From the time we are born we begin an often slow and bumpy progression toward the end of life. Through the ages that humans evolved, some 150,000 years or thereabouts, the average lifespan has varied dramatically. Apart from accidents that prematurely ended a life, the lifespan is primarily related to the recipe of life that is followed. Looking at families, we often find a pattern passed from generation to generation, a pattern of living. Most people do and live as their parents and grandparents did, following a similar lifestyle, diet and environment. So their lifespan was similar from generation to generation. Exceptions occurred where one person would live to a 100 plus years of age and often be self sufficient for their whole lifetime. Other members could be much younger and be reliant on others due to diseases of premature aging. Most would be suffering from some disease that has some degree of debilitation associated with it. Close examination of the recipe of life that is being followed would often show a pattern of toxaemia, - a build up of toxicity over a lifetime. Most toxicity would be due to what is taken through the mouth, some would be attributable to what is breathed and to what is absorbed through the skin, and some to what may have been injected into veins and muscle.
The aging process – take ownership and control of your body and your health, remember it is the only one you have and if it breaks down where will you live.
There are many things that go on in our bodies on a daily basis causing us to age, one way or the other.
Oxidation is one of them, characterised by many things. The extremes of oxidation are the cause of premature death due to dietary, environmental and lifestyle choices. If we take a glass of clean water to represent our body, which incidentally is about 72% water and add to it a small amount of a strong oxidant in the form of iodine. We now have a representation of a toxic body state. Ideally this is not good as we use up a lot of energy to try and sustain our life in this state. However it is readily reversible by adding anti-oxidants such as vitamins found in fresh fruit and vegetables, and in particular vitamin C. In this case the vitamin C is coming from a lemon. Mixing the juice of a lemon in the glass of water it quickly neutralises the iodine and clears the water. However there are some other things in there that make it less than palatable, as evidenced by the chemical smell.
Fruit such as an apple have natural anti-oxidants present, but in small amounts. When the apple is cut in half, it quickly begins to turn brown as the available anti-oxidants are used up. This browning can be delayed by adding the juice of a lemon to the cut surface. This oxidising effect is caused by oxygen atoms binding with other atoms causing an imbalance called free radicals. This begins a chain reaction as the unstable molecules capture adjoining electrons momentarily and attack other molecules that in this case are part of our body cells. This imbalance can be readily neutralised by anti-oxidants or protector inhibitor nutrients.
Mice that have been genetically modified so that after birth they do not absorb anti-oxidants die within a very short time. Fortunately for us, given the right conditions, we are able to absorb anti-oxidants and maintain a level sufficient to neutralise attacks from free radicals so that our life is not compromised.
The paradox with anti-oxidants is that we need to breathe oxygen to live and this is one of the things that causes oxidation and free radicals.
A series of tests were made some time ago using an anti-oxidant scanner which measured the levels of carotinoids in the skin which is directly related to the anti-oxidants available. The interesting thing observed was that people who lived on the SAD diet had a low level of anti-oxidants. Supplementation with vitamin pills marginally increased the levels of anti-oxidants in some subjects, sometimes, depending on the manufacture and the ingredients in the pill. Vegetarians who ate a mix of raw and cooked fruit and vegetables had significantly higher levels again. The highest levels were observed in people who lived on a raw vegan diet and took nothing that was manufactured. These are the people who rarely if ever have a cold and who can run a marathon one day and get up and run again the next day. The recuperative strength is amazing.
Metabolism also has a bearing on the aging process. When we chew the plants in our mouths it is called making the bolus, a Latin word meaning “round mass” or “lump of earth.” Metabolize comes of “meta” meaning, “after change” and bolus to, “throw a lump”. Metabolising what we eat then means how we change that into a state that we can absorb.
The body is made up of some 65 billion cells, skin cells, muscle cells, bone cells to name a few types. Each cell has a DNA that tells it what it is and how to remake itself and how to reproduce itself, it is in fact akin to a bundle of plans and specifications for a building construction. However if the DNA is damaged by free radicals, then their reproduction may not be complete and accurate and the cell may be defective. Subsequent reproduction will replicate this defect and may well add further defects This can be mitigated by first minimising damage through adequate levels of anti-oxidants and secondly by the presence of enzymes. Although enzymes do not take part they are a catalyst in forming the repair. Enzymes oversee the reproduction and ensure that any imperfections are remedied immediately. The DNA is subjected to damage caused by up to 10,000 hits per day which if not repaired will gradually over a period of years cause mutations. These mutations may take 10, 20, 30, or more years to manifest in the form of degenerative diseases and conditions.
