Do you eat to live or live to eat? We should all be eating to live – and we can start doing that – today! SO – here’s the question – are the foods you eat most of the time – helping your body to be healthy and strong or are they breaking your system down little by little and setting you on the path for a possible sickly or early demise?
Let’s learn to eat to live – and let’s start today!
You’re in the middle of some magical moment and a magic Genie appears before you and she says you get one wish – right this minute.
What do you want to wish for?
If you knew me well you’d know I’d probably have a stroke right there just analyzing all my options before I could even make ONE wish. But do you know what we should all wish for if that happened? A HEALTHY LIFE – for ourselves and family! Because DUH!!! If we and those we love most are not healthy, happy and strong – what in the dickens difference – does a lot of the other things matter?
Eat To Live: Testimonials Are Coming In To The Canyon
Quite a few of you are on the lemon water bandwagon – and testimonials are coming into the canyon with rave reviews. One lady said she was so sold – she went out and bought 4 dozen lemons.
People are seeing an increase in energy. Feeling better in general. Brain fog is leaving in some. Arthritis and gout are much improved. Blood pressure issues are clearing up. I’ve had reports on sinus issues. SO MANY GOOD THINGS ARE HAPPENING – from juicing 1 little lemon a day and adding a little Celtic Sea Salt and just drinking that down.
Eat To Live: Kiwi To The Front Lines
To ward off colds and flu just eat 1 or 2 kiwi a day. Now I know if you have a good sized family – that could run into quite a few kiwi – but that one food in priceless in it’s power to ward off the flu.
Everybody we know in Massac County is battling one bug and then the other – and here we sit in Round Knob Canyon – cold and flu free – because we take the time to do what’s right. Now we DO have too much junk food. We had lemon cake just over the weekend and it was homemade and we ate the whole thing. HOWEVER – we balance things like that – with kiwi – lemon water – juicing and more. And I can’t even tell you the last time either of us had a cold or the flu. Not bragging – just stating facts. And we are 70 and 71.
Eat to Live: How Valuable is Your Current Diet to You?
There is so much to learn about healing the body and staying healthy. And by healing I mean even cholesterol and blood pressure.
If you have any of those things, there are things going on in your body that are just not good and need healed. And they all relate to the heart and your clogging arteries. If you have high cholesterol – for instance – the high cholesterol is not the disease you have – you have something going on deep inside your body – and for sure concerning your liver – that is making that cholesterol high. High cholesterol is a ‘symptom’ of an underlying problem. And yes you need a healthier diet – but you also need to flush your liver and get on some good Milk Thistle for a while.
There are so many things we need to do to be healthier. If we were to sit down right now and make a list – my goodness – it would be like an 8 year old’s list to Santa Claus. It would be a mile long. But it’s very simple, really and so worth the effort.
But let’s start thinking and talking about being healthy. AND let’s do more than talk, let’s do something about it.
The absolute MOST important thing we need to do for our health FIRST is build up our immune systems. There are many others that come very close behind that, but we need a strong immune system to fight everything that may come our way from very minor infections and bugs to the most deadly cancer and others.
Eat To Live and Let’s Start Today
There are several things that make your immune system what it is. Those things are environment, diet, lifestyle and genetics to name a few. But let me tell ya, you can really do some good with diet and lifestyle to strengthen your immune system.
Some foods that can stimulate your immune system are: Yogurt, Shiitake mushrooms, garlic, foods rich in beta carotene, zinc, a vegetarian diet, a low fat diet.
Some foods that will lower your immune system are: SUGAR, 🙂 a high fat diet especially the polyunsaturated oils, and processed and junk foods and more.
White Blood Cells Fight Disease
White blood cells are your major fighters against infections and cancer. So you really want to eat foods that will keep those white blood cells at a normal level and steer pretty clear of foods that lower your white blood cell count.
Just simple yogurt, for instance. Yogurt has been a well known fighter of disease through the ages and everybody should have a little yogurt each day. Now you may not especially LIKE yogurt but we’re talking about your LIFE here – so for goodness sakes just put a couple spoons of yogurt in your mouth and swallow it down.
Yogurts are small and can literally kill bad bacteria in your system. AND researchers found that yogurt was as effective as prescription drugs at building UP your immune system. Just 6 ounces of yogurt a day should rev up your immune system so you can fight against colds and hay fever and bigger things.
Now don’t go out and look for the yogurt with the most foo foo in it. Get one that is fairly reasonable with the carb and sugar count. We love Activia and Yoplait. AND don’t get the ‘light’ because if it says “light” it has an artificial sweetener in it and you sure don’t need THAT.
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Eat To Live: The Magic of Shiitake Mushrooms
Shiitake Mushrooms: DID YOU KNOW that Shiitake mushrooms have a substance in them called ‘lentinan’ and it can modify cells to resist the spreading of lung cancer cells. So it’s believed that just a little shiitake mushroom a few times a week COULD POSSIBLY prevent cancer. I’d say it’s worth having a little each day – I mean – “What’s it going to hurt?”
ZINC and Its Effect On The Immune System
ZINC: Your immune system just cannot function properly if your body is low on zinc. AND we start losing our levels of zinc at about age 60. It’s thought that zinc can even rejuvenate an aging immune system that’s trying to go to beddy bye on us.
By age 60, the thymus gland which is a major player in our immune defenses, begins to shrink drastically – just like our height 🙂 So we need the zinc for that and other things.
The greatest source of zinc is oysters so this old geezer and I should be pretty doggone good with our zinc levels 🙂
But it’s believed that a daily dose of zinc could cause as much as an 80% regrowth of our thymus gland function and a significant increase in hormones and t-cells that fight off infections. I forgot to look it up but it seems like a good dose of zinc daily would be at least 15 mg but I wouldn’t take higher than 50mg and that level is perfectly safe. We take about 50 mg of Zinc most days.
DID YOU KNOW that just a little dip in your zinc level can interfere with your mental functioning including memory? So zinc is crucial…
Well we could go on and on with this forever. Because if we want to get healthy and stay healthy there is just so much to learn. But the main thing is this. JUST EAT NATURAL FOODS! If it’s processed – DO NOT EAT IT! If you can’t pronounce it – DO NOT EAT IT! Stay away from sugary foods and high carb foods. DO NOT EAT DIET ANYTHING because anything that says ‘lite or light’ has artificial sweeteners in it. Just plan your meals ‘caveman style’ or eat and cook like your great granny did.
If you want to really know about being healthy I highly recommend any reading by Joel Fuhrman. He’s the doctor on the “Fat Sick and Nearly Dead” DVD that I also recommend. You can watch that video on Netflix I’m told – for free. It’s also on youtube. And I ordered it from amazon so I could watch it over and over to study it and also to loan it out. Dr Fuhrman is also on facebook.
Dr Fuhrman also wrote the book “Eat To Live” – I just bought that book and haven’t had time to read it yet but maybe I can work a little of that in today.
Let’s just start thinking more along the lines of eating to live instead of living to eat. And I don’t know about you but I want to make junk food a rare treat instead of the norm 6-7 days a week.