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20 Nov 2024
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Limiting Beliefs Explored And Explained

Limiting beliefs are your beliefs about reality that restrict what you can experience in life, or attract, or become. Working with exposing limiting beliefs is the perfect antidote to use when you are feeling stuck with what life is throwing at you. Any negative, repeated pattern of experience is ultimately asking you to wake up to your true nature, and stop limiting yourself.

Ironically, most of us use a repeating pattern as an excuse to close down more and feel less. However, until the pattern gets to be so intense that we have no choice but to try something new, we stay stuck in a limiting belief. When we do try something new and actually try to change, but the pattern remains, we know without a doubt that our habitual way of dealing with a problem is a limited belief that needs to be challenged.

Reality Check

Let’s face it. We all have limiting beliefs that define our experience of and expression of self in the world. We all have limits to what we can experience and stay sane, connected, and alive. We also have limits to what we are willing to believe or not believe about reality itself.

Limits exist for a reason. All people have a unique relationship to how their belief system is limited in a way authentic to their soul path. Limiting beliefs become a detriment when there is a perceived loss of choice, perspective, and possibility to live one’s full life experience, making it impossible to live the life we want. We then use this repeated life pattern as an excuse to close down and give up because we are unaware of the limiting beliefs perpetuating it.

In contrast, we could use limiting beliefs to question what we experience, feel those repressed emotions, and open to more possibility in life. A simple limiting belief that I have challenged in my life is that I am supposed to be happy all the time. This limiting belief led me to friendships that did not feel satisfying because I was not expressing who I really was. I began to challenge myself simply by answering the often asked question — “How are you?” — with honesty, especially around people I wanted to have more fulfilling friendships with. The repressed emotions around my limiting belief were related to shame and fear of humiliation. As I began to share myself more, I had to feel into my fear. By challenging this belief and withstanding the emotion, I now have a better sense of when I am truly happy versus when I am not, and I also have friends I trust with my true self.

It is understandable to want to avoid the message behind difficult emotions. Existential emotions are a stretch for us to trust tapping into, and our conscious mind does not like when unconscious material arises; it feels greater than us. Disassociating, fantasizing, judging, blaming, gaslighting, or disconnecting are all reactions we will justify to avoid the change that unwanted emotions are asking us to embrace. But, we can choose to break the cycle by searching internally for limiting beliefs and identifying their effect on our lives, a process of maturation. Ultimately this choice is always our own. Choice is one of life’s gifts.

Steps To Shift Limiting Beliefs

There’s a good chance that any time you don’t want to take responsibility for your emotions (or want to accuse someone of not taking responsibility for theirs) an opportunity exists to explore a limiting belief of your own. This is about waking yourself up. There is nothing quite like breaking a limiting belief and having a new pattern arise where more is possible. Suddenly there is a freedom to be who you want to be. A piece of your soul expands and old emotional reactions no longer land as heavily. Doors open that were previously hidden; self-trust develops.

To start identifying limiting beliefs, simply begin the process of acknowledging more responsibility towards what you attract in life and how you process reality. Bringing awareness to limiting beliefs and starting to make different choices will initiate change in stuck cycles of your life.

One of the easiest places to look for limiting beliefs are in massive generalizations we make about reality in our own head. Try filling out the following statements with your view on reality — “just the way it is.” Take your time honestly considering your spontaneous, authentic responses to each prompt.

People are…(my own example might be here: People are scary. They won’t like me for who I am)

The world is…(my own example here might be: The world is a dangerous place.)

Relationships are…

Friends are…

Science is…

Religion is…

Medicine is…

Alternative medicine is…

Men are…

Women are…

Friends are…

Now carefully notice any underlying themes to your unique limiting beliefs. It is important to understand how your own beliefs come together to protect your core wound, which in turn protects your core self. I have a core wound around safety and self-expression. I have spiraled into this limiting belief over and over again on my healing journey. Every time I come up against something that limits my self-expression or ability to feel safe, I look towards my own internal limiting beliefs and allow myself to feel the emotion. Limiting beliefs do have a purpose as a means of protection. We are meant to have them, and meant to shift out of them if we want to make that choice. We can choose to get past our limiting beliefs or get stuck in them. The choice is always ours.

