is worth taking a look in this education process. He speaks about the CDCs own documentation that the people who have reportedly died of the Swine Flu, in fact died of a secondary infection:

…Nearly all of them, just like the CDC and mainstream media, use the statistic that 36,000 people die from the influenza every year. I actually wrote an article about this fallacy more than five years ago.

Interestingly that number has remained static as if carved into stone all these years.

However, the truth is that less than 1,000 people actually died from type A or type B influenza. The other 35,000 died from pneumonia. This is actually clearly listed on the CDC’s own website, yet virtually everyone ignores this fact.

There is a new Canadian study that suggests those who have gotten seasonal influenza vaccines in the past may be at greater risk for getting H1N1 swine flu.  This information reinforces NVIC’s call for a comparison of the long term health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated children.   Interestingly, the 60 minutes segment acknowledges that many people born before 1950 have antibodies to the new H1N1 influenza and are naturally protected.

I have heard mainstream reporting stating that there have been no issues with this safe vaccine. However this video aired on Inside Adition and covered by many stations.

Another interesting issue in this whole issue around the fact that 99.9% of the people are not having any serious complications from the infection. If the people that are having serious complications also have a secondary infection, it would make sense that raising your immune system could have dramatic effects on fighting this infection. The great thing about that is none of these involve taking potentially dangerous and unproven vaccine interventions.
Your Immune System is Perfectly Capable of Fighting H1N1

Additionally what the 60 minutes segment failed to mention is that it is relatively easy to improve your immune response to fight this infection.

If 99.9% of the people are not having any serious complications from the infection, it would seem perfectly rational to believe that minor lifestyle changes could have dramatic effects on fighting this infection.  None of these immune boosts involve taking potentially dangerous and unproven vaccine interventions.

Simple Measures That Can Help You Fight Illness

*Vitamin D has been well documented to increase the production of over 200 anti microbial peptides that fight infection.

*Eliminate sugar from your diet as that will impair your immune response
*Get plenty of rest
*Exercise appropriately
*Take appropriate supplements like oil of oregano extract, propolis, olive leaf extract, elder flower extract, acerola, DMG.

However you will need to know the above BEFORE you purchase any supplements on that list. Any company that informs you of the above will be in violation of US Federal law and a newly created Swine Flu Task Force has been given the authority to shut the business down and even throw owners in jail.

Violations of these new rules are being prosecuted even more aggressively than alternative cancer treatments. Earlier this week, Dr. Andrew Weil actually received an FDA/FTC warning letter that threatens jail time for failure to comply with the rules.

My gut feeling is there is enough evidence that this is not being covered fairly by the news media or our government. There is enough evidence for me that this flu is not as dangerous as had first predicted, but they do not seem to be willing to stop the forward momentum of the fear.

I have friends who strongly disagree with me and that is great.  We have agreed to disagree.  In the meantime,  we had a great exchange of information and brought out questions and information the other had not thought of.

I would love to hear what conclusions you have made.  What information do you have that I have not covered here.  Exchanging information and discussing these issues is how we learn.  I do ask that all conversations and replies are done with respect to each other!

Here are some great references for boosting your immunity naturally!

Here’s to being a Passion Parent!

Christine Hiebel

Tappy comforting McKenna

My daughter has tapped into the mothership and started the fear of monsters and ghosts.  Where do parents turn when dealing with these fears?  I have turned to using a tool called tapping, Meridian Tapping or EFT.  For ease with my daughter, I purchased a stuffed animal called Tappy Bear.  He has buttons strategically placed at the meridian tapping points.  Working with Tappy helps release the energy of the beliefs, thoughts and emotions of things that affects us~ such as fear of the dark and monsters!

I have included this sweet story written for Till and Tappy by Dr. Patricia Carrington, Phd.  I hope you enjoy it!

The Ghost in Tappy’s Closet

by Dr. Patricia Carrington

One night, in the middle of the night, TappyBear was sound asleep and all warm and comfy in his bed, when he was awakened by the sound of thunder.  He hadn’t expected a storm and so he felt a little scared.

Then he heard a strange sort of groaning noise.  It seemed to come from his closet.

Tappy now felt more scared.  What was this?  Maybe a ghost was hiding in his closet!

Then his scary thoughts made him even more scared.  Suppose the ghost would come out of the closet!

Then he became even more scared when he thought,  ”Suppose the ghost will come after me?”

Thoughts can make you really scared.  Tappy was really scared.

To make himself feel better he decided right then and there to tap on his special magic tapping spots and tap the scared feelings away.  He knew he would be able to take care of any problem if he just wasn’t so scared.

So, Tappy began to tap on his special tapping spots.  At each tapping spot he said out loud, “Even though I’m scared, I’m a great bear and I can handle this!” – He said this same thing at each tapping spot, and soon he began to feel better ––  and better —- and better.

Pretty soon Tappy felt so much better from doing all that tapping that he got out of bed, switched on the light, and went over to his closet and OPENED it to see what was in there.  And guess what?  All that was in that closet was his own clothes and a few games on the self.  THERE WAS NO GHOST AT ALL!

But then Tappy heard that groaning noise again.  This time though he was so calm that he realized the noise was coming from his window.  He decided to walk over to the window and see what was going on, the tapping had helped him so much that he wasn’t a bit scared anymore.  “I’ll handle it” he said to himself.

And that’s what Tappy did.  He went over to the window and he listened to the sound and he looked out the window.  Even though it was night, the light from his room shone out into the darkness and now he could see a tree branch outdoors being blown by the wind.  It was being blown so it brushed right against his window, and when it scraped on the glass of the window it was making a noise that sounded like a squeaky groaning!

A tree branch!  It hadn’t been a ghost at all!  He had only thought it was a ghost because he had felt scared in the first place when he was wakened up by the thunder.  Now that he wasn’t scared anymore, he realized what the noise was and felt fine.  The tapping had come to his rescue!

Tappy went back and crawled into bed and said to himself. “It’s only a tree branch scraping on my window.  I’ll just go to sleep.”  And that’s what he did.

Would you like to color-in the pictures for this story?

Download them here.

The coloring pages and story are in a .pdf file that requires ADOBE READER be installed on your computer to read it. If you do not have Adobe Reader installed, visit www.adobe.com to download it now.Once you have opened the e-book in Adobe Reader, save it to your computer. Go to FILE, click on SAVE, then CHOOSE Desktop. If you want it to work, MAKE SURE TO SAVE IT! If you have any problems with this please email us at:  till.schilling@tappybear.com

How cool is it to gift your child with tools that will help them cope with situations, be it the monster or ghost at night, bully on the play ground or death in the family.  Tapping is one of those tools your child can learn with small stuff (which by the way, is not small to them).  Start in a fun, loving, playful way and watch tapping become a coping tool they can use for the big stuff!  Want to learn more about Tapping and Tappy Bear?  Click here to visit Tappy!

Have any experiences with tapping or other modalities?  We would love to hear from you.  You never know when your story will help someone else that is searching for help in the exact same thing… and your story made all the difference.  Be the difference in someone’s life- share YOUR story!

Here’s to being a Passion Parent!

Christine Hiebel