The DNA is unique to you and has taken over 150,000 years to evolve and the legacy in the evolutionary cycle is you.
The damage to the DNA in the aging process is readily visible, look at the reflection in the mirror, and compare it to your baby photo. Is there a difference? Our cells are continually renewed and over time our whole body is renewed. Albeit modified due to the periodic damage suffered by the DNA that is not 100% repaired.
The body continuously replaces cells, look at the flakes of skin that we shed on a daily basis. The cells are replaced about every three months.
Again going back a 100 years ago, if a person had a heart attack, it took a specialist doctor to diagnose as it was so uncommon. Now heart disease is the most common disease in the western world.
These 65 million cells that make up the body all have a component called a mitochondria that is the power plant for the cell. When converting the simple sugars to energy, about 5 % produce oxygen free radicals which are able to attack the DNA. If there is a surplus of anti-oxidants available then this threat is neutralised or at least minimised.
The diseases that are prevalent in western society such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes are not caught from someone breathing on you or sneezing near you. They are all a result of what has happened to you as result of choices that you have made or have been foisted upon you. Some of these choices may have been made without fully understanding that they could in time result in these diseases developing. Such things as contaminated air or water from urban environments or the spraying of herbicides and pesticides in rural environments.
Probably the most common thing in western society that causes these diseases is the food we eat and what we drink. How often do we see families or small communities that follow very similar diets from generation to generation and all experience similar outcomes in terms of diseases and age related disability. Then there is the odd rebel within these groups who for one reason or another follows a different lifestyle recipe. This one may change after starting to experience the early symptoms of these diseases and find that after a period of time that the symptoms start to remit. Just because diseases develop, it does not mean that they cannot be cured, in medical parlance, or in natural terms, reversed.
During the mid 18th century there were two members of the French academy of science, one was Louis Pasteur, the other was Antoine Bechamp. There were great arguments between the pair as to what caused diseases. Pasteur had the germ theory, all diseases were as a result of germs. Bechamp and another contemporary, Claude Bernard, on the other hand believed that all diseases were as a result of the inner terrain, the condition of the body and in particular as to how toxic the body was. Pasteur and the fledgling allopathic medical system recognised that it would be more profitable and controllable to sell medicines to kill or control the germs. The fact that the germs would return at the first opportunity was a guarantee of continual income. The medical system at the time steered clear of Bechamp and his theory of toxicity because the treatment to change the condition of the inner terrain was simple, change the lifestyle. There were no skilled procedures or patent medicines involved. It was not a case of do it for me and make me well again, it was up to the person to change their ways and once changed and maintained the disease would reverse and never be experienced again.
However the western world is now experiencing the largest increase in the older population with the baby boomers born after the second world war who are now entering the latter part of life. Looking ahead, most people are reluctantly looking forward to declining health and mobility. Restricting their lifestyle and enjoyment, being a burden on the health system and their families and ending up living either dependant upon the family or in care.
The alternative is to change now if you are in that group or any group and take ownership and control of your body and your life. When you think about it, you only have one house in which you can live, without it where are you going to go. There is no one else who will try harder to keep you going than you, what’s the point. So look after the physical body, the longer it lives and the healthier it is the better of you will be.
The ancient Egyptians spoke of the river of life in the human body. What they were referring to was the alimentary canal and in particular the lower part of that canal, the colon. Along with the other ancient civilisations they realised that if the colon didn’t work properly then the whole body was compromised. Ask anyone you know who has suffered from constipation. Their river of life stopped flowing temporarily and in doing so became very toxic. Getting the flow going again quite often required some extreme measures which I do not plan to elaborate on in this discourse, but a vivid imagination may help.