Original article here

15 Nov 2024
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The Definitive Superfood Ranking

Food marketers know that if they call their product a superfood, it’s sure to sell. Take quinoa, for example. In the early aughts, when the ancient grain first became trendy, quinoa prices tripled in the span of five years. (Many Bolivians, who had relied on it as a food staple for centuries, were soon priced out of the market.) The moral here: it’s important to question anything knighted with the superlative.

From a health perspective, many dietitians would prefer we do away with the label completely. “There’s just not enough substantiated evidence that there are superfoods, that these foods solve the problems they say they’re going to solve,” says Suzanne Smith, a registered dietitian at the University of California, San Diego. Smith worries that since many of these so-called superfoods are expensive, they add financial stress to people already struggling to buy healthy food. Furthermore, no single food can undo an otherwise poor diet.

But here’s the thing: some really do stack up. A few have “near-medicinal-like qualities,” says Shawn Talbott, a biochemist, fellow at the American College of Sports Medicine, and author of The Secret Of Vigor. To him, a food is super if eating a normal quantity can deliver a research-backed benefit.

The trick is knowing how to separate the good stuff from the chaff. With that in mind, we asked a few dietitians and researchers to help us rank some of this decade’s buzziest ingredients. Consider this your license to stop choking down kimchi and gluten-free bread and start hitting the blueberries and red wine hard.

Gluten-Free Flours

If you thought eliminating gluten was your ticket to reducing inflammation, bloating, and losing weight, think again. Unless you have celiac disease or suffer from a true gluten intolerance (example: you are doubled over and running for the bathroom post-pizza), there are no proven physical benefits from going gluten-free. A 2012 paper in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found that there was not a single study connecting gluten-free diets to weight loss in nonceliac populations. It also pointed to studies that showed limiting gluten negatively affected gut flora populations, while diets high in gluten resulted in a lowering of triglycerides and blood pressure. If you can firmly trace your stomach woes to eating gluten (preferably through doing a two-week elimination diet), then gluten-free flours may be a superfood for you. But for the vast majority of Americans, they’re nothing but expensive, unhealthy substitutions.

Orange Juice

“Have a glass of orange juice!” It’s the cry eternal of well-meaning friends and parents when you’re under the weather. They aren’t totally wrong: vitamin C may help immune systems. A 2014 study in the journal Nutrients found that men who were low in vitamin C caught fewer colds once they increased their vitamin C consumption, but the difference was deemed statistically marginal. Furthermore, another 2014 study published in Clinical Nutrition found that drinking orange juice didn’t lead to a strengthening of the immune system for healthy, well-nourished adults. So getting enough vitamin C is important, but slamming a gallon of orange juice won’t help—it contains too much sugar. Instead, try red peppers, broccoli, or kale, which all have more vitamin C per serving than orange juice. Plus, they have more fiber and other nutrients.

Coconut Oil

Coconut oil is the new snake oil. You’ll find it included in the ingredient list of nearly every “health” food, from packaged granola to energy bars to Bulletproof Coffee. The big hype behind coconut oil is that it contains medium-chain triglycerides (MCT), which could help our bodies burn more fat. However, at least for now, it’s best to view research on MCT with skepticism: a review of studies on MCT supplementation found that while most research did show some sort of weight loss, the studies were often flawed or commercial bias was present. The researchers concluded: “Further research is required by independent research groups using large, well-designed studies to confirm the efficacy of MCT and to determine the dosage needed for the management of a healthy body weight and composition.”

Chia Seeds

Many runners began incorporating these small seeds into their diet after Christopher McDougall’s 2009 bestseller, Born to Run, described them as nutritionally equivalent to a mix of “salmon, spinach, and human growth hormone.” But a few recent studies—like one in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research and one in the journal Nutrients—have found that the seeds offer runners no performance benefit. Talbott says these popular seeds are good from a “general nutrition” standpoint. That is, they provide macronutrients—including omega-3s—but there isn’t much super about chia seeds beyond that.

Kimchi

This pickled Korean dish has been recently hailed as a superfood due to its high probiotic content. However, Talbott says our understanding of how probiotics work is just too rudimentary to call kimchi—or any food whose main selling point is probiotics—a superfood. “Probiotics are like the Wild West; no one really knows what’s best,” he says. A review on probiotics published in the journal Current Sports Medicine Reports found that, at least for athletes, “scientific evidence for an ergogenic effect of probiotics is lacking.” Still, the super-funky condiment is made up of all healthy things, like cabbage, garlic, ginger, and daikon. If you love it, go ahead and eat it, but it’s too soon to start stocking up.

Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes have become the darling of endurance athletes looking for a natural fuel source, but the types of good carbohydrates that you can get from a sweet potato can be found in any number of other whole foods, like bananas, oatmeal, or dates. If you like sweet potatoes—and they are admittedly delicious—there’s no problem with eating them. Just know there’s nothing super about them.

Almonds

While almonds are great, Talbott takes issue with their designation as a superfood. Most nuts are created equal, he says. They’re healthy and full of good fats, and research shows that regular nut eaters tend to have healthier weights. Almonds are no more more super than their other nut relatives.

Beets

While most of us have heard that beet juice can help with oxygen uptake, Talbott thinks the ergogenic benefits of this plant have been largely overblown. Research on the topic is all over the place: in a recent study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, beet juice didn’t improve the performance of cyclists. But in a 2014 paper, beet juice did improve cycling performance in athletes at altitude. And another study found no benefits from beet juice for runners at altitude. So the jury’s still out on the exact performance benefits of this vegetable, but the bottom line is that many of the antioxidants in beets are available in other fruits and veggies like lettuce, spinach, and strawberries.

Acai

“It’s basically the Brazilian blueberry,” says Talbott. Like blueberries, acai berries are full of great antioxidants (and absolutely delicious). But they are expensive and hard to find. Because of this, research on acai’s benefits is still sparse. You’re better off just buying frozen blueberries for your smoothie.

Eggs

“This is where I draw the line between healthy foods and superfoods,” says Talbott. Eggs are great—they’re full of protein and vitamins and minerals, plus they’re cheap—but they’re not actively working to lower your blood pressure, fight cancer, or make you smarter. Eat them often, but if you don’t like their taste or the sulfur smell, don’t sweat it.

Tart Cherry Juice

There is good research showing that tart cherry juice can relieve post-exercise muscle soreness and may even help prevent post-race colds in endurance athletes. But it’s relatively low on our list of superfoods because it’s such a specialized use. Sure, some athletes may see benefits, but most people would be better off using turmeric for relieving daily aches and pains and post-exercise soreness. Plus, tart cherry juice is expensive, and if you get the real, no-sugar-added variety, it’s more sour than sweet.

Broccoli

If you’re surprised to see broccoli and not kale on our list, don’t be. Broccoli is cheap, full of fiber and vitamins, and contains sulforaphane, a compound that actually helps cells fight cancer. Sure, it smells like a fart while steaming, but “broccoli activates pathways inside the cell so the cell starts creating its own antioxidants,” explains Talbott. Recent research has shown that some organs respond better than others to broccoli’s anticancer properties, but the fact that any of them respond at all is pretty remarkable.

Coffee

“It makes me shake my head when I hear people say they’re trying to quit coffee,” says Talbott. Sure, too much of it isn’t good for you, but at the right dose, coffee does have real benefits. “Caffeine is the most-researched performance product on the planet, and it has the same [beneficial] flavonoid content as tea.” Plus, there’s research showing regular coffee drinkers may have a lower risk for dementia, diabetes, and maybe even Parkinson’s.

Apples

That “apple a day” adage is not total bunk. The flavonol quercetin makes these boring old fruits worth adding back into your lunchbox: quercetin has been shown to lower blood pressure, open blood vessels, and improve endurance athletic performance.

7. Green Tea

This ancient beverage has been recently co-opted by the diet industry, which makes it seem gimmicky. While green tea diet pills are certainly worth being wary of, plain green tea is not. There is research showing that it can boost your basic metabolic rate by 3 to 4 percent, “and it’s profoundly anticancer,” says Talbott, thanks to compounds called catechins. In fact, research in the journal Cancer Prevention found that daily green tea consumption could delay the onset of cancer by more than seven years for women and three years for men. A large-scale population study published earlier this year in Cancer Science followed nearly 90,000 Japanese citizens for more than a decade and found that those who drank large amounts of green tea had lower risks for biliary tract cancer, gallbladder cancer, and bile duct cancer.

Black Beans

If you compare the diets of every culture with a beyond-average life expectancy—including the original Blue Zones of Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; Icaria, Greece; and Loma Linda, California—the one shared food tradition is a hearty doses of legumes. “They’re high in fiber, iron, and B vitamins,” says Talbott, and research has shown that diets rich in legumes (plus lean meats and vegetables) can lower your risk of developing cardiovascular disease and your total risk of morbidity from all causes. While all legumes are worth including in your diet, black beans are packed with polyphenols, giving them an extra nutrient boost.

