If your health is deteriorating, do not assume that your body is failing you--it is not.  Our body's effort to heal NEVER stops, not even for a minute.  However, many people have endured tens of thousands of repeated injuries to their arteries, joints, and tissues, simply because of what they EAT.  For disease to progress, injury must outpace healing.  

However, for healing to occur, the opposite must take place--healing must outpace injury.  It really is that simple--stop injuring your body with foods that injure, and start flooding your body with foods that heal--then watch the MAGIC happen!

I've witnessed such profound changes in people's health by SIMPLY changing the food on their plate.  When processed foods, (anything in a box, bottle, carton or package), fast foods, and animal products are replaced with vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and legumes, (beans, peas and lentils), cholesterol, blood sugar, and blood pressure numbers drop like a rock allowing people to reduce/eliminate medications--and some of these people took medication for years and years--get on a plant based diet and medication is no longer needed!  It's amazing what your body is capable of.

So let's talk about meat--what harm can meat do to us?  After all, where else will we get our protein from?  Let's start at the beginning--There are 5 components of Animal Foods that are Poisoning You:  Protein, Fat, Cholesterol, Sulfur-containing amino acids, and Dietary acids.  When we take in more of these components than our body can use, the excess amounts act as poisons to our body.  Eating a typical Western Diet, these toxic by-products build up in our system on a daily basis.  This is where the trouble starts--this is WHY heart disease is the Number 1 Killer in America!  

Lets talk about each toxic substance and understand WHY they are so harmful:

PROTEIN:  When we keep eating protein after we've met our daily requirement, our body wants to eliminate the excess.  The way we eliminate it is through our liver and kidneys.  Excess protein takes its toll on our body even when we are strong and healthy.  Protein overload causes our kidneys to slow down resulting in kidney damage that leads to kidney failure.  Unfortunately, most people don't realize they have kidney damage--symptoms do not appear until much of the kidney function has been lost.  Protein overload also harms our bones--each time we double our protein intake we increase the amount of calcium excreted in our urine by 50%, greatly increasing our risk of osteoporosis and kidney stones.

FAT:  Our body stores dietary fat effortlessly as body fat.  We also store surplus fat in our liver, heart and muscles.  The accumulation of fat in these organs cause INSULIN RESISTANCE.  What does that mean?  That means that when our pancreas secretes insulin after we eat, the insulin cannot do its job which results in DIABETES.  Guess what--diabetes has become an epidemic in the US........

CHOLESTEROL:  Cholesterol is found nearly exclusively in animal products.  Like all animals, we produce all the cholesterol we need for our cells.  However, our body is not very efficient at eliminating excess--we excrete only a little more than the amount we make ourselves.  When we add to our cholesterol load by eating animal foods, the excess accumulates in our skin and tendons, as well as arteries where it becomes a major contributor to heart disease, stroke, and dementia.  Studies also show cholesterol facilitates cancer development!

METHIONINE:  This is a sulfur-containing amino acid that is found in meat, poultry, fish, eggs and cheese.  When we take in this amino acid by eating animal products, we metabolize it into another amino acid called homocysteine which is a known risk factor for heart attacks, strokes, arterial diseases of the legs, blood clots in veins, dementia, Alzheimer's Disease and depression.  Sulfur feeds cancerous tumors and is known to be  toxic to the tissues of  the intestines causing severe colitis.  

DIETARY ACID:  Animal foods are loaded with dietary acids.  After we eat them, our bones release the alkaline materials carbonate, citrate and sodium to neutralize these acids trying to maintain our pH levels needed to sustain life.  Over time, all this dietary acid weakens our bones leading to bone loss.  The daily consumption of dietary acid from meat, poultry, fish and cheese will absolutely cause us to pee our bones into the toilet!

THE GOOD NEWS IS:  REDUCING OR ELIMINATING ANIMAL FOODS FROM YOUR DIET WILL IMMEDIATELY RELIEVE THE BURDEN ON YOUR BODY FROM THESE FIVE DIETARY TOXINS!!

The best way to cut out these toxic foods is to replace them with whole grains, legumes, all kinds of vegetables, including starchy vegetables such as potatoes, and fruits.  That's right--STARCHY VEGETABLES!!  Diabetics that have been on insulin can EAT POTATOES and reduce/eliminate the need for insulin!!! I have witnessed this personally while working with diabetics.  It's nothing short of AMAZING!!

Make 2020 your HEALTHIEST YEAR yet....I can help you reach your health goals--AND, the ONLY side effect--WEIGHT LOSS!!

Did you know that physicians get approximately 5 hours of nutritional education while in Medical School?  Unfortunately, according to a recent survey of medical schools, 5 hours was the magic number.  The way our "health-care" system is structured, doctors are trained to diagnose a disease and write a prescription for the treatment......pills do NOT CURE chronic illnesses....they manage them.  (This is exactly the reason why the pharmaceutical industry is a BILLION dollar industry.)

However, I am here to tell you that your lifestyle, (diet, exercise, stress reduction) can PREVENT, STOP THE PROGRESSION OF, and many times REVERSE chronic disease.  It all begins with your FORK.