100,000 YEARS OF EVOLUTION
Looking back in time to the earliest appearance of homo sapiens on this earth, some 150,000 years ago and thinking of how they would have lived. Here’s a scenario, they looked around them to see what was edible for a start. There would have no doubt been a lot of green, grasses, shrubs and trees year round. Then there would have been tubers and roots, also year round that would have been edible. Seasonal changes would have seen the appearance of berries, fruits, vegetables, seeds and nuts among other things that were edible. Experience would have been rather a severe teacher, in some cases in learning what plants or parts were poisonous and to be avoided at all costs. No doubt they would come across an animal from time to time that would be killed and eaten. Essentially we lived as gatherers and hunters, gathering stuff that grew, a relatively simple activity. The hunting would have been restricted in the main most likely to small animals, birds and fish. The daunting task of hunting a woolly mammoth or a bison on a regular basis or shopping for the same at Coles or Woolworths defies logic. The energy and the danger involved would mean that many people would live their whole life without experiencing the hunt for large animals. What I am surmising is that the diet would have been predominately a vegetarian diet with a supplement of raw flesh, much in the way that we tend to consume oysters au naturale.
There would have been in some areas severe seasonal cycles of feast and famine bought about by drought, fire and flood. The ability to mitigate these effects would have been limited, however bear in mind that it would have been a lot easier to migrate into more prolific and consistent areas. Apart from young and old family members, moving would have been relatively simple, no cats to the cattery or dogs to the kennels, or homes to be sold. The severe effects that a more sedentary population would have suffered would be somewhat less in some respects.
Thinking back over the last 20 years in Australia, if we didn’t have the wonders of the 21st century to help us, our food supply no doubt would have been compromised. We would have experienced some lean times between the long drought, bushfires and floods. We no doubt would have experienced some times of extreme famine as has been the experience in recent times in parts of Africa. The western world for the most part, particularly over the last few hundred years has only in the main experienced feast cycles. However at what cost to our health has the 21st century lifestyle been.
Looking again at the early man and his food, he evolved along side of foods like apples, peaches, plums, carrots, taro, sweet potato, sunflower, raspberries, dandelion and mustard to name a few. The fore runners of these would in some cases bear little resemblance to what we now know, however the genetic origins are there and the imprint is in our genes and DNA that allows us to identify the food and how to deal with it when we eat it. Given these foods in their identifiable form, that is a whole food, the body knows how to digest it and what to do with it. Then the body can build the strength it needs to survive and function as an efficient, robust and healthy being in which you can live. This will enable a long and stress free life where any attacks from bacteria or other microbes can be dealt with and suppressed. Where any physical damage occurs then providing it is not too severe and any skin breakages are not too bad then the body can heal itself. Even to the extent where say a joint on a finger is severed, then the stub will, given the right conditions regrow the severed part. Most of us would have experienced a cut that left a significant scar when it healed and some years later when you go looking for it, the scar is no longer there, despite the fact that maybe the cosmetic surgeon didn’t get to have a practice on it. The body knows how if it is only left alone to do its job.
About 10,000 years ago in the Indus valley and Mesopotamia there was the start of a revolution that would lead to what we know as the industrial food system. Someone observed some seeds growing on grasses that could in the right time be gathered and crushed to produce what was the forerunner of flour. The seeds that were spilt and left on the ground grew the next season and produced a usable head of seed. Some bright spark then quickly figured out that instead of having to hunt all over the place to collect enough seed to grind into flour why not stir up some cleared ground and scatter some seeds there in a controlled manner. This meant that all the usable heads were in one place and during the growing season they could be protected and nurtured. Some dreamer observing these crops realised that some heads were more prolific than others and decided to save only the most robust and prolific specimens for planting the next season, so began the art of selective breeding. Today we end up with varieties of cereal that have all sorts of different traits that fulfil the specific requirements of the industrial food processors. Never mind that the grain from which the flour was ground some 10,000 years ago produced a loaf of whole grain that included all the parts. Now the grain is processed so that all the constituent parts are extracted and the flour only is used to produce a loaf. Too bad the body asks where is the rest of it so that at least it has all the enzymes necessary to digest it and identify what it really is. This is one example of what happens in the industrial food system.
Until recently you could search the internet and find what was in a serve of French fries that you would buy from McDonalds. It has been taken down now, however there were some 83 ingredients listed, mind you most of them only as traces. So from a potato, a little fat or oil and some salt, the industrial food system adds all these other ingredients and my guess is that they were not all added for their nutritional benefit. Just maybe some of these ingredients are unintentionally adding to the toxic load that the body is subjected to in the twenty first century and at some future time this toxicity will overwhelm and the outcomes dealt with one way or another.
