The One Unchanging Rule of Health

Anne Dunev, PhD (Los Angeles Certified Nutritionist and Holistic Doctor)
If you are not in completely optimum health, no matter what the “illness,” symptom or condition is — from a zit on your face to stress or mood imbalances, weight issues or being tired, feeling your age, or even being diagnosed with a terminal illness —

1. IMPROVE YOUR NUTRITION

This is the one thing you can always do which is never ill-advised and will always improve the condition. No matter what the medical intervention is, improving your nutrition is the best “medicine” possible to give your body what it needs to repair.

Most people know more about the their favorite sports team or their favorite celebrity than they do about how their own body works.

The word “doctor” comes from the Latin “docere,” which means to teach. But how many doctors have the time or inclination to teach us what we need to know to keep our body healthy?

Did you know there are approximately 60 to 100 trillion cells in the adult body? Every hour approximately 1 billion cells must be replaced.

Start with increasing your protein. Your body needs at least half your body weight in grams of protein (weigh 140? That’s 70 grams of protein) and may need twice that amount under severe stress or need to heal. All muscle and tissue is formed out of amino acids from protein. Don’t forget seeds, nuts, legumes like lentils and dairy products, as well as meat, poultry and fish.

Eat only complex carbohydrates. This includes vegetables, from certain root veggies to leafy salads, some fruits, and whole grains (brown rice, barley and oats are better than wheat). You can’t afford the calories from “white” flour and sugar products, except as a rare treat. White flour and sugar require the body to use nutrients in order to metabolize them, so they rob the body, instead of enhancing it.

Eat at least two tablespoons of fat a day, but only unrefined oils. Unrefined, unprocessed vegetable oils “mobilize” saturated fats from meat and dairy products and help protect the arteries. Omega 3 oils and fish oils may be used, also. Try to use only organic milk and cheese products. Toxins store in fat tissue and have affinity for the fat in dairy foods.

Unrefined walnut, sesame, sunflower and avocado oils can add wonderful flavor to your salads and veggies.

Eat organic food whenever possible. Pesticides are neurotoxins. They attack the nervous system of insects. They also attack the nervous systems of humans. No one has calculated the amount of pesticides and petrochemicals that accumulate in the human body, but we do know that these chemicals are harmful. Your body deserves the very best — it is a reflection of you.

9 Changes to Boost Energy and Jump Start Weight Loss

Anne Dunev, PhD CN
1. Include a good fish oil capsule (2-4 daily) in your diet every day. This kind of Omega 3 oil helps decrease inflammation, and helps mobilize stored fat in the body.

2. Take digestive enzymes with every meal. It’s not just what you eat — its what you can digest. Most people don’t need antacids — just more digestive enzymes. A little organic apple cider vinegar (in some water) before a meal can aid digestion and decrease appetite.

3. Add kelp or iodine to your regimen. The lowest incidence of breast and prostate cancer in the world is in Japan, amongst elder Japanese on high sea weed (high iodine) diets. Iodized salt is the wrong type of iodine.

4. The body needs to move. Find an exercise that you enjoy and do some 5 times per week, for 40 minutes. Weight training burns more fat than cardio workouts!

5. High cholesterol? Increase your fiber by taking fiber supplements and eating more fresh fruits and vegetables and brown rice. Try vitamin supplements of Choline, Inositol (B vitamins) and Lecithin to break up dietary fat.

6. Eat small, frequent protein meals. If you eat the same amount of calories, but in small, frequent portions rather than 2-3 larger portions, you will boost your metabolism and lose weight. Munch on nuts and seeds, have lettuce wraps of cheese and meat. Cut out wheat for a week and see how much better you feel.

7. Eat real/whole foods. Did your great grandparents eat it? Then it is probably real food. Food should not have a shelf life unless it is dried. Save technology for electronics. Human beings need food that Nature created, not food companies. (Soy powder is highly processed and a hormone disruptor; as well most soy crops are genetically modified.)

8. Add a probiotic supplement daily. There are a few hundred little bugs in the body, mostly of the helpful variety. “Good” bugs keep the “bad” bugs at bay and the colon healthy. When the colon is healthy, toxins do not leak into the blood, which helps prevent allergies and infections.

9. Look for the best Vitamin E — wheat germ oil. The body needs whole Vitamin E for heart health and to make hormones. Hormones tell the organs (brain, liver, heart) what to do by sending little messages through the blood. Heartbeat faster when you see someone special? Thank your hormones.

Running to Catch Up: Health in Our Times

Anne Dunev, PhD CN
At a holiday party a friend of mine told me that he is now working three times harder for half the pay. Welcome to 2009.

Just as greed in the corporate financial world devastated so many people when the bottom fell out of the markets, greed in the pharmaceutical, food and agricultural businesses has devastated the health of Americans. The statistics on chronic disease, obesity and mental health diagnoses tell the sad tale of health bankruptcy. People need affordable health insurance. But even more desperately they need good health.

In 1908, Dr. Harvey Wiley was head of the Bureau of Food Chemistry. His stated mission was to prevent any adulterated food substances into the American food supply because he felt that the future of the nation was dependent on the health of its citizens—and health was directly related to the purity of American foodstuffs.

