Being an athlete can take quite a toll on the body, even with a great diet. Over weeks of training I’ve found that even on the best diet, I’m bound to run into injuries and soreness. That being said there are several things that make a big difference in how I feel the next day and rather or not I’m able to train the next day.

Currently, I’m training for a Brazilian Jiu-jitsu competition in May. I’m new, and my workload isn’t nearly that of a seasoned professional athlete, but for the average person, it’s intense.

Every day I do a full body weight lifting workout, yoga, stretching and breath control, 100 bodyweight squats, three sets of push-ups and pull-ups, drilling and training with my dad for about 20 minutes, a mile run, and training at the gym for 3-4 hours a day.

Most injuries I get heal quickly. Since starting Brazilian jiujitsu I’ve suffered jammed toes, a bruised trachea, a pulled quad muscle, and most recently a pulled muscle in my rib area near my spine. Every other injury has been quick to heal, gone in three days at the most. My rib injury took longer to heal. Even after it got better, I spent weeks being sore in that area and having to pay special attention not to reinjure it.

I’ve got a competition soon so extended time off isn’t an option, nor is any sort of pain management that would slow my healing long term. I don’t take pain medication of any sort, nor do I use recreational pain relief like cannabis. Cannabis and over-the-counter pain relief, as well as prescription pain medication all slow down the healing process exponentially for temporary relief.

I view my pain (and many other things in life) like a credit card. Using medication to relieve pain temporarily means dealing with a longer lasting injury, and more pain in the long run. For instance, if I have an injury that hurts at a 6 out of 10, I can smoke some weed or take some other pain medication. But once it wears off that 6 becomes a 7, maybe an 8. And of course, the next dose of pain relief won’t be as effective unless you up the dosage. That’s not my idea of a desirable feedback loop.

To promote healing, we do hot-cold compresses switching back and forth to attract blood flow and inflammation for healing. In the end, we use lots of deep tissue oil on the area. Deep tissue repair oil is my number one recommendation for pain relief and healing if you’re only going to use one thing to aid in the healing process. I use it multiple times a day when I feel sore and before or after a workout. Deep tissue oil has menthol crystals, cayenne, wintergreen oil, and other things to promote healing and attract blood flow to the target area.

I also do hot epsom salt baths as often as needed. It’s nothing revolutionary, but epsom salt does help release tension, relax the muscles and prevent soreness.

Many people recommend Boswellia, an herbal extract, to help with inflammation and pain. Although I’ve never used it, you can read more about it and its benefits in this article.

I stretch and do yoga every day to work on flexibility and aid in healing as well. Even if I’m injured to the point of being unable to workout, I still stretch for movement and healing.

Many other athletes have done down similar paths of using natural remedies to help heal, but very few go deep enough to get the full benefits. Acupuncture and chiropractic care are two examples of holistic routes that some people go down, but as great as they are, they’re really only temporary pain relief. Acupuncture and chiropractic work can be great aids for the body in addition to a healthy diet and routine, but they don’t fix any problems on their own.

Diet

Without a healthy diet, I wouldn’t be able to do this every day, but I’ve learned that there’s a difference between fueling my body for everyday life, and my diet when I’m training. When I’m training, I eat a high caloric diet with lots of protein. My main sources of protein are eggs, meat, and cheese. I generally eat less than a pound of meat a week. I have a little bacon in every salad, and between one and three nights a week, we’ll have sausage or bacon in dinner. I also eat homemade beef jerky for protein in between classes.

Eating an anti-inflammatory diet is probably the most important part of my healing process because it goes beyond just healing. My diet is even more strict than it was prior to fighting, although prior to fighting I ate better than almost anyone I knew. I have to eat a diet that not only aids in healing but prevents me from getting injured frequently. With the right diet, you can make your body impervious to injury. I don’t sit around and wait for an injury to start eating a diet that promotes healing.

Every day I eat a large salad with lots of different vegetables. Diversity is an extremely important part of a healthy diet that many people are missing. There are lots of professional athletes who have figured out that a healthy diet allows them to perform radically better, along with recovering faster and overall feeling better. That being said, not many people have figured out that there’s a big difference between eating some kale salad and eating a 10-cup salad with kale, collards, rainbow chard, spinach, lettuce, cabbage, and more. My salads have at least 10 different vegetables and herbs in them. This article goes into how I make my salads and cranberry lemonade.

