What the desert recipes that follow are NOT!
I’ve seen a number of my male acquaintances gain weight (a few to such a degree that it was very concerning) after having gotten married. Others simply started putting on the pounds with age. My father, who was overweight, informed me that he was skinny like me when he was a kid, but that this all changed once he became an adult, and he warned me that I was going to suffer the same fate. My reaction was to think to myself, "Yeah, but I’m not you!" So from the time I was young, I was determined to learn from my parent’s mistakes—not to repeat them.
That being the case, in 2017 I obtained a book authored by Lyn-Genet Recitas in which she suggested that though there is some truth in the assertion that a slowing of the metabolism can contribute to weight gain as we get older, the main factor is that as we age, our bodies lose digestive enzymes and stomach acid, and even saliva decreases, so that not only might we begin to experience digestive issues, but weight gain as well.
Given that I am also interested in doing what I can to maintain a healthy heart, I was also interested in what she had to write about inflammation, which she defined as a physiological process designed to help people heal, but which can also lead to a variety of problems. She believes that chronic inflammation exacerbates and hastens the aging process because it floods tissue with free radicals and promotes the destruction of normal cells; and that it is not only a major contributor to the aging of the cardiovascular and nervous systems, but is now recognized as one of the key risk factors for heart disease, diabetes, high cholesterol, stroke, and cognitive and neurological disorders.
She goes on to state that the immune system’s response to an inflammatory diet diverts the body’s energy from healing and repair and allows whatever is latent in our genetic makeup to kick up whatever is chronic and worsen it, be it high cholesterol, diabetes, or heart disease. While the attack is happening, the body’s instinct to repair takes a backseat and can only restart when the danger is resolved.
Finally, chronic, low-grade inflammation can produce a wide range of inflammatory proteins. These cause hormonal signaling to go haywire, permitting free radicals and pro-inflammatory compounds to flow at a low level—continually—which one might feel as joint pain, migraines, sinusitis, fatigue, depression or even disease.
So then, the desert recipes that follow, which come from her work titled The Plan Cookbook, are NOT designed to avoid the use of sugar. Rather, they are recipes intended to help older adults cut down on the amount of inflammation that might be attacking their organs and physiological body systems. Therefore, anyone viewing additional posts to this thread should bear this in mind.