Saccharin was invented in 1879 when a chemist named Constantin Fahlberg spilled a substance on his hands while doing research at Johns Hopkins University. It tasted sweet and the first artificial sweetener was born. A coal tar derivative, saccharin is 300 times sweeter than sugar. President Teddy Roosevelt grew up eating saccharin and was convinced it had helped him become the President of the United States, instead of being the sickly child he once was. Saccharin gained popularity during the sugar shortages of World War I. Teddy Roosevelt may have led the charge up San Juan Hill, but the nutrient value and integrity of the American food supply has been going downhill ever since.

Soil contains living organisms, as well as minerals. Plants use the minerals for food. If the minerals are not replaced, the plants won’t grow—right? Not unless you pump artificial fertilizers into them, as we do. And genetically modify the DNA of the plant so that it looks oh-so-pretty in the supermarket, but is still devoid of the vitamins and minerals needed to sustain human and animal life. Yes, people die when denied real nutrition. They do it slowly—when they consume enough calories—and they do it painfully, as their physical and mental condition deteriorates.

Compound this with the fact that most of what is sold in grocery stores would have been illegal in 1908, when the health of Americans was a top priority for a visionary like Harvey Wiley, and you have the appalling state of health and obesity we face in 2009.

Given the low standards we have for organic foods in the U.S., compared to Europe and the United Kingdom, even eating organic isn’t enough. It is more than a start. Eschewing junk and processed food is the first step. But, to rebuild health, to stave off aging and avoid Alzheimer’s, dementia and generally drooling in a wheelchair when you reach your dotage, you have to be very, very smart about how you feed your body.

Does that mean that you have to eat vegetables, or gag down slimy green drinks? Give up the pleasures of crème brulee or chocolate fudge brownies? No, but it does mean that, if your tongue alone is in charge of your diet, you are going to need more than a government bail out to handle the bankruptcy of your health.

In other cultures that practice herbal medicine, children are given bitter foods from infancy to accustom them to taking their medicine straight. In the U.S. children are given ice cream and candy from an early age to accustom them to a lifetime of good-tasting foods that lead to learning problems and adult diseases in childhood. This often develops a dependency on “kids’ foods” that are even more anemic and devoid of nutrition than the typical dinner table fare. We call this “marketing.”

In the war over consumer dollars, all is fair. But the long-term cost of the cheap and abundant food we consume in health-dollars may be higher than we can calculate. And the cost in human suffering is enormous. No one ever seems to get addicted to broccoli. But ask someone to give up their diet soda or donuts or chips.

Just as my friend has to work three times harder, our food has to be three times healthier. The only answer is super foods—super concentrated foods that offer a surplus of nutrients and a minimum of preparation time. After all, if we were all cooking complete organic meals three times a day, there would be no need for this post.

When you ingest super foods, the body will give up toxins, repair cells and “turn off” genes that cause disease. Like a garden, where plentiful nutrients and healthy soil make disease and pest resistant plants, the human body blooms with energy, beauty and strength when fed properly.

Why Do We Eat Plants?

Anne Dunev, PhD CN
If you look around your kitchen, you can find lots of different things to eat. Many things we eat come in boxes and packages. A lot of these things taste good. They are bright colors, many are very sweet and there are lots of flavors to choose from.

So, with all this prepared, packaged food around, why do we eat plants?

People say that eating plants are good for us. But plants don’t always taste as good as the food that comes in boxes. So, what is the big deal with eating plants?

Some plants do taste good. Strawberries and apples and watermelons are plants. So are oranges and carrots and peas.  Then there is broccoli and celery. And who can forget cauliflower and Brussels sprouts? Those are the ones that smell funny when you cook them. Why eat something that smells like that?

People have been eating plants for thousands and thousands of years.  Before they had farms, people gathered green plants and fruits from the forests. People have always eaten plants. So, does that mean we need to eat them today, when we have so many other things to eat?

What is it about plants?

It starts with dirt. Really.

Our bodies have something in common with dirt. Minerals. Dirt is made up of rocks that are broken down into small bits. The rocks are made of minerals.

Human bodies are about 70% minerals. Teeth and bones are mostly made of a mineral called calcium. But there are dozens of other minerals in the body, in all parts of the body. Some of these are magnesium, zinc and copper. There are even tiny amounts of silver and gold in our bodies.

We can’t eat dirt. And even if we do eat dirt, we can’t use the minerals in ground up rocks. These minerals are called “inorganic”. That means the minerals are good for rocks, but not usable for living bodies.

Here is where the plants come in. Plants make their own food in their leaves, and they love minerals. Plants are little factories that suck up the inorganic minerals through their roots. They use the ground up rocks in the dirt, or soil. Then they change the minerals into the “organic” form, the form of minerals that can be used by our living bodies to make strong bones and teeth.

If your bones could talk to you, they would say, “More spinach, please. And how about some nice Kale.” Dark, green leafy vegetables have the most calcium.

Just think. All the food that our bodies actually need to be healthy exists in Nature. All the food we need grows, either from the ground, or in animals. There is nothing in factory-produced food, made of artificial colors and flavors and chemicals, which our body needs. Most factory food is not healthy at all because there are hardly any vitamins or minerals in it. Factory-made food, also known as “junk” food can make us fat, and feel tired and bad.

If our bodies could vote, they would vote for foods from Nature. It is a natural choice if you want to feel great and be great. You have it in you. Feed it with plants.