Dark Chocolate

To get the reported benefits from chocolate, Talbott says you really need to eat the super-dark stuff—70 percent cocoa or higher. Studies have shown that just a few ounces can deliver a heart-healthy dose of flavonols that lower LDL cholesterol, stabilize blood sugar levels, and improve blood flow. Plus, as we all anecdotally know, there’s research showing that eating chocolate can boost your mood.

Red Wine

Go ahead and rejoice: there is evidence-based research showing that wine may have anti-inflammatory and blood pressure–lowering benefits, thanks to the polyphenol micronutrient called resveratrol, which research has linked to a host of cardiovascular benefits (although many of these studies were performed on rodents, not humans). A review in the Journal of Nutrition found a significant body of research pointing to a lowered risk of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality for populations that consume resveratrol-rich foods such as red wine. If you aren’t an alcohol connoisseur, a serving of red grapes may be just as good. Although be wary of resveratrol supplements: one study was actually suspended because participants reported kidney complications. Not that you’d ever want to skip that glass of red wine for a pill, of course.

Salmon

The omega-3 fatty acids in salmon contain docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), which help boost brain and heart health, respectively. “Omega-3s help with blood vessel compliance and have a nice blood-thinning effect,” which can reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes, says Talbott. A paper published in Epidemiologic Review found that women who increased their fish intake, including salmon, late in life had significantly fewer incidences of coronary heart disease. Additionally, salmon’s DHA—which you can get only through diet, since your body does not naturally produce it—acts as a membrane to neurons in the brain, protecting them from damage or inflammation. A meta-review in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Review found that an increase in fish consumption could reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s by more than 30 percent.

Turmeric

This powder, which comes from the rhizomes of the Curcuma longa plant, has been used in ancient medicine and Southeast Asian cuisine for centuries. Turmeric’s clearest benefit is that “it is profoundly anti-inflammatory,” says Talbott, thanks to curcumin, a natural polyphenol that also gives the powder its bright yellow hue. The body of research on turmeric is fairly deep, with several large-scale studies, and turmeric may have more benefits than researchers yet realize—early results from one small study in the UK showed a potential for turmeric to change gene expression in a way that might help fight cancer. Talbott says it’s best to eat turmeric at a suggested dose of one-fourth teaspoon three times a day along with some fiber and fat for maximum absorption. (He sprinkles turmeric on sandwiches, adds it to salad dressing, and even puts it in his coffee.) A word of caution: turmeric is very pungent.

Blueberries

“It almost sounds ridiculous to list the research-backed benefits you can get from blueberries,” Talbott says, pointing to their ability to lower your risk for heart disease, reduce joint and muscle pains, and curtail oxidative stress (the naturally occurring stress produced by cell respiration). Blueberry’s power comes from the compound oligomeric proanthocyanidins, and Talbott says that you don’t need a ton of it to get results: a half-cup per day of fresh or frozen blueberries results in a “significant longevity benefit.” Plus, there’s plenty of research showing that blueberries can reduce post-exercise stress and inflammation among athletes. As for the general population, researchers revealed that—at least for women—getting three servings of berries per week cut heart attack risks by one-third.

Original article here

21 Oct 2024
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LARPing Your Job

Not long ago, I went on one of my favorite podcasts — The Ezra Klein Show — to talk about burnout, workism, and our relationship to labor. In our conversation, I invoke the idea of “LARPing” your job, a phrase my partner uses to describe the way we try and show evidence that LOOK, OVER HERE, I AM WORKING. (‘LARP’= Live Action Role Playing).

You can LARP your job in person (holding lots of meetings, staying late and getting there early as a show of ‘presentism’) and digitally (sending lots of emails, spending a lot of time on Slack, or whatever group chat platform your organization uses). This piece from Vox does a good job of outlining how Slack, marketed as a “productivity tool” and “email killer” is often neither.

It’s something I’ve thought about a lot as a remote employee: how do I show that “in the office” when I’m far away, and two time zones behind the vast majority of my team? By dropping links to articles (to show that I’m reading); by commenting on other people’s links (to show that I’m reading Slack); by participating in conversations (to show that I’m engaged). Evidencing that I’m doing work instead of, well, doing work.

