We were talking with friends about the Paleo Diet the other day and one of the things it pointed out was how much people don’t know about foods. This was a person who had worked in the food industry for many years. He had bought and shipped millions and millions of dollars of food for his own company and for other companies. One of the companies that he worked with sold their products through Whole Foods.
They had been with them for years and it had helped make them a very large operation. Yet his sense of what made a good protein source came out of the same misconceptions many people suffer from. I was explaining that a key part to boosting the metabolism was eating lean protein first thing in the morning.
That’s something like tuna or white turkey breast, 60% to 90% lean protein. He was thinking nuts, 30% lean protein. Most people think of metabolism as the sole territory of the thyroid. But Chinese medicine quite correctly sees metabolism as coming from three sources, the proverbial triple warmer. Heart and thyroid is one center, digestion is another, and reproductive is the third.
The key here is that when you consume lean protein first thing in the morning it makes the body work harder to use that nutrition and in the process the metabolism cranks up. Once it’s up to speed it tends to stay there. In the same way having the ‘hots’ for somebody cute definitely gets the hormones going and warms up the entire system. Working hard and stressing the heart warms the system.
Thyroid drugs have been among the most prescribed in the nation for many years, but the thyroid, like many glands is very small. The amount of hormone excreted is tiny yet powerful. But, hormonal glands are moderators. The problem our society has is that we depend upon the glands to be prime movers. If you give the body the correct foods; lean meats and fish, vegetables and fruits, nuts and seed and pure water you don’t have to goose the hormonal system with drugs like prodding an animal with a cattle prod.