One of the things I have noticed over my many years in the alternative health field is how regularly the prevailing wisdom in the dietary advice world changes.  The "certain to bring you health" guidelines put out by the government or other health "authorities" seem to reverse themselves all the time.  New health gurus of every kind jump out with advice and books every year.  Most of what I see is founded in what I call fanciful physiology.  By that I mean that these health "authorities" make up mechanisms and explanations for how the body works that have no relationship to how the body actually works.

Most of the time these fanciful physiology explanations are innocent attempts to make sense out of observations or experiences with themselves or patients that they just don't understand...so they guess.  This is valid scientific process.  First you observe, then you form a theory.  But then you must test the theory.  Most health gurus do not have the resources to test their theories so they decide their theory is right and move straight into treatment.  Other times these faulty theories come about and are promoted for completely other reasons - political, economic, and power based reasons.

Breakfast is an example of this second set of reasons.  The American food pyramid that everyone learned as a child is the result of political choices to support our government subsidized corn and wheat industries.  The subsidies started after the Great Depression in 1929 as a way to stabilize the over 6 million small farms at that time.  It didn't work.  A few large corporate farms swallowed up 98% of the small farms.  Now over 180 billion dollars in subsidies go to these large corporate farms.  They in turn used that money and power to induce the government to promote a dietary style through "health recommendations" from the FDA that pushes the over consumption of grains.  Breakfast is the prime example.  When breakfast cereals were first introduced they were considered a vegetarian health food.  After promotion by the "experts" paid for by the cereal and seed oil industries, breakfast cereals and toasted pastries have exceeded a 90% market share for breakfast in most of America.

The problem is that cereal, pastries, and toast with cholesterol free margarine are horrible foods in general and an even worse foods for breakfast.  Within minutes of being eaten, the cereal turns into sugar in your bloodstream.  The insulin surge this causes and the inflammatory oils in margarine are the main reason for the current epidemic of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.  Soda pop and these breakfast foods are probably the single biggest killers of Americans.

To add fuel to the fire, the lie was promoted that everybody needs to eat a big breakfast to get his or her day started.  Say's who?  Hey, it sold more boxes of cereal.  But where is the science behind this proclamation?  Amazingly, there is none.  In fact the science says just the opposite.

Digestion Cycles

There are two main physiologic processes that govern our digestive processes - nervous and hormonal.  Brain control and stimulation of our digestive system occurs through the Vagus nerve, which is a parasympathetic type of nerve.  These nerves turn on when the brain is relaxed and feels safe and mellow.  They turn off when a drive to action or stress excites us.  In simple terms, our digestion shuts down when we get revved up to meet our day.  

The second control for our digestive system comes from natural fixed hormonal cycles called circadian rhythm cycles.  Digestion requires a lot of energy.  Consequently our body breaks up the energy use demand into a three-part cycle. The 3 Digestive Cycles are:

* Appropriation cycle (eating)
* Assimilation cycle (absorption of nutrients)
* Elimination cycle (waste excretion)

Appropriation Cycle

The appropriation cycle operates from 12:00 noon to 8:00pm. This is the optimal time for eating all your proteins, complex carbohydrates and fats. It is during this time that your body will focus its energies on physically breaking apart the foods consumed. Eating earlier can mess up the elimination cycle by pulling the  energy away from the removal of waste from the body. Once the waste is removed your body is ready to consume new foods.

Assimilation Cycle

The assimilation cycle operates from 8:00pm to 4:00am. This is the phase where the body extracts all the vital nutrients from the food required for the many metabolic processes that occur in your body. Eating after 8:00pm will force the body to divert energy back to digestion rather than assimilation of nutrients. Eating late at night may cause you to wake up exhausted in the morning, because your body has spent all it's energy trying to digest food instead of absorbing and using the nutrition while you were sleeping. This will also interfere with the beginning of the elimination cycle.

