If you take the larger view of health, then health is wholeness. If you use that definition, you can't just talk about nutrition. To me, most people know a lot more about being physically healthy than they put into practice. For me, the biggest question is why is that? I think the main reason for that is that if you are not inspired, and you not in love with being alive--where you have joy and are excited, and you can't believe how grateful you are for being alive--If you're not really, really positive about being alive, why would you do all the things that take effort that you do to remain healthy.
So, for me the first instruction is get inspired. Whatever that takes. Whether you have to lick rocks in the bottom of a creek, or have to go to church three times a day, or whether you can sit on a mountain for a year by yourself to try to get present in your own life--whatever it takes to get inspired is what you have to do. Otherwise, everything is just more work, more information, more stuff to do in a life that is already too harried and too much things to do and not worth living all that much.
If you're not inspired, you're most likely to only be motivated by pain, and disease is one of the things that motivates people when they're not inspired. But that kind of inspiration doesn't nearly have the quality of life and the possibility of enjoyment that getting inspired has. So, it's always better to chase the carrot than to run away from mistakes.
So, if you're inspired, it's not that difficult to be healthy. It takes effort, and a lot of what we have to do we already know. Fundamentally, physical health comes from living in line with Nature. So we're talking about fresh, raw, whole, organic. That was Nature's standard for as long as the planet's been spinning for every creature except for us. And, in that program, you need to get your green foods, the most important food on the planet, your essential nutrients which include, essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, minerals and vitamins. You need to make sure your digestive system works, so we use digestive enzymes, probiotics and fiber to do that. You want to get your anti-oxidants. All Whole foods contain them, greens are the richest source. You can also get them in supplement form; and phytonutrients, which are the herbs that were used for spicing and flavoring foods, like ginger and garlic, and green tea, and those kinds of things.
What disturbs health, Number 1, is to not be inspired, but Number two, three and four, poisoning your program for health, which is your genetic program with synthetics pesticides and plastics, pharmaceutical drugs, industrial chemicals, heavy metals, and a few other things like smoke, lack of REM interferes with health. Number 3, not getting enough of the essential building blocks, and Number 4 is not making sure digestion works. Because to get the building blocks that your body needs in order the build your body where everything works, digestive system has to be working. If it's not working, you will not get your building blocks, and you will create toxicity in your own body.
So those are the four: Inspiration, don't poison the program, optimize your building blocks, and make sure digestion works, if you want to be physically healthy.
There are four groups of essential nutrients, and about 40 essential nutrients. They include 20 minerals, 14 vitamins, 8 essential amino acids that come from protein, and 2 essential fatty acids that come from fat. If I had to pick one to focus on, I would pick the Omega 3 fatty acid simply because it is the most sensitive, the most damaged by processing. It is the most recent discovery of being essential, that was only discovered in 1981. And, it is the most commonly too low in the greatest number of people. 99.9 percent of the population doesn't get enough Omega 3 for optimum health. 99.9 percent. That's why I talk about there needs to be a bottle of Omega 3s in every fridge. Of course, they need to be made with health in mind, so that cuts out the fish oils, and that cuts out the cooking oils because they are damaged by the processing. They'll get you a million or more toxic molecules for every one of the body's 60 trillion cells in just one tablespoon, because of the damage done by the harsh processing and the cells' sensitivity to that damage.
Essential always means essential for all 40 of these essential nutrients. It means that your body can't make this stuff. It means you have to have them. Even though your body can't make it, you have to have it. And because you can't make it and you have to have it, it has to come in from outside. This also means that if you don't get enough you cannot stay healthy and your health will go down, and you will get deficiency symptoms. Those symptoms are degenerative in nature and look like our degenerative diseases. If you don't get enough long enough, then you die; and if you bring them back before you die, and bring them back in adequate quantities, then all the problems that come from not getting enough are reversed, and you get your health back. Also, we are not allowed to call a nutrient "essential" by the research scientists convention, until researchers have identified at least one biochemical reaction in the body in which that essential nutrient is needed, and without which that biochemical reaction in the body cannot take place.