Dr. Dean Ornish, cardiologist, who practices medicine in California, (President Clinton's cardiologist), has what's called a Lifestyle Program that patients go through to REVERSE their heart disease.  Because his program has scientifically PROVEN to REVERSE disease, Medicare as well as other insurances are paying for patients to go through his program.  Why wouldn't these insurance companies pay--by teaching patients how to change their diet, get some exercise in their day and reduce stress, the insurance companies will save a boatload of money as these patients will not require pills or procedures.  Dr. Ornish has changed thousands of patients' lives primarily by changing the food on their plate!!

It sounds so simple.  Dr. Ornish has stated in his book, Undo It, that Lifestyle medicine is better than angioplasty and stents in treating most patients with stable coronary heart disease. Although stents and angioplasties have been the mainstay of treating coronary heart disease for almost 40 years, many people are shocked to learn that these are largely ineffective in treating patients with stable heart disease. Eight randomized controlled trials concluded that stents don't prevent heart attacks, don't reduce the need for bypass surgery, and don't prolong life in patients with stable coronary heart disease. In a recent editorial published in the Lancet, cardiologists wrote that the cardiology guidelines need to be updated and revised based on this groundbreaking information.  

Heart disease remains the #1 Killer in America today.  This disease doesn't even have to exist if only people realized that by changing the food on their plates, they can PREVENT, STOP THE PROGRESSION OF AND REVERSE this horrible disease.  Our body is more intelligent than any pill or procedure we have.  

As Dr. Ornish and several other physicians have repeatedly proven, a Whole Food Plant Based diet has the POWER to give our body what it needs to give us OPTIMAL HEALTH!

When we give our body what it needs, our body will heal itself.

What is "chronic disease"?  Chronic diseases now affect one in two Americans and account for 80% of our health-care costs.  Yet despite a host of new drugs and procedures, the incidence of chronic disease continues to rise, not only in the US, but around the globe as developing countries adopt our "Western Diet".  

Chronic diseases are all those conditions, ailments, and illnesses that make you sick and never really go away.  We can manage their symptoms and find occasional relief from them, but they tend to come back again and again.  

What are these diseases?  They include:

Heart disease
Hypertension
Type 2 diabetes
Gout
Arthritis
Depression
ADD
Gastric reflux
Inflammatory bowel disease
Osteoporosis
COPD
Asthma
Fibromyalgia
Kidney and liver ailments
Macular degeneration
Cancer
And the list goes on.....

There are four common characteristics that chronic disease tend to have:

#1  Chronic disease does not heal by themselves--they are not "self-limiting".  The common cold is self-limiting--it runs its course and then it's gone.  Not so with chronic illness.

#2  Chronic illnesses get worse over time.  Since the health-care is only treating the "symptoms", there is no return to health, just an ongoing management of recurring symptoms.  For instance, high blood pressure--most patients are given a pill to take to bring down the blood pressure--stop the medication and what happens?  The blood pressure goes up again.  A much better approach would be to FIND the REASON for the increase in blood pressure and FIX it.

#3  Chronic disease doesn't have a single cause one can point to, rather, several factors usually are occurring.

#4  Chronic illnesses tend to have complex symptoms--that is, the "sick" person has numerous different complaints and there are varying indications of illness.  

Because these chronic illnesses may have hard to specify causes and not one single origin, people think they have to live with these conditions.  Unless we make drastic changes in health-care, (unfortunately, what we have now is sick-care), many people are on a course toward a frail, sick old age in which they will spend most of their time going to doctors and popping pills.  

This does not have to happen!!  Right now our "standard medical model" addresses the symptoms of illness and focuses on coming up with a diagnosis and a pill to "fix" the ill.  However, there is a new science called Functional Medicine that searches for the "root problem", corrects it, and what happens??  The symptoms go away--no pills or procedures required.

Remember, the human body is more intelligent than any pill or procedure--our body is ALWAYS trying to keep all of our systems in balance and kill off any foreign invaders that come in through our diet and our environment to keep us running strong.  However, should something go "wrong" and we start to get "symptoms", the first step we usually take is to go to a physician who then gives us a pill which only masks the symptoms--we MUST get to the ROOT of problem and eliminate it.

This can only be done by learning HOW to personalize your own health-management program, then manage it to REVERSE or PREVENT chronic disease and live your life to the fullest!!

The FIRST AND FOREMOST step in taking back control of your health is to FIX YOUR DIET!  Every bite we take is either bringing us closer to HEALTH or closer to DISEASE.  We need to fill our plates with as many colors as we can mange to eat!  Vegetables and fruits are FILLED with disease-preventing, cancer-fighting, health-promoting vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, phytochemicals, etc.....The more vegetables and fruits we can eat in a day, the MORE our health will soar. 

With that being said, we have to PUSH OFF our plates all the "foods" that are making us sick--all the processed "food" that comes in boxes, bags, cartons, and bottles that have an ingredient list a paragraph long with ingredients we cannot pronounce--these food-like substances are not food our bodies are looking for.  Our bodies were not designed for this type of "food".  

Our grocery cart should look like this:

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The more veggies and fruits, the better your body will respond and begin the healing process.  

For more in-depth diet information, stayed tuned for my next post!!