How to Increase Your Covid Risk of Death Tenfold

I really did not want to write an article about covid.  

The simple act of reading the word for a lot of people piles on anxiety and contributes to a disruption in mental health.  The media has never talked about another issue as much as it has with this one; it is ultra-saturation overboard and I did not want to contribute to any of that.  Most of the articles that are scrolled across are full of panic, fear, death, OCD-handwashing, isolationism, potential poverty, job loss, economic collapse, and political fights.  It is no wonder that people are stressed out and on high alert, living around the clock in fight-or-flight mode.  Something as simple and seemingly benign as a trip to the grocery store has people behaving as if every other human being is a threat to their life - strangers hiding behind masks, gloved up, and eyeing each other suspiciously or not at all. 

As the weeks and months have crawled on at a snail's pace, we have thankfully been able to gather quite a bit of data regarding many things surrounding this issue to understand it a bit better.

I have recently come across some information that may be initially a little scary for some of you, but I intend to give you a workaround and provide you with some hope.

Here's the thing, lovelies - we're not afraid of a regular virus.  We're not afraid of the flu, we're not afraid of a cold.  

We are, however, afraid of a virus that we think is going to kill us haphazardly.  We don't want to die.  We don't want our loved ones to die.  We don't want to be a statistic.  We don't like the thought that just going to the grocery store could end our lives.  Many are paralyzed with fear that they could be carriers and kill of their parents, their children, and all the old people in the grocery store, out on the streets going for a walk, and all of our neighbors.  What seems like a random chance of a very unpleasant death alone in a hospital bed is a nightmare that none of us want to participate in.  Nobody wants to play Russian roulette with this.

This is understandable.  

But what if it's not exactly that way?

We have read the numbers about how it significantly affects the elderly population more strongly than the youth.  This is still not a relief, of course, but with this we are able to see a pattern.

New information is coming out that is showing an overwhelming and shocking link to the severity of covid with several underlying comorbidities.

Data from the first 2204 patients admitted to the National Health Service in Europe revealed that 72.7% were overweight or obese.  That is an incredible number!  This number speaks only of obesity, and not even of age.  (Please note that this number is the percentage of those who were admitted to the hospital, and not of those who died.)

Those with type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome have a ten times greater risk of death than those who are metabolically healthy. 

Because this virus strongly affects lung function, it is no surprise that a study from China found that smokers were fourteen times more likely to get severe disease than non-smokers.   

Other staggering comorbidities reflected that hypertension (high blood pressure) was a prevalent partner in those who were dying from the novel coronavirus.  

With only 12.2% of Americans metabolically healthy, how could this ever be hopeful?

It is hopeful because of something called nutrigenomics.

Nutrigenomics is the study of how our genetic expression is affected by the food we eat and how the food we eat affects our genetic expression.  This branch of science, biology, and medicine offers a tremendous amount of hope to all of us, but especially to those who are living in fear of death by "the rona".  

Here's the deal.  Food is the language of our cells.  Every single bite is information to our bodies.  Every single bite delivers information that turns on or turns off genetic expression.  Maybe you are among those who are suffering from type 2 diabetes or obesity - right now, your body has those switches flipped on.  But it doesn't have to stay that way!

When we think of making a difference in our bodies by changing our diets, many of us think that it takes months or years of nonstop suffering and kale to see effects.  We think with targets out that far away, it's not even worth it - there's no hope.  It will take too long and it will cost us too much joy.  Weight loss may be something that does take a while, especially if you don't have a lot of testosterone and if you are over 40.  But weight loss is not the same as genetic expression.

All of this means that you can do something about it.  It means that you can drastically cut (or increase) your risk of death by the novel coronavirus.  It is not an unknown monster hiding in the closet.  It is not Russian roulette.  You have access to actions that can decrease or increase your risk of death.

Every single bite you take makes a difference.  Every. Single. Bite.  Within two weeks, your body will begin reflecting significant change in genetic expression.  You may not see that in weight loss and you may not see instant toned abs and a six-pack, but at a level that you cannot see, change is happening and it is drastic. 