So in the marketplace people would talk about "essential carbohydrates" and essential all-kinds-of-stuff, but those are not on the list. There are no "essential" carbohydrates on the list of essential nutrients at this point. Minerals, 20 of them, vitamins, 14, amino acids, 8, and fatty acids, 2, are on the list. And that's all that's on the list at this point.
Every cell, every tissue, every gland, and every organ has to have Omega 3 and Omega 6--both are essential, they need to be in the right ratio, they include being part of the structure of the cell membrane of every cell. They're required in vision, they're required in brain function, they're required in seratonin production, they improve nerve transmission, they speed learning, they increase IQ, they elevate mood and lift depression, they improve muscular development, they are required for wound healing, they increase stamina and performance. We've measured in athletes. They are major nutrients--we're talking a tablespoon for 50 pounds of body weight per day--that's a major nutrient. And they improve the function of our glands, they form a barrier in the skin against the loss of moisture, so they make skin nice--you tan better, you burn less--they help with skin conditions like excema, psoriasis, acne, dry skin, dandruff, cracked heels. They lower most cardiovascular risk factors if they're fresh, not damaged by processing. They increase oxygen metabolism--that's why they give you more stamina, but that's also one of the reasons why they improve cancer. They decrease inflammation, so all the "-itis" diseases can improve with Omega 3. They increase bone density by supporting the bone-making and inhibiting the bone breakdown cells. They are extremely important for brain development in the unborn child, and brain development after birth, and brain function in adults. They lower the symptoms of most of the neuro-degenerative diseases, and mental disorders. They help with premenstrual syndrome. They are required for reproduction. Males become sterile and females miscarry if they don't get essential fatty acids. They help with hair and nail growth, they are required for liver and kidney function. They improve digestion by decreasing leaky gut, and decrease the tendency for absorbing undigested food, which leads to allergies. Let's see, did I miss any part of the body? They literally are required by every cell in your body.
Because so many people don't get enough, and every cell needs them, is the reason why the research sums up the benefits they have to say that if you increase the Omega 3's in the diet, you improve the symptoms of virtually every major degenerative condition of our time, which means that all of these degenerative conditions that improve when you increase Omega 3's are at least in part caused by Omega 3 deficiency. That's why I think there should be a bottle in every fridge of a good Omega 3-Omega 6 combination. Omega 6 are similar to Omega 3's, except most people, unless they are on a low-fat diet, get enough Omega 3's along with some toxicity from the usual diet that people eat. That's why I emphasize the Omega 3, but both are essential, and they need to be in the right ratio, and they need to both be made with health rather than shelf life in mind, because they way they are usually made by the industry does a lot of damage to these absolutely essential nutrients in our diet.
Most of the oils that people buy in the supermarkets contain Omega 6's, but not Omega 3's, and that's why our diet is so out of kilter regarding Omega 6's and 3's. So what I do in the formula that I developed for essential fatty acids, I use about 50% of the blend for Omega 3's and 25% is Omega 6. So the ratio is 2:1. More Omega 3's because they are the ones that are missing from most people's diets and are required for health. Omega 6's are there because most people get their Omega 6's in a damaged form with a million toxic molecules for every cell in a tablespoon. They are associated with increased inflammation, increased cancer, and some forms of cardiovascular disease. So, my view is that people should be getting off those damaged Omega 6 oils, and they should be getting Omega 6's made with health in mind. The formula calls for organic Omega 3's and organic Omega 6's made under protection from light, oxygen and heat--not treated with drano, window-washing acid, bleach, and not heated to frying temperature, which is what happens to supermarket oils, all except extra virgin olive oil. So we do it that way because they are so easily damaged, and then instead of being good for health, they are good for disease.
MINERALS
The point of these minerals is that they are essential. Same deal. Your body can't make them, you've got to have them. They are structural or functional. Some of them are what make the enzymes work, some of them are what make your bones strong; some of them are important in energy reactions like magnesium is; some of them are important in wound healing like zinc is. Iodine is important both for the thyroid gland and female reproduction. Selenium is an anti-oxidant, that by itself can decrease cancer by 50%. So there are the ones that particularly have great history behind them. But you've got to have them, because if you don't get enough you cannot stay healthy. Same as with the essential fatty acids. They come from whole food, and they come from supplements. I do both. I eat whole foods as much as I can, I use a high dose multi-vitamin-multi-minerals supplement. I do not have a formula that I've produced, although I will eventually do that simply because there are a few relatively good formulas around.