Three to four times a week I drink my “anti-inflammatory smoothie“. I make it with an abundance of anti-inflammatory foods like ginger, pineapple, cranberries, tart cherries, and turmeric (to name a few). I drink lots of cranberry lemonade to flush out toxins and inflammation, as well as stay hydrated. Lastly, I obviously avoid inflammatory foods. I limit my grains and avoid corn (although occasionally we make homemade tortillas). I don’t even eat oatmeal anymore, because it’s too similar to gluten in the way it digests and causes inflammation.

Many fighters and bodybuilders eat lots of oatmeal as a good source of protein and fuel. For many people, it’s great. But, like most other grains, it’s inflammatory. I feel it when I eat them. I’ll bet if you’re paying attention, you can too. When I’m in need of protein and fuel I stick to things like eggs, homemade beef jerky, walnuts, chia seeds, and raw sheep’s cheese.

It seems like the list of foods I can’t eat is extremely long, but the list of foods I can and do eat is even longer. The guidelines are pretty simple, make everything from scratch, eat tons of raw veggies, eat tons of cooked veggies, and avoid any and all things processed.

Supplements

With a healthy diet the average person shouldn’t need to take supplements everyday when they’re healthy, but someone who’s pushing their body on an athletes level may find that they function better with supplements.

Currently, I take Sf722 every day, generally because I eat a lot of fruit. Sf722 also helps pump my body full of good stuff similar to salads. Without Sf722 my skin can be prone to breaking out from rolls on the mats, and my healing and recovery slows. I also take Abzorb, or other enzymes to help with digestion, especially if I eat pasteurized nuts. I take vitamin D, Vitamin B, and thyroid and/or pituitary glandular supplements to prevent endocrine system crashes.

When you’ve taken antibiotics or medication or done anything to eradicate your gut microbiome, your gut isn’t producing enough vitamin B. This can be one of the last things to correct itself after you’re healthy. Taking vitamin B helps heal your gut and helps the endocrine system by providing your body with vitamins that your gut should be producing.

When you’re overweight, even just a small amount your body has a hard time assimilating vitamin D from the sun. not to mention most of us don’t get enough sunlight anyways. Being overweight also leads to extra stress on the kidneys (and lower back) and the endocrine system.

Sleep

Diet and sleep are equally as important for overall health, and when it comes to how sore I am and my recovery time for an injury. Unfortunately, it can be hard to get a good night’s sleep when my injury is severe enough, but it’s always a top priority.

I always get a minimum of 8 hours of sleep. Regardless of the quality of sleep, I’m in bed trying to sleep for at least 8 hours. Sometimes depending on the workout the day before, or how an injury is healing, I can get more than 10 hours of sleep.

Related: Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and Balancing Our Hormones

Training

While training anything contact or combat related it’s extremely important than you learn how to protect yourself from injury while drilling and rolling. It took me way too long to learn how to fall properly in jiujitsu, and it’s still a work in progress. Falling down wrong was the number one cause of injury for me while training.

Related: Running Without Knee Pain

That being said, once I learned how to protect myself from injury I found that training was actually extremely important for healing my most recently injury. So, if you can move, move. Staying active and using your body is extremely important for working your muscles and building them back stronger after an injury.

Generally, I use the rule use it or lose it. Broken bones often don’t need casts (and strong healthy bones are harder to break). Staying active is usually your best bet for healing quickly.

Conclusion

Some days I wake up barely able to move! Training this hard has been really intense, but I know that with the way I do things, my recovery time is radically faster than anyone else I know doing the same thing as me.

In my experience the most important thing to do is to be in tune with your body to an extreme. The moment something isn’t right I can tell, and I can feel a difference in the way certain foods fuel my body. I track my sleep and my diet, and when things aren’t working the way they should I back track and examine where I might have gone wrong.

This takes time, and it takes mistakes. I’ve experimented with lots of different foods and routines and I’ve seen how certain things make me feel, and how they effect my performance. Working out and being active is a wonderful thing, but it doesn’t mean much if you’re not healthy enough to sustain it.

A new study conducted by UC Riverside suggests that exercise and healthy diet in childhood lead to adults with bigger brains and less anxiety. The study aimed to examine the long term benefits of a healthy diet and exercise as the two are usually examined separately, or short term.