Type 2 diabetes and obesity can be changed drastically with diet.  It is a wonderful, glorious, and hopeful fact!  It is not easy and there is no magic pill to take, but it will bring results that you will be thankful for.  

If you find yourself in this position and you want to make change, I urge you to do a few things that will significantly affect your genetic expression, pushing you farther and farther away from risk in each bite that you take.

1.  Only eat real food.  

This sounds dumb, but most food in the grocery store isn't real food.  I mean that you should be eating only fruits, vegetables, meats/fish/poultry, and very minimally processed dairy.  You should not be eating food that comes out of a box.  You should not eat foods that have bright colors.  Eat food that grew on trees, grew out of the ground, walked on the ground, swam in the water, and is recognized in nature.  

Cereal is not real food.  Tortilla chips are not real food.  Granola bars are not real food.  At least, none of those are real food for this purpose.  Eat only real food that you put together to make other food, not food that a factory made for you. 

Yeah, I know.  I lost you when I spoke disparagingly about tortilla chips, but since this is a life or death kind of thing, I'm going to tell it to you straight because you need to hear it and because you really can change your life.

2.  Avoid sugar and carbs like the plague.

You already know this, especially if you have diabetes - sugar cranks up your levels like crazy and makes you get into a downward spiral for insulin sensitivity.  That's the problem and that pushes you deeper into metabolic syndrome, type two diabetes, and obesity.  

The other thing is that sugar destroys the good guys in  your immune system and paralyzes them.  That's the last thing you need when there is a psycho virus on the loose.

This includes liquid sugar (which is the absolute worst of all) - soda, juice, energy drinks, and coffee drinks that pretend to be coffee but are actually just dessert.  It includes cookies, cakes, pies, candy, ice cream, and every single thing that you love.  (I know.  I'm just going for it all today, aren't I?  Sorry, not sorry.  I will risk hurting your feelings if it will save your life.)

Bread?  Nope.  Not right now.  Not for you.  Pasta?  Sorry, it's not on your team, either.  I wish they were.  I get it, I really do.

If you don't hate me yet, I'll get you with this - alcohol.  You probably should significantly limit that, also.  

3.  If you have type 2 diabetes, you should consider looking into intermittent fasting.

That looks like eating within an 8 hour window in a day.  This helps regulate insulin levels significantly. 

Here are some things that you should be doing:

1.  If you're not taking zinc, you're out of your mind and you need to get on that immediately.  Research is coming out solidly showing how zinc works with your immune system to fight covid before it can even get in and cause damage. 

2.  Drink your water.  Hydration is huge for helping your body work optimally.

3.  Get outside and get vitamin D on your skin.  This is huge for fighting this virus.

4.  Exercise at least 150 minutes a week.  Go.  This is not for vanity anymore.  This is to save your life. 

5.  Take and eat probiotics.  This includes naturally fermented foods like brined sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha, kefir, miso, tempeh.  You can also take it in supplement form.  These not only help digestion and weight loss, they boost your immune system.

I know that many of these things are hard.  I know that reading through this might feel like I am a huge jerk who is raining on every fun party that ever existed in the history of the world.  I understand why you would think that - these changes are difficult! Not drinking wine and whiskey while simultaneously having to suddenly homeschool your children is for some a rather monumental task.

But lovelies, difficult is not impossible.  You can do this.  And with the risk that is out there, you owe it to yourself and to your family to have a fighting chance and to get yourself out of those categories that push you much closer to death.

Feeling out of control and hopeless is a very disturbing place to be.  Certainly life comes with wild things and we cannot control everything, but with what we know and understand of this virus, there are some helpful things that can be done to mitigate significant risk.

Let us not panic.  Take charge and do something about it.  If you are concerned with the death rate, begin taking action that will separate you from being a person of high risk.  

Do hard things.  We're in this together and I'm cheering for your success.