Some of the minerals, particularly calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium--these are the minerals that we require the most of in our diet every day. These minerals, as well as the other minerals, these, because we need so much of them, have the effect of alkanilizing the body, along with oxygen, along with greens, along with bitter. The importance of alkanity is that if you become acidic, which is caused by preservatives such as sulfates and sulfites, and phosphates, or chlorides, which you find in the chlorinated water, or nitrates--which you find in the soil because of the fertilizer. Those make your body more acidic. When your body becomes more acidic, you begin to get more inflammation. When you get more inflammation, inflammation is behind many of the major degenerative conditions, including osteoporosis, at least some cancers, at least some form of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and of course all of the "-itis" diseases like arthritis and rhuematoid arthritis. Inflammation is a key common denominator factor behind those conditions. And, at least one of the causes of inflammation is not enough minerals in the diet, and acidification of the body. The inflammation leads to poor circulation, and the poor circulation then leads to poor nutrient supply, poor oxygenation, and poor removal of waste products. So that gets you tissue toxicity that, again, then leads to degenerative conditions.
CALCIUM MAGNESIUM RATIO
The ratio I like is a little richer in magnesium than calcium. The reason for that is that more people are deficient in magnesium than are deficient in calcium. So, the ratio that I like a lot is 1.2:1--a little bit more magnesium. There are people who go higher than that with magnesium. The usual recommendation is twice as much calcium as magnesium. I find people get better results when they get that ratio closer to 1:1, and maybe even richer in magnesium. There are also some issues about the form it's in. If you have magnesium oxide, if your stomach acid isn't strong, which is often the case in older people, but also sometimes in younger, then you get poor absorption of it. The citrates are easier to absorb. There are amino acid chelates that are easy to absorb, but usually more expensive. Then there's a form of lactate that is apparently one of the best forms to absorb. You get that in liquid tinctures. One of them comes from Salus-Haus for about three generations.
AMINO ACIDS
The major advice there is that if you eat only whole foods--whole grains, fresh vegetables, seeds and nuts, and eggs, dairy, meat, fish--white meat, red meat, fish--you will never go short of protein. If you were to eat only vegetables, seeds and nuts, you would not become deficient in proteins, because everything that is alive has in it proteins that are part of the stucture and part of the function of that creature. Even if it's vegetable. If you are are bodybuilder, if you work out more than is normal for human beings, you may have to go to the more meat and eggs sources, but if you eat nothing but whole foods--but of course, nobody does these days. In the sugar there is no protein. In the white flour a lot of the protein has been lost--about a third of it. If you are using white oils, there is no protein in those. If you are using white fats there is no protein in those--the margarines and shortenings. If you eat candy, there's no protein in that. So there's a lot of things we eat that have had at least in part or all of the protein removed. But if we go back to only whole foods, which I highly recommend we do--from a point of view of health--then protein deficiency is very unlikely unless you have very, very serious digestion problems, which may be the case in very old people, very sick people, or people who are overly active, they may need more protein than they can get from green vegetables. But there are lots of vegetarian body-builders that don't eat animal products. They get it from seeds and nuts which are quite high in protein. Almonds have four times more protein per weight than steak does, partly because when you eat steak, part of the steak is water.
Somebody asked me, "Well, don't have to eat steak?" I say, "Well, cows make your steaks, but they make them out of grass." So, obviously, there's enough protein in grass to make the steaks in a cow. Our digestive system is a little different, so we may not be able to do it on grass, but the point is there obviously is protein in all of our vegetables. In spirulina it's 6%, in nutritional yeast it's about 60% nutrition, and in almonds, it's up there, too, about 40-60%.