The 80 other ingredients or additives in the French fries are typical of the 100,000 food additives that are approved around the world. Mind you not all authorities approve the same ones, there is a vast discrepancy. What one country forbids, another will approve. Some countries have an abysmal record of approving toxic additives upon payment of an appropriate fee. The next time you look at or buy potato chips with some flavouring have a look at the ingredient list. A simple list of say potato, oil and salt becomes a list as long as your arm, some of the ingredients are numbers or names of things that you never hear of in a vegetable garden. These additives make up the 4kg per year that the average person on a SAD diet would ingest. If you think of it in terms of sugar or flour, that is a lot of stuff to eat.
We assume that these additives are approved for us by the relevant authorities who have our best interests in mind. This is not necessarily so, many have been approved and then subsequently withdrawn much to the chagrin of the manufacturers and suppliers. There are some 5000 combinations of additives banned in Australia that are approved for consumption in the US and Europe.
The problem with these additives is that they build up in the body over time. The effect is not immediate, in fact the effect can manifest long after the additive has been ingested. Only when another additive arrives and reacts with the dormant one does it become a problem and lead to an ailment. By that time the original additive may have been long forgotten and overlooked when looking for a cause of the condition.
One solution to the problem of additives is to stay clean. Our society makes it difficult as the industrial food industry is so entrenched in the food supply chain. A simple solution is only to eat whole foods and keep away from drugs. Two examples of drugs as additives is where antibiotics are added to animal feed and the residue ends up in the meat you eat and the milk that you drink.
Some of the approved additives make you wonder who has their eye on the ball, so to speak. Added calcium to manufactured milk. Have you ever heard of a poddy calf fed whole milk directly from its mother developing osteoporosis when it grows to adult hood. Australia, New Zealand and the USA are among the highest per capita consumers of dairy products, plenty of calcium there for your bones we are told. What we are not told is that among other things the dairy actually produces an acid residue that the body has to somehow neutralise.
One way is to actually deplete the bones of calcium and magnesium, and compromise their strength. A paradox. The strongest animals in the world suckle their young, upon weaning they never drink milk again. The thing is that these animals get their bone building minerals of calcium and magnesium not from milk but from things green, - grasses and leaves. When someone says to you, “ but where do you get your calcium from. …” you now know.
Sugars ain’t all the same. There are large molecules and small molecules, simple sugars and complex sugars, natural sugars and manufactured sugars and artificial sweeteners.
The consumption of sugar has increased over the last 150 years from about 1 kg of sugar per year to about 55 kg per year. Little of this increase has been in complex sugars but rather in refined sugars used in manufactured foods and drinks. One large problem is that the body finds these sugars rapidly enter the blood stream and cross the blood- brain barrier. This increases the blood sugar and the body panics and produces large amounts of insulin to minimise the shock. In doing so the net result is that a lot of this excess sugar is converted to fat, unhealthy fat. An energy spike is experienced which is often recognised as a feel good condition. However it does not last and so off for the next hit. Complex sugars such as those found in fruit and vegetables on the other hand need to be broken down by the body before they can be absorbed into the blood stream. This takes time and doesn’t usually produce a spike in blood sugar levels. The result is that the energy levels are much more sustainable and tend to last longer between recharges and the energy is used up and not converted to fat.
WATER
Water is after air the most important thing for us to take into our bodies. Without water the body rapidly dehydrates and dies. The human body is about 72% water. If you’ve ever found a dehydrated carcase of a dead animal you’ll know how much water there is in the body. Most people in the western world are severely dehydrated. We need to stay hydrated, well hydrated at that. The brain is 80% water. Each day we need to drink about one litre of water per 22 kg of body weight. No you wont have water sloshing around inside of you and no you wont spend half your day in the toilet. If you’ve ever neglected to water a pot plant, which I’d find it difficult to believe that any of you would do such a thing. The thing is the plants roots dry out and the soil around them dries out. If you pour water on the soil and roots, it runs straight through. Soak the pot in water until it re-hydrates, leave it for a day and pour the same amount of water onto it, you’ll probably find that little if any water flows through it straight away or if at all and most of it is absorbed. The same with the human body, it takes a while to flow through when it is adequately hydrated. The average person is dehydrated, if your urine has any more than a slight tinge of straw colouring in it, then you are dehydrated, so drink up. No, you wont flush out all the electrolytes and collapse. Just try it and see if you feel pleasantly different. The average person used to weigh 70kg, that’s what the pilot uses in calculating the take off weight of his aircraft, this is out of date and needs to be increased, but 70kg, needs about 3 litres and another cupful per day of water to stay hydrated. Freshly crushed and cold pressed juices counts as water. The average person only drinks about 1 litre of water a day. Over a year that is nearly four 44 gallon drums or 800 litres you’ve missed out on, more than enough to fill the wading pool a couple of times. Things like tea, coffee and alcohol are diuretics so the equivalent amount has to be added to the 3 litres. You may have had the experience in your misspent youth to have drunk a little too much booze and the next morning you’re dry as and your head is demanding immediate attention. That is because the whole body is low on moisture and the sooner you re-hydrate the better.
