Ice IS just water (H2O), and it has no calories. This is a true statement, but ice CAN cause problems in the human body. Did you ever drink something cold and your teeth reacted or you got “brain freeze?” Did you ever think this is your body’s way of letting you know you should not do what you just did? Yes, our body talks to us, but most of us don’t listen.
Heart disease is one of the biggest killers in the United States, and I believe that it is not just our love for processed and junk foods. I believe ice also a contributing factor. Most other countries don”t use ice and when American’s are traveling in other countries and ask for ice we get funny looks. Many countries also drink their beer at room temperature.
Think of your esophagus as a pipe from the mouth to the stomach. When you put something cold in a pipe, the pipe also gets cold. In the body, guess what sits on that pipe, the esophagus that is? The heart sits against the esophagus. The heart is a muscle and when muscles get cold they contract. Iced drinks, are 32 degrees and that is 66 degrees colder than our normal body temperature, cause the blood to chill and that causes it not to flow through the body the way it should. The legs and especially the ankle is the furthest place in the body from the heart, so the cold blood that is not moving very freely stagnates in the legs and ankles and turns purple. Cosmetic surgeries to get rid of those spider and varicose veins is not a cure for the problem. Those discolored veins are your body talking to you in a language most people or doctors don’t understand. Closing off veins would not be a good idea, rather breaking up the clog with the correct herbal medicine would be amore healthy answer.
Oxygen flows through our blood to heal most everything. Something to ponder: you can go without food for a month or more, water for several days, but you can only go without air for a FEW minutes. This statement alone tells you how important air is to life. Our bodies are great machines that work perfectly if we do the right thing.
So the next time you get a drink, think how that ice will impact your health. It is probably OK for water to be COOL, but not ICE COLD. Personally, when I get water from the refrigerator door, I let it sit for a few minutes so the glass absorbs some of the cold. When at a restaurant, I just ask them for water with no ice and then let it sit for a few minutes as well.
If you do have purple veins anywhere on your legs, you may want to see an acupuncturist that also practices herbal medicine. We can help break up that slow, dead blood and get you back to health.
Happy Cinco de Mayo. If you are going to have a drink, drink responsibly and your tequila straight and without ice, but don’t drink and drive.