In the formulas I developed Wholesome FastFood Blend, which is really a fiber product, and Beyond Greens have proteins that come from seeds and nuts: flax, sunflower, sesame, mainly. In terms of protein powders, I don't use them. I know lots of people who swear by them. I don't use them because we are a very protein conscious society--and we like our eggs, we like our steak, we like our chicken, we like our turkey, we like our pork, and we like our dairy products. Those are all high-protein products, and if anything I'd say most people get too much protein rather than too little in this society. The downside to protein is it'll leach minerals from your body, so you need more minerals. The example I like to give is, we're told to eat between 1200 and 2000 milligrams of calcium per day. But there are tribes in Africa that eat mostly vegetables--they only get 300 mgs of calcium and they get no osteoporosis. They also are cattle herders and they do a lot of walking, but mostly what they eat is vegetables. Because they eat much less meat than we do, they don't get the leaching of minerals from the bones that high-protein diets cause.
I'll give you one other example. The Eskimo diet, which is very high in protein, because they don't eat any vegetables--on ice flows nothing like that grows--so the seals, whales and fish high-protein diet, low in vegetables, and one of the two main causes of death they had was osteoporosis, bone loss, then the second was burst blood vessle/stroke. Both are the result of less minerals, especially in the body, as well as not much Vitamin C, which was important for the strength of arteries.
You know that advertising is not for the sake of health, it's for the sake of selling.
When proteins are metabolized in the body, minerals are used up in the process, so the minerals go out of the body through the urine with amino acid metabolites. Then you become less akaline, and you become more acidic. When you become more acidic minerals have to be taken from the bones to replace the minerals taken out of the body because they are required in other tissues as well, so the bones are the storage, and you're getting more minerals coming out of the bone than going into the bone because you're dumping so much through the protein metabolism, so your bones get weaker.
If you become acidic, that's very toxic. If your body became a slight pH--not a whole point, but just a very small amount of pH different from normal, you would check out. So the bones are used to alkalinize the body when the body is becoming acidic from whatever is causing the acid, and that includes poor circulation as well.
We do get calcium in dairy products, but one of the things we're not getting is magnesium. The ratio of magnesium to calcium is 1:8. So lots of calcium, not much magnesium, and in the milk for long term, probably not enough calcium, either. There are people who argue that we get enough calcium from milk, but for sure we don't get enough magnesium from milk.
The point is we are getting acidic because we're dumping the minerals from the high-protein diet. And we go to the bank, which we call the bones, and we say, Let me withdraw some calcium, and sooner or later the bank goes bust, and your bones fall apart, and that's the problem. When you eat vegetables that doesn't happen. You then build your bones with vegetables, and I would, frankly, recommend green vegetables to build the bone bank over dairy products. Why is that? Because we know that the Africans that eat mostly vegetables can maintain their bones on only 300 mgs., and we're getting 1200 to 2000 and getting osteoporosis. Our recommendations are much higher and our intake is much higher because of our intake of dairy. So we need a lot more because we're on these acid forming and particularly high-protein diets.
By the way, vegetable proteins have more alkaline amino acids themselves. YOu have some acid ones, some alkaline ones and some neutral ones, and vegetable proteins have more alkaline amino acids than animal products.
So, eat your veggies. But get inspired. Otherwise you won't eat your veggies. I have a friend in Texas who said, "I didn't claw my way up the food chain to eat vegetables." He's a dyed-in-the-wool meat eater. But I've got to tell you--I'm 15 years older than he is, and I'm in much better shape than he is. Because I don't mind the idea of clawing my way to the top of the food chain and eating vegetables. I don't mind that at all.
VITAMINS
The single highest vitamin deficiency is Vitamin B6. The highest mineral deficiency is magnesium. If you don't get enough your body won't work. That's the law. They're required in digestion of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and they play a ton of co-factor functions in the body. Absolutely gotta have 'em. If you didn't get any B6 at all, that would kill you. If you didn't get enough Vitamin C, that would kill you. You get scurvy. When you get scurvy, your blood vessels break down so you get bleeding gums, that's one of the visible signs, but eventually your blood vessels will break down inside, and you will bleed to death internally from lack of Vitamin C. Scurvy is a symptom that gets worse over time on your way down to checking out.