Researchers divided young mice into four groups, those with access to exercise, those without, and those with a standard healthy diet, and those with a standard western diet.

Related: Sugar Leads to Depression – World’s First Trial Proves Gut and Brain are Linked (Protocol Included)

Mice were put on their assigned diet as soon as they were done weaning and stayed on the same diet for three weeks until sexual maturity. The mice then went through an additional eight weeks of “washout” where they were kept with out wheels on the standard healthy diet. Researchers then measured aerobic capacity, did behavioral analysis, and testes different levels of hormones.

Previously, the research team found that eating too much fat and sugar as a child can alter the microbiome for life, even if they later eat healthier. Going forward, the team plans to investigate whether fat or sugar is more responsible for the negative effects they measured in Western-diet-fed mice.

Childhood diet and exercise creates healthier, less anxious adults

Researchers concluded that early life exercise resulted in less anxious behaviors in adult mice and led to increases in adult muscle and brain mass. When fed standard western-style diets the mice became fatter and grew into adults with a preference for unhealthy foods.

Running on a regular basis has numerous health benefits. Studies show that running for just 5-10 minutes a day can benefit the heart, help prevent neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, result in a lower chance of cancer, and of course, build excellent lung capacity, and function as a great leg and core workout. Additionally, a runner’s high is very real. The endorphins and other chemicals you release in the brain while running are not dissimilar to those released from getting high on cannabis. Not to mention, when a runner’s high wears off, you’re left with the benefits, as opposed to the crash some feel after smoking too much weed. Running can help with depression and other mental health issues as well.

All that being said, running can be a pain, literally. Running is difficult. It’s hard on your joints if you’re not healthy enough. It can leave you feeling beyond sore and tired, and if you’re wanting to run every day, you might be feeling like you don’t have enough time to recover in between runs. I’ve put together a list of some of the most common problems new runners face, and the best way to fix them, based on my experiences. 

I’ve found that pain from running is caused by four major things and can generally be fixed with one thing. Pain while running is often caused by poor form, poor shoes, poor diet, and obesity. If you were to fix your diet, all of your problems while running would get better and would eventually go away, but you might need a few other things to fix the problem completely in a timely fashion.

Hip Flexor Pain

Hip flexors are muscles that bring your legs up towards your torso while bending your torso towards the hip. In other words, they flex the hips (hence the name). You can feel the hip flexors through the sides of your thighs up to the hips.

When I moved away from a slow jog and started trying to run as fast as I could, my hip flexors became extremely sore. If you notice your hip flexors are sore, the best thing you can do is stretch them. In my experience, if I notice the soreness in the hip flexors one day and then stretch, they’re worse the next day.

Low lunges and the pigeon pose are my two favorite stretches that I do almost every day to combat sore hip flexors. They’re also great for opening up the hips in general. Check out this article for some other good stretches for the hip flexors. I’ve also found that any post-runners yoga routine is great for stretching the hips. This is my favorite yoga routine for after a run. 

Knee Pain

Knee pain and overall joint pain (more on that later) is often caused by inflammation and can be fixed by diet. But that can take a while. So, in the meantime, you can correct your running form a couple of different ways to alleviate knee pain. You should be running on your toes, not running on your heels. The impact of running on your heels often causes knee problems.

I also recommend running in Vibrams. Regular running shoes are not as good for your feet as they’re made out to be. You can read more about that in this article. Regular running shoes make it difficult to run on your toes, and they weaken your foot muscles. Vibrams are made to mimic the natural way we walk when we’re barefoot, and they build up your muscles in your feet. 

Lower Back Pain

Lower back pain comes from poor kidney function and/or excess weight. I still experience lower back pain while running if I’m not taking practically perfect care of myself. Diet is key, and it will fix most problems. But to target the lower back, I drink a gallon of cranberry lemonade a day to keep my kidneys working properly.

I still have about 40 pounds of extra weight to lose. This is the other factor in lower back pain! Having extra weight puts stress on the kidneys and can also result in lower back pain, so, as much as it sucks to hear, losing weight will help with your lower back pain.