Whatever water you drink is utilised by the body in a controlled manner. The brain, being boss gets first go then the other organs and so on until either everything is fully hydrated again or else the water runs out and some parts are left a little dry. One part of the body that is often dehydrated and left a little dry are the discs in the back. When fully hydrated they are plump and full of fluid and keep the vertebrae separated and able to articulate fully. When they become dehydrated, this allows the discs to compress and allow the vertebrae to perhaps grind on one another and to squash the nerves that come from the spinal cord.
You’ve heard of pinched nerves and compressed discs. Well before looking for the steroids or worse still the knife, consider a good few extra glasses of water each day to re-hydrate yourself.
This de-hydration also affects the colon and what is passing through it. The colon takes moisture from the matter passing through it. If you are dehydrated the bowel matter is also dehydrated. Guess what, it is hard and dry, difficult to move through the colon and is one significant cause of constipation. When a bowel motion does take place, not everything moves. What is on the outside can stick to the walls and de-hydrate and putrefy more and add to the toxic load in the colon. Not only that but the colon can enlarge to accommodate this material and in doing so becomes lethargic and makes it even more difficult to pass. Paradoxically, the colon in this condition cannot absorb moisture as it should and the stool may be very liquid while the body is dehydrated.
When the body is fully hydrated, water that we drink is used to flush out all the body and exchange body fluids on a continual basis.
ENZYMES
Enzymes are the life force of the foods we eat. They are an essential part of our diet and although they do not nourish the body they are the catalysts that allow the food we eat to do so. A simple test to see if the enzymes are fully active is to test the food and see is live and if it will grow. Seeds, nuts, fruits and vegetables that have been heat treated or radiated in some way have all had the enzymes compromised and hence will not do their job. The body will have to draw on its reserves to digest the food and drink and after these are depleted, then life is no more. Enzymes are necessary to help with the repair and rebuilding of damaged DNA and to limit the effects of aging.
Enzymes can readily be found in the diet, providing the food has not been heated above about 55C. Anything that has been cooked, pasteurised or heat treated in any way has had the enzymes destroyed. Raw food has live enzymes that when eaten can act as catalysts where necessary to repair and rebuild DNA. This is particularly important in mitigating the effects of aging. It is important to eat a significant amount of food each day that has not been depleted of its enzymes. Enzymes are particularly important in building protein. The body makes protein from its precursors, nitrogen and amino acids. Nitrogen may come from the air we breathe or as a by product of the breakdown of plant or animal protein. Amino acids may be ideally gained as first source from plant foods or secondarily as second source from the breakdown of protein during the digestion process. When amino acids and nitrogen are combined by the body to build protein, the catalyst is the enzymes.
IMMUNE SYSTEM (Which is not really a system but a concept that helps with understanding)
The immune system is one thing that is severely compromised by the SAD diet of western nations. 70% of the immune system is in the intestine and the colon. Ideally this should be a clean river of life, free of obstructions, debris and toxins. For those who have had the pleasure of nurturing a new born baby, you will know that within one to two hours of being fed, there will be a bowel motion. Good things in, bad things out! This does not mean that the milk that the baby drank has passed through in that short time frame. There may be six or eight feeds being processed at different stages along the length of the alimentary canal at any one time. As we grow the gut matures and is able to ideally limit the elimination process to two or three a day. The adult human intestine is about 6m long and the colon is about 1.5m long. The intestines have about 400 million tiny villi, tiny threads that absorb nutrients as they are moved through.
When food is eaten it begins the digestion process in the mouth where it is mixed with saliva. Once in the stomach it is subjected to some very harsh acids to help quickly breakdown the food and drink that has been ingested. The stomach lining is also subjected to these harsh acids, but it is protected by a mucosal lining that is continually sloughed off and replaced. Once the stomach has finished with breaking down the food, it is then slowly released into the intestines where the majority of the nutrients are absorbed.