To be clear, I do think that Slack (and video chats) makes it possible for me to 1) Live in Montana and 2) Collaborate with my editors to publish pieces. And I also love bullshitting or discussing articles with my coworkers, and I know that my editors would say that there is no need to compulsively perform on Slack. But I think that people who do “knowledge work” — whose products are often largely ineffable — struggle with the feeling that there’s little to show, little tangible evidence, of the hours of work that they sit in front of their computers.

Hence: LARPing your job. The compulsion, I think, is heightened for those of us who worked, jobsearched, or were laid off during the post-2008 recession: we’re desperate to show that we’re worthy of a salaried job, so eager to demonstrate just how much labor and engagement we’re willing to give in exchange for full-time employment and health insurance. That’s certainly the case for me, especially in a field like culture writing, where full-time gigs are incredibly rare.

The problem, then, is that “knowledge work” rarely fits the standard, 40-hour-a-week capitalist paradigm. In “traditional” jobs, 40 hours means 40 hours of service (childcare, elder care, waiting tables, cleaning streets, making deliveries) or 40 hours of production (stamping metal, performing quality control, flipping boards, framing houses). If you want to produce 1000 widgets, you can figure out how many hours it takes to produce each widget, and how many employees you need to pay to put in those hours.

This falls apart with knowledge work. How many hours does it take to write a sermon, to figure out a legal strategy, to edit a book or write a piece of music? There’s the visible labor (the amount of time you sit at the desk, typing words that actually end up in your piece) and the invisible labor (the amount of time you spend thinking about it, the amount of paragraphs that get erased, the number of interviews you do that never make their way into the final piece). Lawyers have figured out a way to charge for the invisible labor by turning it into “billable hours,” incrementalized into 15-minute chunks. Some freelancers (for PR, graphic design, web design and other jobs that bill by the hour) do the same.

There’s a whole different set of problems that arise when you work under this “billable hours” paradigm: every hour could, theoretically, be one that you’re working and billing. But I do think that freelancers in particular have less of a compulsion to LARP their job, because who are you LARPing it for? Yourself? You already know how hard you work. Time LARPing is better spent, well, working.

The compulsion to LARP is for those who have to feel accountable to some larger salary god, one who takes earthly shape in the form of our manager, our manager’s manager, and/or our coworkers, all of whom are constantly deciding whether or not we deserve the salaried, privileged position in which we’ve found ourselves. This is largely bullshit, of course: yes, our managers do think about how much we’re producing, but only the worst of them are clocking how many hours our green dot is showing up on Slack. Most of our coworkers are too worried about LARPing their own jobs to worry about how much you’re LARPing yours.

We’re performing, in other words, largely for ourselves. Justifying to ourselves that we deserve the place that we’ve found ourselves. Justifying to ourselves that writing for the internet is a vocation that deserves steady payment. At heart, this is a manifestation of a general undervaluing of our own work: we still navigate the workplace as if getting paid to produce knowledge means we’re getting away with something, and have to do everything possible to make sure no one realizes they’ve made a massive mistake.

Of course, there are myriad cultural and societal forces that have led us to this point of disbelief. Every time someone made fun of my undergrad degree, or my dissertation, or my Ph.D. Every time someone made fun of BuzzFeed, or denigrated writing about celebrities or pop culture generally. Every time someone at a family gathering said something like “must be fun to get paid to go to the movies?” All of those messages come together to tell me that my work is either easy or pointless. No wonder I spend so much time trying to communicate how hard I work.

The thing about writing is sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s difficult, and sometimes that easiness is a product of years and years of thinking about a topic and sometimes that difficulty is a product of the very same thing. Sometimes there’s 14 hours of work to do in a day and sometimes there’s two. Sometimes I’m far more productive if I’m on a hike, without my phone or Slack, but just hanging out in my own mind; sometimes I’m more productive after goofing off on Twitter. When you’re working remotely, how do you “show” that you’re reading? That you’re thinking?

The best evidence of working hard has and always will be the quality of the end product. But the quality of knowledge work is often so difficult to quantify and parse that, as knowledge workers, we find ourselves doing two different jobs: the job that produces the work, and a second, shadow job of performing our labor, of making the case for our own employment, for our entire vocation, over and over again. Writing this newsletter is a great pleasure for me, but it’s also, subconsciously and consciously, part of that project.