You've got this,
Ms. Daisy

Weight Loss on the Winning Team

Well, lovies, we've made it.  2017 has been cleared off of our plates and we're here with a fresh start, a new calendar waiting for you, blank, and ready.  The first day of 2018 greets us with the promise of new hope, dreams, and aspirations.  Will you focus on self-improvement, sanctification, connection, your health, being intentional and present, dropping addictions, loving more, enjoying your littles, learning something new, or a combination of all of those? 

Or perhaps you resolve to not make resolutions.  You've failed in the past and you aren't about that useless nonsense of flipping a calendar and waving a magic wand, hoping that you will magically change into someone new. You know yourself well enough to know that change comes slowly, and not because it is tradition when the Gregorian calendar tells us so. 

Whatever camp you find yourself in on this day, perhaps you are like many of my clients and friends who find themselves not quite exactly where they'd like to be physically after the head-on collision they've had with the holidays.  It all starts so subtly.  An extra bag of candy from the grocery store at Halloween because they've got a 2 for 1 sale slides quickly into the eating frenzy and near bake-off of Thanksgiving, which careens us smack into Christmas and Hanukkah, at which point we have given up on the voice of moderation because "it's the holidays" and we'll deal with that later, but now is the time for enjoyment!

Ah yes.  Enjoyment.  January 1 comes and that luster of "enjoyment" looks like you staring at yourself in your mismatched plaid pajama pants, gazing disgustedly at your puffy face, your unshaven bits (PSA: Hey guys!  It's time to shave those beards!  No, seriously - the homeless look is now officially out of vogue - unless you're a millennial, then whatever, man, go back to your microbrewery in the basement.  We won't bother you while you so creatively express yourself.), and a pile of glorious lumps you have somehow managed to acquire over the last few months.  You look aghast, wondering if it is the lighting or if, please God no, let me not really and actually be this hideously ugly.

Okay, that's it.  I'm not going to say it to my friends or on facebook, but bruuuh, I have got to do something.   And so it begins.  You start to reel it in just a little because you know you cannot go on like this. 

But what will work?  What will bring the success that you crave?  (Hint: It's not taking my locker at the gym.) 

Will it be to swear off cookies for the rest of your life?  Will it be to sweat it out on the ellipitical for three hours a day everyday for the unforeseeable future (a.k.a. until Valentine's Day when they have candy hearts and boxed chocolates for sale)?  Will it be to make chard sandwiches for breakfast to punish (I mean, reward) yourself?

If you even have an inkling about the nature of our complicated brains, you will know that these things can only work for a short time.  They are not sustainable (especially the chard sandwiches - right, Court?).  We are desperate little creatures sometimes and we will resort to absurdities to climb out of our panicked states.

I am not all about that cray cray thang.  I believe in making sustainable change slowly, and making it a lifestyle (want more?  Hint: YES, YOU DO.  Check out my book on Amazon: Just One Thing: Simplifying the Mystery of a Healthy Lifestyle.  You can snuggle it on your pillow or frame the cover and hang it on the wall.  Blow it up to poster size and put it next to your mirror with a speaking bubble that says, "YOU CAN DO EEET!"  Or just read it.  Any is fine.). I want you to be able to actually enjoy your life with a cookie, but not be a slave to the sugar god.  I want you to be able to look at something (even though it looks completely delicious) and shrug and be able to say, you know, right now I'm just not feeling it.   Contrast this with the feeling of you holding that third cookie in your hand, biting down, chewing, and thinking, I don't even really want this.  What am I doing right now?!  

What works?  In my health coaching practice, there is one thing that brings a glowing highlight of attention to what is going on in your life, and where you can study yourself to make good and lasting change.  It isn't exercise (although you ought to exercise).  It isn't swearing off foods exactly.

It's a food journal.

What?!  Yes.  A food journal.  Let me propose something to you.  I know it may seem wild, but just hear me out.  I believe that there is a potential that you may have slight cognitive dissonance between what you think you are eating and what you are actually eating, and you won't be able to bridge that gap until you put it in black and white and see for yourself.