In the meantime, when you’re on your feet, tighten your abs to relieve pressure on your lower back. I use this trick when I’m running, when I’m on my feet for prolonged periods of time, and whenever my lower back is bothering me. I also do ab exercises every day to strengthen my abs and relieve lower back pain. I find that yoga helps, too, but if I’m doing yoga solely to relieve lower back pain, then I’ve been slacking on the actual methods to prevent lower back pain. Ideally, I do these things on a regular basis to prevent lower back pain, not make lower back pain better (although it works for that too).

Foot Pain 

People are often wearing the wrong kind of shoes for running. Tennis shoes are not good for your feet. The extra cushy arch support flattens your arches and can contribute to all sorts of problems. You’re better off in the long run with Vibrams or other toe shoes.

I will warn you, toe shoes can take a bit of time to get used to when you first start running. As your feet muscles begin to get stronger, your feet will probably be sore while you adjust. If you’re running on gravel paths, look out for rocks! The soles of your toe shoes are thinner than regular tennis shoes.

You might find that if you’re running every day with Vibrams, they wear out faster than tennis shoes. Make sure you are wearing the proper size shoe when you’re running. If your shoes are too small, you won’t have room to compensate for swelling. If your shoes are too large and your feet have too much room to move around, that is also a problem. When you buy running shoes, you want them to be slightly too big to compensate for swelling. 

Overall Joint Pain 

Joint pain and excessive soreness from running are often caused by inflammation and the body’s inability to recover quickly. This can be fixed by diet. I wouldn’t be able to run every day the way I do, at my current weight, if I didn’t eat as well as I do! Check out this article to learn more about how to achieve homeostasis through diet. You are what you eat! Pay attention to what you put into your body so your body is able to perform at the level you want. Check out this article to learn more about joint pain, the causes, and how to fix it.

Side-aches 

You’d be hard-pressed to find a runner who hasn’t suffered from side stitches at one point in time. Remember to breathe deeply throughout your run (I know it’s hard, but it will get easier as your lung capacity gets better). Don’t run on a full stomach. I prefer to run first thing in the morning on an empty stomach.  

Conclusion

Running on a regular basis and recovering enough to enjoy it every day, is certainly a challenge. That being said, it can be done, and running is one of the best forms of cardio. Running boosts my mood, gives me energy, and creates a routine in my daily life. I’ve found it to be my favorite way to start the day. In fact, it’s a guarantee that my day is going to be better if I start it with a run.

Developing daily running habits isn’t easy, but taking care of yourself so you have the physical ability to develop daily running habits, is a good place to start. 

Running Without Knee Pain

Refined sugar feeds pathogens, especially candida. An abundance of candida and other pathogens leads to allergies, diabetes, obesity, and a whole lot more. Unfortunately, we love sugar. We love sugar so much that Americans are planning to spend nearly $3 billion on Halloween candy this year. The science is in: if you want to be as healthy as possible refined sugar must be eliminated from your diet.

This includes Halloween. 

This will be my second Halloween without Halloween candy. Truthfully, I can’t say I miss it all that much. I know that’s not the case for everyone, so I’ve put together a guide for some alternatives and ranked them from least healthy to most healthy. Although we have some alternative candies, this isn’t an exact trade-in for your favorite candy bars. This is more a guide to satisfy your sweet tooth. 

This is not an advertisement. None of the brands below paid us.

Least Healthy

Organic Cane Sugar 

Truthfully, I can’t believe I still have to include this. Using organic refined sugar and calling it “healthy” is what my dad did 20 years ago. It’s dated, and it’s not a healthy alternative to regular refined sugar. There was a time when my dad was a radical health nut for eating organic sugar instead of regular sugar, but today, even the least health-conscious people I know who were born within the last 50 years are of the opinion that sugar is sugar. As far as the effects of sugar on your body, organic cane sugar has the same effect. Organic cane sugar will still feed candida growth in your body! 

Coconut Sugar, Brown Rice Syrup, Raw Sugar, and Agave syrup 

There are a lot of sugar alternatives out there that are still very high on the glycemic index chart. The only sugar substitutes we use that I recommend are stevia, monk fruit, and dates. I use blackstrap molasses, too, but I don’t recommend it for everyone. I mix a teaspoon of molasses with whatever quantity of monk fruit that I’m using to make “brown sugar”. Molasses does have some benefits, but it is still a refined sugar. If you use molasses, use it in moderation and pay attention to how it makes you feel. 