Elimination Cycle

The elimination cycles operates from 4:00am to 12:00 noon. At this time the primary focus is to remove waste from the body. After all food is consumed, digested and absorbed, anything left over is waste and has to be removed from the body. This is an important time, as any waste left in the body will become toxic and cause health problems. The reason for most health complaints is because they body has not been able to remove and eliminate toxins.  Therefore it is important to let your body do its job of elimination at this time.  That means not loading it down with food that requires digestive energy.

From both the nervous control of digestion and the natural circadian rhythms of digestion, a hearty breakfast is not a good idea.  Morning is not the time to be eating proteins, fats, or starches.  Morning is a time for eating foods that require little or no digestion energy such as fruit and soft vegetables. Fermented vegetables are especially good this time of day as they help detoxify your gut by promoting the growth of good bacteria.  Since we want to stimulate elimination, morning is a good time to take in fibers that will support the removal of toxins from the liver and colon.  Very little energy is available for trying to digest heavy proteins, fats and complex carbohydrates.

Interestingly, many people find that coffee in the morning is beneficial.  Coffee is high in antioxidants, stimulates liver flushing, and promotes bowel movements so it fits as an early morning beverage.  Coffee is not good for everyone, but for many people it is healthy.  Green tea, herb teas, fermented beverages, and unsweetened cocoa powder (with no milk) are good alternatives.  Stevia and/or erythritol as in our Dr. Dave Sugar are good sweetening options.

Aside from the political desire to support our breakfast food industries, are there any good reasons for supporting the hearty breakfast theory?  Yes there are.  Proper nervous and hormonal control of digestion depends on healthy physiology.  But most people are not healthy.  After years of eating too many easily digested carbohydrates and sugars, our metabolisms have become unbalanced.  A healthy metabolism easily switches back and forth between using glucose (sugar) for energy and ketones (fats) for energy.  Eating too much sugar has suppressed the fat burning side of our metabolisms, which we need for energy when we have not eaten in a few hours.  A healthy person is burning fats when they wake up in the morning, and they can go many hours just using those fats for energy all morning.  Modern people end up with low energy in the morning because of this imbalance and "need" to pump sugars and carbs into their systems in order to function.  

Another of the pushes for a hearty breakfast was the education system.  Kids were just eating sugar for breakfast and ending up hyped up on the sugar initially then they would crash after a couple hours.  This was destroying their ability to learn.  In order to slow down the rate at which sugar was entering their system, a push was made to include more protein and fat with breakfast.  The protein and fat don't digest well that early in the morning so they did indeed slow down the sugar high the kids were getting.  Adults found the same held true for them as they were noticing their blood sugar energy drop because of the insulin surge midmorning.  This is why coffee breaks were invented - to pump energy (and therefore productivity) up whenever blood sugar typically drops due to the unbalanced metabolism.  A heavier breakfast helps to prevent this.

Unfortunately, eating when your system is not ready to digest causes the food you ate to ferment, putrefy, and form toxic byproducts that break down the gut and poison the rest of your system.  The lack of complete digestion also promotes the overgrowth of dangerous bacteria and fungi in your gut.  This all ends up creating a ton of other diseases.

So, eating a bunch of sugar and carbs in the morning promotes insulin swings which cause heart disease and diabetes.  This means don't eat cereal, muffins, doughnuts, pop tarts, pastries, pancakes, waffles, or other sweet and starchy foods for breakfast.  It is just sugar to your body.  The only time it is occasionally safe to eat such things is after a heavy protein and fat meal later in the day as a dessert.  The heavy foods will slow down the absorption of the sugary foods.

Eating a heavier breakfast of proteins and fats promotes gut and systemic toxicity, which promotes autoimmune diseases, cancer, and many other inflammatory conditions.  So avoid those steak and egg breakfasts.  The mental picture of the big country breakfast on the farm is a bit of a lie.  Those farmers were up very early and had already put in 5 to 6 hours of work before they ever sat down to that breakfast.  