My awesome clients have come back to me with amazing revelations.  They see that they are desperately in love with tortilla chips.  (This is actually a recurring theme among many of them. Read: YOU ARE NOT ALONE.)  They see that they are eating about a micro-ounce of protein all day and it suddenly dawns on them why they feel like they got hit by a truck and have energy swings like a cross between a Nanny 911 toddler and your 16 year-old self raging through a tornado of severe PMS.  They see that they are surviving on McDonald's and coffee during the day, cheese and crackers for dinner, and three bowls of ice cream before bed.  They realize that they are drinking a lot more junk than they thought they were (whether that is the poisonous Coke Zero or Tito's vodka or vanilla caramel lattes from Starbucks). 

You can do this old school - pen and paper.  You can get an app.  (And if you do, for the love of all that is good, do not bother tracking your calories.  Counting calories is so Jane Fonda era.  What counts is that you're eating real food.)  You can do it throughout the day.  You can do it at the end of the day.  You know what will work for you.  I also recommend that you write down a few other things in your food journal: how much sleep you got the night before, your overall mood (on a scale of 1-10), if you took any vitamins that day, and your stress level.  Those things will give you a broader picture of  what is going on in your life and how your body is responding to things.

Exercise is great and has many benefits for mental health, brain plasticity (by creating BDNF), preventing Alzheimer's, dementia, and increasing overall good mood, but it will not erase and repair your five donut a day habit.  Food is first.  In my personal guesstimate, I'd say that weight loss is 85% your food and beverage choices and 15% exercise.  Exercise comes to tone up the flabby.  Exercise is how you get that solid six-pack, but you won't even find that six-pack if you buried it under six layers of bagels and Pop Tarts.  Hear me: I do want you to exercise, but I want your exercise to be effective.  It is a lot easier to keep something up when you are actually hitting goals and making change than when you shovel ice cream down your pie hole and put yourself back ten steps.  You're fighting yourself and that is a losing battle, no matter how you look at it.

I want you to win for 2018.  I want you to smash goals.  If you're still breathing, you life isn't over.  Your race isn't finished.  It is not time to give up.  You've got stuff to give.  You were put on this planet to do something, to help others, to give your talents to change the world.  That is a lot easier to do when you have energy, a clear brain, and a body that works optimally.  No, it's not everything.  Your eternal soul will long outlive your shell, but what you do here and now makes a difference for eternity.  Embrace it and go get it.

Peace, love, and let's do this!
Ms. Daisy

p.s. If you'd like to work with me and have someone come along side of you and cheer you on and guide you toward your goals, get in touch with me.  It is an honor to watch people grow and change and become who they have wanted to be.  I'd love to help.  (Send me an email and connect with me: energeticwellnesscoaching@gmail.com)  I do Skype as well as in person programs.

Sugar Detox (and other such drug addictions)

Have you ever heard Mark Hyman speak?  Besides being a genius, he is hilarious, and he's on the board of the EWG (my hero!), and a functional medicine MD.  He's right up there with my other favorites: Joel Salatin (farmer, author, activist for real farming, and hilarious person), Mike Adams ("The Health Ranger", scientist, activist, author, businessman, rancher, and hilarious person), Michael Moss (author of Salt, Sugar, Fat), Michael Pollan (author, activist, chef, also very amusing, has a bald head and a genuine smile), and Dr. David Brownstein (author, holistic MD, and the guru of the world in thyroid health, literally.).  

Mark Hyman, MD

I love the way that those guys write, research, and save the world with passion.   

After I heard Mark Hyman (he's an MD) speak on why we are fat, I decided to pick up his recently most famous book, The Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox Diet.  Hyman's motto is, "Save the world and have fun."  I am not sure why he had to steal mine, but it's okay.  We can be twinsies.

His book is very interesting (so far - I think I'm on chapter 2).  He references a study done in 2009 by Dr. Serge H. Ahmen (Is Sugar as Addictive as Cocaine?, published in the journal Food and Addiction) showing that sugar is more addictive than crack - in fact, sugar is eight times more addictive than IV cocaine.  Actually, and even more surprising, it is more addictive than heroin (and that is more addictive than cocaine).  