How do we get away from this paradigm? Understanding that there are so many different types of labor, and none more or less important than any other — that’s part of it. Being a doctor is hard, being a writer is hard, but so is being a nanny or being a full-time mom or bartending or being a forest ranger. But the other key, and the most applicable for this discussion, is cultivating a workplace that’s less dependent on employees checking boxes of what “working” looks like, and more flexible to the ways that (good) work actually gets done — including (gasp) working less.

That’s the hardest thing, at least in our culture, to fathom, the hardest thing to change: that fewer working hours might produce more value. That maybe the person with less of a societally and workplace-enforced compulsion to prove themselves will produce the work that does it for them.

Original article here

17 Oct 2024
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If You Are Suffering With A Bowel Disorder, Stop Eating This Food So You Will Feel Whole Again

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) — not to be confused with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) — is an autoimmune disease that has very serious consequences. (IBS, on the other hand, is a functional bowel disorder. In other words, there are no significant physical conditions that contribute to the problem; hence it’s a functional disease.)

According to statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), IBD affects more than 3.1 million American adults, nearly triple previous estimates. There are two types of IBD:

Crohn’s disease
Ulcerative colitis

Both of these IBD conditions involve chronic inflammation in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Symptoms include abdominal cramps, fatigue and diarrhea. IBD also raises your risk of developing colorectal cancer, the fourth most common cancer in the U.S.

What’s behind the rise in IBD?

As with many other autoimmune disorders, IBD cannot be traced back to any single cause; rather, it appears to be influenced by several factors, including:

Genetics
Toxic environmental exposures
Diet
Altered intestinal microbiome
Immune dysfunction

Researchers believe the rise in IBD is linked to dietary changes, as more people are now eating primarily processed foods high in sugars and synthetic chemicals. Other factors thought to play a role in IBD include:

Air pollution
Excessive exposure to antibiotics
Pesticide exposure (glyphosate being identified as being particularly harsh on gut microbes)
Genetically modified organisms (GMOs)

As noted by Digestive Medical Solutions:

“[I]n addition to the rising economic, ecological and ethical questions raised by GMOs, there is a growing health risk … Specifically, a higher risk for allergies, toxic intestinal bacteria, reduced immune function, liver problems and many other highly controversial links.

These risks apply to everyone, but especially those with irritable bowel diseases. For a patient with Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, they’re devastating, making it difficult for patients to recover properly, especially with so many other complications involved.

Ultimately, GMOs create bowel hypersensitivity, increase inflammation and damage to the intestinal lining. This makes IBD and IBS cases much worse, as they contribute and in some cases, may actually trigger these diseases.”

How glyphosate affects your health

While Monsanto (now acquired by Bayer) insists that Roundup is safe and “minimally toxic” to humans, independent research strongly suggests that glyphosate residues “enhance the damaging effects of other food-borne chemical residues and toxins in the environment to disrupt normal body functions and induce disease.”

According to Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Anthony Samsel, Ph.D., a research scientist and consultant:

“Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body.”

Samsel and Seneff have also published research tying glyphosate exposure to Celiac disease and gluten intolerance.

While genetically engineered (GE) crops such as corn, soybeans and sugar beets tend to contain higher levels of glyphosate due to them being more heavily sprayed, conventional non-organic crops such as wheat are also routinely doused with glyphosate pre-harvest to boost yield, a practice known as dessication. In summary, studies have found that glyphosate:

Inhibits cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes that catalyze the oxidation of organic substances. This, Samsel and Seneff believe, is “an overlooked component of its toxicity to mammals.” One of the functions of CYP enzymes is to detoxify xenobiotics — chemical compounds found in a living organism that are not normally produced or consumed by the organism in question. By limiting the ability of these enzymes to detoxify foreign chemical compounds, glyphosate enhances the damaging effects of those chemicals and environmental toxins you are exposed to.
Impairs the serum sulfate transport system in your body. Consequences of glyphosate interfering with CYP enzymes and impairing sulfate transport include GI disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
Destroys the tight junctions in the cell membranes in your gut, thereby leading to “leaky” gut and absorption of undigested foods you were never designed to absorb.
Makes the gliadin in wheat highly indigestible. Moreover, by attaching to gliadin, glyphosate promotes unwanted immune reactions.