It wasn't long ago, in fact, that the reason the English became the world language was because there was a physician in England in the 16th Century by the name of Lund, who figured out that limes would prevent scurvy. They didn't know it was Vitamin C, but they knew scurvy was a problem for the sailors. They used to die on long ocean voyages from scurvy, from bleeding to death. And Brittania ruled the waves for several centuries because the sailors had limes and that protected them from dying of scurvy. So it wasn't their prowess, it was just that they could outlast and out-stay-alive the other people who were eating salted pork, their mainstay, and that doesn't have Vitamin C in it.
If the Dutch had learned about Vitamin C or limes, then Dutch would be the world language. There were lots of other sailors. It could have been the Portugese, the Spanish, it could have been the Norwegians, but because the English figured out the Vitamin C problem--the scurvy problem--Brittania took over all of the world, and that's why English is the Number 1 language in the world. Now isn't that interesting?
Bioflavanoids are not considered essential nutrients, although they could be, just like some of the herbal principals could be considered essential nutrients. But they haven't figured out a specific biochemical reaction in the body that requires them. They used to call them Vitamin P--that was the permeability factor--and they are also important for keeping the blood vessels from breaking down. So where do you get your Vitamin C? You get it in vegetables, and you get it in fruit. Bioflavonoids accompany Vitamin C in whole foods. Sometimes you can get them as a supplement along with Vitamin C. Sometimes the Vitamin C is given separately. You can augment that with a supplement, but you cannot eat junk and flip a few pills and figure that's going to do the job. There's a whole lot more in foods than you find in supplements. You can add supplements to a good food program, but they are not a substitute for eating properly, which is fresh or raw and organic.
FIBER, ENZYMES & PROBIOTICS
They are not absorbed into the body in any appreciable amounts, but they make sure the digestive system works properly. Digestive enzymes help digest the food, break it down into the building blocks that can then be absorbed, and the genetic program can then use the building blocks. But when we cook food, we destroy these enzymes. They should be replaced at least any time we eat cooked food. But the people who eat nothing but raw foods tell me that when they take enzymes with raw food it helps with the digestion of the raw food. Raw food have some enzymes in them that do at least a part of the digestion--at 10 to 90 percent of the digestion. So the enzymes are very important, especially when you eat cooked food. Otherwise, you overload your digestive system, you burn out your pancreas, then you start getting gas and bloating, and allergies; and you can get auto-immune conditions, and lots of problems when digestion isn't working. So that's the enzymes.
I actually have six formulas for digestive enzymes: for kids, for teenagers, this is mainly for a junk food diet; for adults--it's a very high protease formula. Then one I've been working with for a while called the Ultimate Enzyme Blend.
Probiotics, same story. Probiotics are bacteria. They are alive. They protect us from unfriendly bacteria in our digestive tract. When we cook our food we kill the ones that come on raw food, so they should be replace. I tell people to open a capsule of these probiotics on their tongue, then brush their teeth with it, and then swallow and don't rinse their mouth. Because the mouth is the most vulnerable part of the digestive system, and when the start on top and work their way down the whole system, they get to do the maximum amount of good, because they make substances that are absorbed into the body. They strengthen immune function. They also improve the covering of the inside of the digestivfe tract that protects the inside of our digestive tract from acids and enzymes, abrasion and unfriendly microorganisms. They also help to take down cholesterol to some extent. But particularly, they out-populate and inhibit the growth and field of food for unfriendly bacteria that are everywhere. They are what I call the rot bacteria. They're everywhere. Their job is to take apart dead things, and as long as we're alive we really want to inhibit their growth in our body.
The third is fiber. Certain kinds of fiber escorts toxins out of the body. They are called musilage fiber. The formula that I developed is called Wholesome Fast Food Blend. And the fiber in that escorts cholesterol and bile acids out of the body, escorts toxins the liver dumps out of the body. Without that kind of fiber, a lot of the cholesterol, bile acids and toxins are reabsorbed into the body. They absorb tons of water, so they are very good for bowel regularity. The fiber is very soothing, so it's also helpful in Irritable Bowel, and along with probiotics and Omega 3's that help heal that sort of problem. That fiber is also the favorite food of the probiotics, so they reproduce better, and implant better, and give you better service. So your digestion is better when you have that kind of fiber in your diet.