The final absorption of nutrients and moisture takes place in the colon. Eventually ending at the end of the colon or the rectum to be eliminated. Ideally elimination should follow sometime after a meal as the electrical forces within the newly ingested live foods take effect in stimulating peristolsis. The time that the alimentary canal takes to process food from eating to elimination should be as short be as 8 to 12 hours. This depends upon whether meat and other less easily digested food is eaten or not. Raw fruits can pass through the stomach into the intestines within about one hour. Heavy meats that have been cooked such as pig meat, can take from 4 to 6 hours to digest in the stomach before passing into the small intestine. The digestion process can be very tiring on the body. Look at what happens after a family feast. Most retire to rest soon after the eating has finished because all the energy is focussed on digesting food. Often the food eaten is very diverse, from light raw fruits, to cooked vegetables, to a variety of cooked meats. These are all mixed in the stomach at once. Some foods digest quickly and then start to ferment in the stomach while the heavier foods are still being digested. Any wonder reflux and indigestion are often experienced. Perhaps if food that is digested quickest is eaten first and the slowest and most difficult is eaten last then these conditions may be reduced in occurrence and severity. The western SAD diet is most often eaten without thought as to how long each type of food takes to digest in the stomach. The thought of beginning the meal with raw fruit or the desert course then the salads followed by the cooked vegetables then the raw fish and finishing with the cooked and processed meats would not seem plausible. However this is the relative time the different foods takes to digest. In fact the healthiest way to eat is a mono diet, that is where one type of food is eaten at each meal.
So here we have this food that has been eaten that has to be broken down into its constituents so that it can be absorbed. Take a raw carrot, it has to be broken up, chewed, masticated then the juices that are released then have to be broken down so that the intestines can absorb the nutrients. So we end up with pulp or fibre which can help with cleaning the gut and the juice which contains the nutrients.
Other foods have to be dealt with in a similar way, broken down so that they can be absorbed. The slower the foods move through the gut and the more processed they are, the more opportunity there is for the gut and its immune system to be compromised. Slow moving goo and glue foods and lack of roughage passing through the gut allows time for build up to take place and for matter to be trapped in the folds of the gut and lodge there. Instead of passing through the gut in 8 to 12 hours before elimination, in extreme cases elimination may be once every 8 days and then only with great difficulty. This allows plenty of opportunity for bowel matter to putrefy and stick to the walls of the colon in particular and to build up. This creates a fairly toxic condition allowing gas, body odour, poisons and leakage into the stomach cavity. Toxins that would normally be caught by the mucosal lining and sloughed of regularly are trapped and build up in the putrefying layers that accumulate inside the colon in particular. This build up enlarges the colon in particular and the small intestine to a lesser degree. However what passes often has to find its way through a very narrow and tortuous passage to be eliminated. Often without being dried out as it passes through the colon because of the toxic build up in the colon. The peristalsis that would normally move the bowel matter quickly and with ease has little effect due to the thick build up and so elimination has to be associated with red faces and extreme effort. Often this results in other issues such as the ubiquitous haemorrhoid, diverticular disease and anal fissures. The build up not only effects the colon but all other organs in the body.
What we end up with is a very much compromised digestive system. The flow of nutrients is compromised, the absorption is compromised, the immune system is compromised and the effective elimination of waste is compromised. Any wonder someone with issue of the gut can have many and varied health issues.
DIGESTIVE LOAD
The digestive load can have some significant long term outcomes that when optimised, result in healthy, productive and long lived individuals. A study some years ago was made of the population of Okinawa because of its high incidence of centenarians and its low incidence of chronic illness. There were more than 500 people per million who were 100 years or more. A detailed examination of their lifestyle revealed some observations which are at odds with the western lifestyle. The dinner plate is only 8/10ths full, that is they do not over eat. The diet is high in anti-oxidants raw foods. They enjoy moderate exercise, not rugby or AFL style but reasonably vigorous walking and volleyball. There are teams based on age groups, 100+, 90+ and 80+ and they tend to conserve energy. However the younger generation is not so healthy as they tend to follow the western lifestyle. In Australia about 5 per million live to be 100 or more. There are some other populations in the world that are similar to the Okinawans.
Looking at some specific foods and their overall effects on nutrition and health. The western diet has an emphasis on dairy and meat.