Here is his take on it:

"Despite wanting to change or stop, those with food addiction cannot resist - even in the face of significant emotional or physical harm to themselves and those they love.  They hide their addiction, they worry and obsess about cutting down, all against a backdrop of shame, embarrassment, and denial.  They eat a whole sheet cake in the middle of the night in the dark.  They say, 'It's like someone takes over my body and I can't stop eating.  I want to be locked up.  I can't keep living this way.'...When our brains are bombarded with sugar, a potent pleasure inducer, we become addicted to that pleasure.  Willpower and conscious choice are no match for these powerful, ancient drives for survival."

He says that you can eat sugar, but you have to treat it like any other recreational drug.  He's serious.  He's right.  You can have a glass of ice wine, but you probably shouldn't walk around all day with the bottle in your hand to make it through (mmm, iiiice wiiiine).  

You want to listen to him.  This link will take you to a totally worth it 22 minute sample where he talks about sugar and fat and what he eats for breakfast. The embedded video below it is something different.   Mark Hyman, the awesome rockstar

And this little 5 minute embedded video is his awesomeness on fat and how it doesn't make you fat.  It makes you cringe, right?  (Cathy?)  Get that full fat yogurt going on!


To get out of your addiction, you have to press reset.  You have to abstain from your drug and go for what brings health.  You have to let your brain and body heal.  You have to let your nucleus accumbens chill out.  (The nucleus accumbens "is known to be ground zero for conventional addictions such as gambling and drug abuse.  This is the pleasure center of the brain, which, when activated, makes us feel good and dries us to seek out more of that feeling.")


So take a deep breath.  You might need to take a few.  Hundred.  But move toward health.


Peace, love, and get healthy,
Ms. Daisy

It's just your life.

Hello and welcome to your life.  You get to pick your path (within reason) and fly with it.  I was just speaking with someone this morning who has arthritis, and I suggested the unmentionable: that they reduce or eliminate sugar (as well as taking turmeric/curcumin with black pepper and maybe a little tart cherry juice.  Yeah, for real, try it.).  But that’s the thing, if sugar (crack) makes you happy, and you don’t mind that you can’t walk or exercise, then go with that.  I don’t even mean that in a snarky way, I mean it literally.  You’re the only one who is going to pay the price in your own body for your decisions (although your death will affect your family and friends, so go ahead and be a selfish pig if that’s how you roll.).  You get to live with the chronic pain and debilitation, your spouse can’t feel it, your doctor can’t feel it, and your friends will either feel sorry for you (poor baby) or think you are a bozo for wimping out on their antics (hey Nancy!).  

 

HEY! Is this you?

But do pardon me, because I am inclined to convince you otherwise.  Here I go.

I can see how it seems to be the easier way to eat whatever you want, smoke whatever/whenever/how much ever you want, sleep whenever you want, work out only if you feel like it, but, oh, the price of that life!  

 There was a study that wasdone in Potsdam, Germany, on 23,000 adults over the course of several years.  They asked them four (somewhat) simple questions:

       1.  Do you smoke?

2.  Do you eat well (this sounds really nebulous, but there were specific guidelines that included things such as eating a certain amount of fresh fruits and veggies, eating clean meats, not eating processed foods, etc.)? 
3.  Do you maintain a healthy weight? 
4.  Do you exercise regularly?

People who answered with four healthy responses (no smoking, yes, I eat well, yes, I maintain a healthy weight, and yes, I exercise regularly) cut their all-mortality rate (this includes all the biggies - cancer, cardiovascular disease, the whole 9, etc.) by 80% against those who answered with four unhealthy answers.  Okay.  I know you didn’t hear me because you are not freaking out.  Let me repeat myself.  You can cut your risk of death by EIGHTY percent.  I don’t know if you know this, but 80% is some pretty darn good odds.  If you had an 80% chance of winning a kajillion (a jillion jillions) dollars, I’d say you might take it.  If you wouldn’t, well fine, I will. 