According to independent testing by The Detox Project, glyphosate (the active ingredient in Bayer’s best-selling herbicide Roundup) is present at “alarming levels” in many popular processed foods. Scientists have found glyphosate alters gene function in the livers and kidneys of rats at levels as low as 0.05 parts per billion (ppb).

Meanwhile, Cheerios was found to contain more than 1,125 ppb of glyphosate, Doritos more than 481 ppb and Ritz crackers more than 270 ppb. According to Dave Murphy, former executive director of Food Democracy Now!:

“It’s time for regulators at the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] and the White House to stop playing politics with our food and start putting the wellbeing of the American public above the profits of chemical companies like Monsanto.”

GMOs are responsible for the rise in IBS too

IBS is far more common than IBD, affecting an estimated 70 million Americans. Symptoms of IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), a functional GI disease, include frequent:

Abdominal discomfort and/or pain
Spastic colon (spastic contractions of the colon)
Gas and bloating
Diarrhea
Constipation

Avoiding gluten is an important first step in treating this condition. But avoiding GMOs and pesticides is equally important. As noted by Naked Food:

“If you … suffer from a chronic digestive issue, then you should know that the food you choose to consume could be carrying a gene that is designed to intentionally cause intestinal rupture. [GMO] foods that contain Bt toxin, a built-in insecticide that inherently works by imploding the stomach of the creature that is feasting on it, could very well be contributing to your intestinal angst.”

Bt crops are pesticides

Bt plants are a different breed of GE crops. Contrary to herbicide-resistant GE crops, Bt crops are equipped with a gene from the soil bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), allowing them to produce Bt toxin internally. Plant-incorporated pesticides such as Bt (both the protein and its genetic material) are actually registered with the EPA as a pesticide, but the Bt plant itself is not regulated as such. This has resulted in the false claim that Bt plants have reduced pesticide usage.

The Bt toxin produced inside Bt crops is NOT actually included in the data collection on pesticide usage. So, to say that Bt crops promote less chemical-heavy agriculture is truly a gross misrepresentation of reality.

Every single cell of the Bt plant contains this insecticide, yet not a drop of it is counted. The failure to count the toxin inside the plant, and only counting the pesticides applied topically, is a significant loophole that makes Bt plants appear to provide a benefit that in reality simply isn’t true.

Moreover, while topically applied Bt toxin biodegrades in sunlight and be washed off, the Bt toxin in these GE plants does not degrade, nor can it be removed or cleaned off the food because it’s integrated into every cell of the plant. The plant-produced version of the poison is also thousands of times more concentrated than the topical spray, so in reality, Bt pesticide exposure has risen exponentially, no matter what the pesticide usage data says.

Bt toxin is exempt from toxicity requirements

Plant-incorporated Bt toxin in Bt soybeans is also exempt from the requirement of a tolerance level for residues, both in the commodity and in the final food product. The final rule on this was issued in February 2014. This is truly incomprehensible in light of the potential for harm.

Originally, Bayer and the EPA claimed the Bt toxin produced inside the plant would be destroyed in the human digestive system, therefore posing no health risk. This was proven false when, in 2011, doctors at Sherbrooke University Hospital in Quebec found Bt toxin in the blood of 93% of pregnant women tested, 80% of umbilical blood in their babies and 67% of non-pregnant women.

The study showed that Bt toxin actually bioaccumulates in your body. Other research suggests it may produce a wide variety of immune responses, including elevated IgE and IgG antibodies, typically associated with allergies and infections, and an increase in cytokines, associated with allergic and inflammatory responses. A study published in 2011 found that Bt toxin affects human cells, both in isolation and in combination with glyphosate-based herbicides, including Roundup.

Since the introduction of Bt crops, IBD rates have significantly risen

That study also showed that the pesticide crystal proteins Cry1Ab, a subspecies of the Bt toxin, causes cell death starting at 100 parts per million (ppm). As noted by Naked Food Magazine, there are distinct parallels between the prevalence of Bt crops and GI disorders such as IBD and IBS:

“Genetically modified foods that carry the Bt toxin first came to American households in 1996. Between the years of 1979 and 1998, the number of Americans to suffer from Crohn’s Disease … bounced back and forth between 225 per 100,000 people to 300 per 100,000 people.