So what is best to eat for breakfast?  A healthy breakfast consists of 1-2 pieces of low glycemic fruit, steamed, fermented, or fresh-juiced low glycemic vegetables, coffee, tea, or cocoa powder, and fiber. You don't want more than 15 grams of fructose (fruit sugar) per day as this shuts down your liver's elimination process.  So even though fruits do not require much digestion and are therefore a good choice for eating before noon, their sugar load makes more than 1-2 pieces a bad choice.  Berries, plums, peaches, green apples, and other low glycemic fruits are the best choices.
 
Personally I have a big bowl of blended vegetable soup with almond skin fiber added.  Since I am doing a low-carb lifestyle, I usually skip the fruit.  Sometimes I will do a coconut milk smoothie with free form amino acids, fiber, stevia, and unsweetened chocolate powder.  

If you have low blood sugar tendencies, then you will have to eat in a sub-optimal manner until your blood sugar metabolism is corrected.  The best advice is to recognize that your digestion is at minimum energy and eat as little and as simply as possible, with light easy to digest proteins, fats, and a little fruit, such as you might find in plain yogurt with fresh fruit or a light protein smoothie.  The easiest fat to digest is coconut oil/milk, so it makes a good base for such a smoothie.

Your goal is to feel light and energized by breakfast so you can meet your day with enthusiasm.  You do not want to eat foods that feel like they slow you down or feel heavy.  Your digestion simply can't handle it.

When can you handle heavier proteins and fats?  That depends.  Your strongest digestion times are between noon and eight at night so that peak will be around four in the afternoon.  But remember that good digestion requires you be relaxed.  If you are still busy running around at four in the afternoon then the excited energy will undermine your attempts to have good digestion.  So the general answer is to eat your heavier meals between 12 noon and 8pm whenever you are able to relax while and after you eat.   Don't eat anything after 8pm.  The habit of eating while on the run is a killer on your body.  Don't do it.  Snack instead on small amounts of good food that won't burden your system.

Lastly, your digestive system can never handle overeating.  You simply can not have healthy digestion and health in general if you eat more than your system can effectively process.  Rather than eating until you are full, a good habit is to stop when your stomach is no longer empty.  It takes time for the food you eat to trigger your brain that it has had enough and is full.  By that time you are usually over full.  If we were to spend 2 hours slowly eating a meal as they do in some countries, this would not be an issue.  But in busy modern America our meals are usually wolfed down within 15 to 20 minutes... not very relaxed eating.

Breakfast is a very important meal of the day - important for elimination of the toxic waste from our system.  We want to support this waste removal by keeping breakfast very light and consuming foods that stimulate detoxification and elimination.  Eat foods that require very little digestive energy in the morning.  Eating in rhythm with the natural physiology of your body will pay you back with improved health for as long as you stay with that rhythm.     

Good Journey,

 

 

david@fairoakshealth.com

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About Dr. DeLapp

Dr. DeLapp has been a philosopher, non-force Chiropractor, medical intuitive, and health innovator for over 30 years.  He began experimenting with  medical intuition in 1972 while studying physics at UC Davis.  In addition to physics he designed and completed an individual major in the philosophy and psychology of education.  Shortly after he choose to pursue a career in the only truly health oriented profession available at that time, Chiropractic.  He graduated with honors in 1981 with his doctorate and opened a private practice. 
Since that time he has continued his research into the effects of consciousness and learning on health. 
He developed the Biomagnetic Retraining system for correcting movement abnormalities. 
Since 1991 he has focused on developing a powerful system for uncovering and assisting the mind-body connection in health and personal growth.  The in-depth coaching, guided by the subconscious direction from the body, is called Heartflow and the simpler mind-body retraining for health and unfoldment he has named Gracework.  Both are available at Fair Oaks Health.

Dr David DeLapp DC
Chiropractor

Ellen Flowers FGM
Spiritual Life Coach

 

Somatic Therapies

 

Lorena Morales