ANTIOXIDANTS
Again, green foods are the best source. All whole foods contain them because all living creatures have to protect themselves from them--random damage done by oxygen and some other chemicals on the planet, both naturally present and synthetic. Their job is to neutralize what we call free radicals. Free radicals are like terrorists on the molecular level. They go around and so stupid things everywhere. So antioxidants protect you from that because they pick them off one by one as they appear in the body. If we don't have them, we get random damage that speeds aging, and we die earlier.
LOSING WEIGHT
First of all, if you want to do the whole diet, greens is Number 1 on a diet for weight management. Because you cannot get overweight on greens. If you ate nothing but greens, there is no way you could get overweight. What makes most people overweight is too many sweets and too many carbs--the bread, the pasta, the potatoes, the breakfast cereal, pancakes, waffles, potato chips, french fries. They honey, syrup, sugar, and all the things sweetened by them--the cakes and the cookies--all that stuff. That's where most of the overweight comes from. On the American food pyramid, they were put on the base of the pyramid for a very long time. Now that they made the food pyramid different, it's more screwed up than ever, and is completely un-understandable. I would put greens on the bottom of the food pyramid. On my website, by the way, there are some food pyramids with that on it--which if you want, you can cut and paste onto your website.
So greens are first, then good fats and proteins are on the second level because they have essential nutrients. The fuel goes on the third level. Never eat more fuel than you burn, because if you don't burn it, you're going to wear it as overweight. Everything you eat that you don't burn gets turned into fat, and that fat is for storage, hoping there's going to be a famine--then you can survive better than a skinny person if there's a famine. But we don't have famines in North America, so what we do is have lots of feasts, get overweight--we don't have the famine, so we store all that stuff. So we have to limit what we eat to what we burn. What we burn depends on how active we are. If you're working on the farm by hand with a shovel, or you're in the rice paddy weeding the rice by hand and you're in there and it's cold water and you're losing lots of energy, or if you're an athlete who's really physically very active, you can eat lots of carbs and burn them off. But if you're sedentary, you need to limit your carb intake. And what you use as fuel instead is the good fat. And the good fats, especially the missing Omega 3, turns on fat burning, turns up heat production, and turns off fat production in the body. The carbs turn on fat production and turn off fat burning, so overweight people have a hard time losing body fat, because they can't get it burning as long as they keep eating carbohydrates. That's why we say, Make a fuel shift. Lower your carb intake, increase your good oil intake. The good oils will turn on your fat burning, you'll have more energy, you're more likely to be active--because overweight people always complain about not having any energy and being tired all the time. That's because you can't get the fat burning, and that's because you're eating the wrong foods to get that done. The Omega 3's do that beautifully. So 99.9% of the population, or the 65% of the population that is overweight, that's just one of the symptoms that 99.9% of the population gets from not having an optimum of Omega 3's in their diet.
So at least in part overweight is caused by not enough Omega 3's in the diet. And the other main part of it is too many carbohydrates in the diet. So we call that the fuel shift. Use good fats for energy instead of carbs, and you'll be amazed at how quickly you lose fat. Now there is some overweight information as well, where you are retaining water in the tissues, and the Omega 3's help with that as well. The carbs actually get you to retain water. So in both ways of overweight Omega 3's help you and carbs hurt you. This is completely contradictory to what we were told 20 years ago. We were told to eat less fat, more carbs, and in 20 years of following that advice, overweight went from 25% to 65% of the population. Now we need to do the opposite--eat less carbs and more good fats, and we'll be able to reverse that. Honestly, other than not being inspired to do that, that's all it takes to get it done. Exercise, of course, helps because that way you're going to burn more fat, and so you'll get to your normal weight quicker. Plus, the body was made for activity. You've got to be active. If you're not active, you're going to die young. If you're not active and you're overweight, my view is, Really enjoy your life, because it's going to be a short one. Get inspired and stay inspired!