Kinda like this, but multiply the intensity by a kajillion.

If you think about those questions for about two and a half seconds, you realize that 3 out of 4 of them are your own choices, and the fourth follows two others (in general).  This makes me want to reach out of your screen right now, grab onto your shoulders, look you deep into your eyeballs, and tell you (probably in a highly spaztastic voice), “You are a main player here!  You can make decisions to elongate your life, enhance your lifestyle, and improve your quality of life!  You can do this!  Why wouldn’t you?”  And then you’d be all, yeah, I know, it’s cool, I should exercise, but that’s just to shut me up and pacify me because I’m jumping up in down in front of you still holding onto your shoulders.  Well, guess what, homie?  I ain’t letting go because you cannot be hearing me if you want to continue to pursue your death.

Excuse me, is this your dinner?

So what’s your excuse?  You like to eat crap?  Crap tastes so dang good that you wanna go with that in your swan dive off of the cliff to your death?  ERMERGERSH, just stop it.  I promise you that if you start eating well, your tastes will change.  You will crave what’s real.  If you can break up with sugar, you can look at a pile of ice cream and think of it as disgusting.  (It takes a while, but it’s f’rizzo.) 

And while I’m on that soapbox, sugar is worse than crack.  Do you want some inflammation?  Do you want to grow cancer?  Do you want to blow up your strep throat?  Do you want to stay sick longer?  Do you want to have horrible cholesterol numbers?  (Hint, big sugar has money and they love it that you think it’s because of fat.  They’re laughing at you right now.)  Do you want to be addicted?  Get your IV sugar on, baby.  Light up your brain like a crack addict.  

In fact, a study was done on rats that caused them to be addicted to IV crack and sugar and let them make their decisions on what they wanted to get high on, and they picked sugar eight times more (read it again, I said IV crack vs. sugar.  IV CRACK!!  Holy crap!  Eight times more!  That is freakin’ nuts!).  They even picked sugar when they were being electrically shocked.  They were receiving physical punishment and they went for it anyway.  Does that sound like you?  Oh.  Sorry.  Don’t mean to step on your inflamed, sick toes.  Wait, yes I do.  I want you to think about it.

Pick better.  

If you need a hit, may I suggest exercise?  It has its own crackalacka ways (well, I suppose minus those bothersome times of spending days and nights strung out under trailers in abandoned garages in the middle of Detroit).  Once you get into a good groove, you can become addicted to the endorphins that are released as you work out.  Instead of all of the negatives that come along with the horrors of sugar, you can trade that in for a healthier heart, a happy body, better sleep at night, an ability to maintain a healthy weight, and an increased libido amongst feeling generally awesome (I haven’t even mentioned how you will actually be awesome, too).  

May I recommend swimming, running, and biking?  Perhaps a little weight lifting?  Perhaps a few (hundred) pushups (doing them on glass shards to increase your toughness is completely optional)?  If you can’t feel the motivation, sign yourself up for a race.  Perhaps the sheer horror you would feel at being last would inspire you to dig deep and get your exercise on.  Please tell me that you have some inkling toward competition.  Please.  If you don’t, well, take your sad sack self and do your pushups anyway.

It is not rocket science.  If I told you I had a magic pill to make you live longer, better, and with a clearer brain and vigor, I guarantee you little druggies would be eating it up like crack candy.  Well hello, it is available to you!  You have to change (shriek!), but it’s really worth it.  Well, if you’re into living longer and better, I guess.  (Maybe that’s not your thing.)

Oh, just do it already!  (I’m still hanging on to your shoulders.  Can you hear me yet?)

Peace, love, and live, dang it, LIIIIVE!
Ms. Daisy

Return of Crackoween

'Ello, lovelies!  Happy Crackoween!  What's that, you say?  You aren't familiar with Crackoween?  Well, some people call it Halloween, but clearly they must be mistaken.    Obvs.