Milk in the western diet and its other manufactured products such as cheese is pasteurised to kill bugs but in the process enzymes are also destroyed. The digestive process is compromised from the outset, no longer is milk a whole food. The enzymes that are there to help assimilate any goodness in the milk are absent, is it any wonder that the countries with the highest per capita consumption of milk products also have the highest incidence of milk allergies, diabetes, osteoporosis and lupus. Milk products are promoted as being rich sources of nutrition, but they have been seriously compromised by the industrial food industry. So here we have a food that is ingested in huge quantities in the western diet purportedly to supply calcium for bones and some fats for energy. However it produces an acid residue which has to be neutralised by the body. One of the first things that is called upon to neutralise this acid is the magnesium residing in the bones. A recent study on the effects of pasteurisation was made comparing calves fed on whole milk and calves fed on the same milk that had been pasteurised. The outcomes were as expected, healthy robust calves at weaning for the whole milk and smaller, less robust and sick animals from the pasteurised group. Think about this when you may be considering milk in your diet and when feeding pasteurised milk to young children in particular.
Meat in the western diet is considered to be a daily staple, in fact in many places meat is part of each meal. Apart from the fat and cholesterol that is ingested, industrially raised meat, such as feed lot beef contains a huge load of industrial drugs. These have been fed to the animals to artificially increase body mass and protect against disease. When ingested by other animals, including humans, these industrial drugs and their residues end up being passed on and become part of the digestive load. Residues of antibiotics then impact on the gut flora and compromise the digestive process and add to any already present toxic load on the body. A considerable part of the energy derived from the meat is used up in the digestive process. This can take more than 24 hours to occur in humans. This means that the meat and its residues have begun to putrefy along the way, adding further toxic load that the body has to deal with.
Vegetables and fruits that are eaten raw are digested quickly. The digestive process takes about an hour on an empty stomach before release into the small intestine. Here the nutrients are absorbed into the blood stream. There has been a reasonable load on the digestive system to break the food down so that it can be absorbed. Then there is a fairly large load of pulp which has to be dealt with and moved along the digestive tract.
If the fruits and vegetables are crushed and most of the pulp removed by juicing, then the nutrients enter the bloodstream much quicker and with far less load on the digestive system. This means that the energy required to process the juice is less, and the available nutrition is proportionally more. As a result of this, the excess energy which is not required to deal with the bulk food, is available to the body to carry out the work of providing a strong immune system, among other things.
FASTING
Juice fasting is perhaps a misnomer, nevertheless it does convey the idea of something special going on. The word fast is derived from the meaning to make strong. So a juice fast is undertaken to make the body strong.
Why undertake a juice fast? The first thing is to increase nutrition. A typical juice recipe consisting of apples, carrots, lemon and beetroot would produce about 2 litres of juice from about 3 kg. This has very little pulp and a very high bio available nutrient dense juice. Very little energy is required to digest it and there is not much pulp that has to be transported. If you imagine 2kgs of carrots, six medium size apples, a small lemon and a small beetroot served up on a dinner plate. This would constitute a reasonable sized meal and would require a lot of chewing and chopping into edible sized pieces to be digested not to mention the large load of fibre and pulp and the time to eat it. Juicing bypasses this to a considerable degree and in doing so provides a nutrient dense food which is readily digestible.
By reducing the load on the gut in digesting the juice, it has an opportunity to clear out material that may have been stuck to the walls and caught in crevices. In doing so the gut becomes more pliable and better able to absorb nutrients. This results in more energy being available due to the increase in efficiency of absorption. This excess energy is available to the body to carry out repair and maintenance. This would include damage to organs such as the liver and the pancreas due to toxic loads and physical damage to the body.