In 2000, that number shot up to 375 per 100,000 people, and has been on the rise ever since. Ambulatory care visits from those who reported inflammatory bowel symptoms went from 275 per 100,000 people to 375 per 100,000 people between the years of 1994 and 1998.”

Protect your health by avoiding GMOs

As noted by Digestive Medical Solution:

“The first and more important step you can take to protect yourself from damages that may be caused by GMOs is to change your diet. Non-GMO, free-range and otherwise organic foods should replace any GMOs you regularly consume. It also helps to avoid the most common food allergens, such as gluten and sugar products …

However, the damage caused may be long-lasting. GMOs may make you allergic to non-GM foods. Since the genetic material in GM soy transfers to the bacteria living in the intestines, it continues to function and spew proteins continuously. Clearing the body of these harmful substances is no easy task.”

The most commonly consumed GMO crops (which includes both herbicide-resistant and Bt varieties) are:

Corn (found in most processed foods in the form of corn meal, corn syrup, corn starch, corn flour and so on)
Soy (which hides under descriptions such as lecithin and starch, among others)
Canola (rapeseed oil)
Potato

You may also be exposed to Bt toxin via meat from animals fed Bt corn, and glyphosate via herbicide-resistant GE grain feed such as corn and soy, all of which are common staples in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). This is one of several good reasons for making sure your meats come from organically raised grass fed animals.

Other processed food ingredients also wreak havoc in your gut

Besides pesticides such as glyphosate and Bt toxin, processed foods contain a variety of other ingredients that wreak havoc in your gut. Research suggests emulsifiers such as polysorbate 80 and carboxymethyl cellulose play a role in IBD and colorectal cancer, primarily by inducing chronic low-grade inflammation. As reported by Medical News Today:

“Normally the intestine is protected from a variety of harmful bacteria via the mucus structures that cover the intestines, keeping the harmful bacteria away from the epithelial cells that line the intestine.

But emulsifiers seem to help transport bacteria across epithelial cells … The team fed mice the two most common additives have also been linked to low-grade bowel inflammation and metabolic disease: polysorbate 80 and carboxymethylcellulose.

The doses were replicated so as to mirror the proportions these emulsifiers are commonly added to human processed food … Not only did emulsifiers alter the microbiotic environment in a way that is proinflammatory, but it also changed the balance between cell proliferation and cell death, which enhances tumor development.”

For optimal health, opt for organic food

A large number of studies have shown that organic foods:

Are less likely to be contaminated with pesticide residues. (Synthetic chemicals are not permitted in organic agriculture, yet occurs due to contamination from nearby conventional farms.)
Contain fewer heavy metals (on average 48% lower levels of cadmium, for example).
Contain anywhere from 18% to 69% more antioxidants than conventionally grown varieties.
May in some cases be more nutrient-dense. For example, one 2010 study, which was partially funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), found that organic strawberries were more nutrient-rich than non-organic strawberries.

If you live in the U.S., the following organizations will help you locate farm-fresh foods:

EatWild.com — EatWild.com provides lists of farmers known to produce wholesome raw dairy products as well as grass fed beef and other farm-fresh produce (although not all are certified organic). Here you will also find information about local farmers markets, as well as local stores and restaurants that sell grass fed products.

Weston A. Price Foundation — Weston A. Price has local chapters in most states, and many of them are connected with buying clubs will help you easily purchase organic foods, including grass fed, raw dairy products like milk and butter.

Grassfed Exchange — The Grassfed Exchange has a listing of producers selling organic and grass fed meats across the U.S.

Local Harvest — This website will help you find farmers markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area, as well as other produce, grass fed meats, and many other goodies.

Farmers Markets — A national listing of farmers markets.

Eat Well Guide: Wholesome Food from Healthy Animals — The Eat Well Guide is a free online directory of sustainably raised meat, poultry, dairy, and eggs from farms, stores, restaurants, inns, hotels and online outlets in the United States and Canada.

Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) — CISA is dedicated to sustaining agriculture and promoting the products of small farms.

The Cornucopia Institute — The Cornucopia Institute maintains web-based tools rating all certified organic brands of eggs, dairy products, and other commodities, based on their ethical sourcing and authentic farming practices separating CAFO “organic” production from authentic organic practices.

RealMilk.com — If you’re still unsure of where to find raw milk, check out Raw-Milk-Facts.com and RealMilk.com. They will tell you what the status is for legality in your state, and provide a listing of raw dairy farms in your area.

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