Well, if you're not exactly sure, let me tell you.  Over here in the good ol' U. S. of A., we pay like a majillion dollars for a flame-retardant (poison, endocrine disruptor) costume (or $17.99) for a little, and send them out begging for crack candy from house to house wherein they knock on the door and yell out, "Trick or treat!"  Halloween decorations start showing up at Costco in August so people can stick skeletons and tombstones in their front yard for all of October, because hey, if we can't make a holiday into completely over-the-top wild spaz consumerism, we've landed in the wrong country.

Then the last week of October comes and the giant bags of candy go on sale at the grocery stores.  The bags have to be giant because there are so many chemicals ingredients in there, they need that much space to write it down.  This is when it is your duty to spend an irreprehensible amount of money on such things in order to poison bring joy to all of the children in your neighborhood.

Okay, okay, okay.  I'm not exactly the Scrooge of Halloween, but I am trying to make a point.

The point is that there is so dang much candy for those little bodies that I think you could induce a sugar coma in no time.  

Now when I think back to my growing up days, my parents were much more normal lenient in the area of candy consumption.  I remember pouring out my treasure all over the living room floor in order to organize it into categories (chocolate, suckers, sugar candy, worthless pennies, McDonald's bucks, etc.) and then it was a thing back then that parents were encouraged to sort through candy to check for things like razor blades, or candy laced with LSD.  We had no TSA scanners back then, so I think it passed or failed based on making a general scan over the pile and then warning us not to bite down on potential razor blades if we happened to find one.

Once we got that green light, it was frenzy time.  It was like Christmas morning, but Halloween night.  Shreds of wrappers littered the floor, tongues turned blue, then purple, then red, then yellow.  I would trade Tootsie Rolls with my brother for anything else (since who eats those unless they are totally desperate?!).  I would hand my mother the McDonald's bucks and think to myself how weird that was that people passed these out.    

Maybe the candy didn't contain TBHQ (butane derivative - good thing you have  those flame retardant costume, eh?), high fructose corn syrup, artifical flavors, colors, soy lecithin, partially hydrogenated oils, and other chemicals.  Maybe it did.  But what I know now is that much of the candy in fact does contain such ditties.  Some of these are carcinogens, some mess up your endocrine system, others carry heavy metals because of their processing (like mercury) which causes neurodegeneration, and some are petroleum derivatives (yummaaaay).  

And I haven't yet mentioned even the amount of sugar our candies contain.  So what?  Let the kids have a little sugar now and then!  Yeah, except for two things.  Sugar follows the same path in your body as cocaine, lighting up those exact paths in your brain.  Sugar is a narcotic.  Yes, it's legal, yes, most people think nothing of it (except maybe when they have to go to the dentist).  But it is a narcotic.  The more  you have, the more you need.  When people comment about being addicted to sugar, they may be speaking more literally than they could imagine.

The other issue with sugar is that your body can only process a certain amount of sugar at a time.  Beyond that (depending on age/weight/etc.), you get, in essence, an immune system shutdown.  Everything has to stop its productivity to run over and get this fructose, glucose, sucrose, lactose, etc., out.  It is like factory shutdown.  Hopefully at that time you don't get innundated with an enemy front and get sick three days later.

So what to do?  No parent wants to be Oscar the Halloween Ruining Grouch, for sure.  But we are also responsible to protect our children when they are unaware of dangers.  This is a personal decision, and each parent ought to think through what this looks like in their own home.  I'm just here to pass on the info.

As far as my home goes, I will go ahead of time with them to pick out a few treats from the health food store (72%+ dark chocolate, some organic suckers, Glee gum, etc.) so they have something to look forward to.  After we go trick-or-treating, we get home and weigh the candy and they trade it in for money to buy something they like that lasts longer than a Tootsie Pop.  (I dump all of the crack candy into the garbage. Garbage day is Monday, if you want to garbage pick for mine.)

Happy Crackoween, ya'll.

Peace, love, and that treat might be a trick,
Ms. Daisy