A typical fasting with juice over a 21 day period would result in some of the following occurrences. Days 1 and 2, the stomach and gut would clear out any previously ingested food. Days 3 and 4 the liver would be cleared of fats and on days 5 and 6, fat cells, viruses and bacteria would be sought out and mobilised. By doing this, a lot of old wounds may be disturbed and a lot of dormant toxicity mobilised. This would result in headaches and nausea and maybe some painful spots on the body during the first 10 days of the fast. However on the upside, these are transient and usually only last and hour or so or at the worst up to about 8 hours. Usually by day 10 at the latest the body settles down and begins the task of some serious rebuilding. By about day 14 the lymph system is beginning to clear itself of wastes the may have been around far too long. This is why it is important to maintain a level of walking each day, as the lymph is mobilised through muscular contraction only. It is important to ensure that clothing is loose so that there is no restriction to the lymph flow. This particularly applies to bras that have an underwire and shoulder straps that are too tight. Around about day 21 the lymph has usually been cleared. During the fast most people release about 10 percent of the body weight over the first 14 days of the fast and up to a further 5 percent for the next 7 days. However this is not across the board, people of lighter stature usually loose less and stabilise much earlier in the program. People who are heavier may still be releasing weight at day 21 and may not stabilise for some considerable time after that. Water is important and needs to supplement the juice. A guide is that the body requires 1 litre of water per 22 kg of body weight. When on the juice fast, each litre of juice can be equivalent to about 1.2 litres of water. Depending upon your body weight, about two thirds of your requirements should come from juice. Therefore for a person who weighs 66 kg, they would need 3 litres of water per day. By making 2 litres of juice, then about a litre of water is required to make up the balance. You will notice that these measurements are all very approximate. A person weighing 110 kg would require 5 litres of water. In terms of the juice fast they would need 3 litres of juice and 2 litres of water. Mostly this is due to the juice being modules of one litre. There is also the activity level and the weather to be considered. A very active person may require more water especially in the warmer part of the year. The test is of course the colour of the urine. This should be a light straw colour at the darkest, any darker and the fluid intake needs to be increased. As the day is begun by drinking half to a litre of water with 1 to 2 teaspoons of rock salt or unrefined sea or lake salt, then electrolyte balance is rarely a problem.
JUICE CLEANSE PROGRAM
The juice cleanse program is made up of a number of modules. Depending where you are at, at the time you decide to undertake the program as to what you need to do to obtain the optimum result.
The program begins with a questionnaire, the answers are evaluated and from this a detailed, individual program is mapped out. Each program has the same content however because each person has different issues that need to be addressed then the introductory part of the program is often very different for each person.
The introductory part of the program may take up to three months. This is usually to accommodate issues around liver, gall bladder and kidneys that may need some specific cleansing. Most people usually have an introductory program of about 14 days to prepare for the juice cleanse and minimise the effects of detoxification. Apart from body weight the juice part of the 21 day program is the same for everybody apart from weight variations. At about day 15, a regimen of cleansing with a clay and seed mix is undertaken. The clays used are very specific in what they are intended to accomplish. There are three fractions, two fractions are included to attract heavy metals and toxic residues that may be in the colon. The other fraction is a finely ground sea shell and clay fraction that is designed to scratch any parasites that may be still clinging to the wall of the gut. The parasites cannot recover from the scratch and soon dehydrate and die. During the course of the fast some people may wish to avail themselves of the opportunity to undergo a colonic irrigation or a series of enemas. Both of these have among other things the ability to dislodge any toxic residues and matter that is caught in the diverticula folds. Although desirable these procedures are not absolutely necessary.
The seeds and husk included in the mix are to provide a scouring of the walls of the gut to help dislodge any stubborn mucosal linings and any matter that may be caught in the diverticula folds. The mix is taken over an eight hour period and is accompanied by more than average amounts of water. Most times this is eliminated some eight or more hours later along with any residual matter that has been collected along the way. Sometimes people find that their gut is still sluggish and may need to take a dose of Epsom salts to help move through the gut. This is very rare.
At the end of 21 days a transition program is begun that lasts one to two weeks in which the long term diet is introduced. Depending upon where you are at as to whether you desire to have a raw vegan diet based on fruit as the main component or perhaps a modified omnivore diet based on your 21 day experience and learning. There is no hard and fast rule. However most people experience a heightened awareness of how dietary changes effect their bodies. This is due to the increase in the bodies immunity to diseases and sickness and also to the bodies renewed ability to regenerate damage due to accidents. This regeneration also effects the natural ongoing repair and replacement of cells within the body and in particular those cells that need repair due to less than optimal copying due to DNA or oxidative damage.
Once the fasting program has been completed and the effects on sleep and rest patterns and changes in levels of concentration and energy have been experienced, then this most often becomes the routine expected from day to day and year to year. The idea that degenerative diseases are inevitable as we age becomes the myth that it is. Although aging does cause some changes in the human body, its ability to repair itself and fend of illness and disease is not compromised if the river of life is fed the right stuff. ©graeme ward 2011