Read this article to see some alternative sugars and where they rank on the glycemic index chart. I personally have not used any other alternative sweeteners besides the ones I recommend above. In my opinion and experience, these are the healthiest sugar alternatives you can use.

Anything Too Processed 

Lately, I’ve seen a push for Smart Sweets. Smart Sweets is a brand of candy that makes your favorite regular candy like gummy bears and sour patch kids. They are free from sugars and sugar alcohols, they’re naturally colored, and gluten-free, as well as free from other common allergens like nuts. They even have vegan options. If I took my kids trick-or-treating and they gave these out, I probably wouldn’t tell the kids they couldn’t eat them, but it’s not an everyday healthy alternative. They’re sweetened with monk fruit, and that is a good sugar alternative, however, the candies themselves are just too processed to be considered a great alternative. That being said, these are better for you than regular refined sugar. So they’re not the worst thing you could do. But any naturally sweetened candy like this that is processed into a gummy bear, or sour worm, or anything resembling normal candy, is just too processed to be considered healthy. 

Getting There!

Chocolate

They make a multitude of alternatively sweetened chocolate bars out there. We’ve tried a couple of them, and while they make good alternatives, we wouldn’t recommend them for everyday eating. 

Lily’s Chocolate Bars, and Other Lily’s Products

Lily’s chocolate bars are sweetened with stevia. It is a good alternative to conventional chocolate bars, but they are cooked and more processed than some other raw or otherwise healthier options. They also contain Soy Lecithin, which is essentially a food emulsifier; it helps the chocolate achieve the right texture. My family and I do eat Lily’s chocolate bars occasionally. They also make chocolate chips which are great for baking. 

Lily’s also makes peanut butter cups. Finding Lily’s peanut butter cups was a godsend when I was still craving Reese’s Peanut Butter cups. I don’t crave peanut butter cups much anymore, and when I do I prefer to make my own! (More on that later) Lily’s chocolate has a plethora of sweet alternatives and a multitude of different kinds of chocolate bars. We try to avoid processed foods as much as possible, but Lily’s isn’t the worst thing you could grab as a treat every once in a while. 

Lakanto Monk Fruit Chocolate Bars

Lakanto is the brand of granulated Monk fruit that we use for baking. It’s radically better than sugar, but it does have erythritol, which is a sugar alcohol. Sugar alcohol isn’t great for you, though a little every once in a while with the help of a healthy gut won’t be the worst thing for you. Lakanto also makes chocolate bars, and while I’ve never personally had them, based on the ingredients, they are also a suitable chocolate bar alternative. Again, they’re still a processed food, so not too much!

Honey Mama’s Chocolate Bars

Honey Mama’s makes raw food chocolate bars out of portland. A raw food chocolate bar is going to be much better for you than a processed chocolate bar. For that reason, these are our favorite. They’re made from sprouted almonds, cacao powder, raw honey, and a couple of other ingredients depending on the flavor you get. They melt in your mouth and have the best texture of any candy bar you’ll ever have, hands down. There is, of course, one problem. Raw honey is only good in small amounts and is not good if you haven’t fixed your gut. If you haven’t created a gut microbiome healthy enough to process the sugar from raw honey, then these aren’t for you (of course, if your gut isn’t healthy enough to process sugar, this is the wrong article for you! What are you doing here? Go make a salad!). Don’t cook with these chocolate bars! Heating up honey kills the enzymes and causes it to lose its health benefits- you might as well just eat sugar if you’re going to heat up your honey. 

Peanut Butter/Nut Butter

We like peanut butter. A lot. If sugar is still a regular part of your diet, you likely won’t be able to appreciate a high-quality sugarless peanut butter to its fullest, but trust me, you’re missing out. Most peanut butter isn’t good for you. Large scale factory-farmed peanut butter often has peanut mold problems. Additionally, enzyme inhibitors are particularly bad with peanuts. Small scale peanut butter made from sprouted nuts is much better for you, but expensive and often hard to find.

If you’re buying nut butter or peanut butter, our favorite nut butter is the Nutt-zo Keto butter. It’s got a bunch of nuts and seeds in it and it fantastic. My dad recently found another good one called Fix and Fogg Everything Butter. But ideally, you should be making your peanut butter/nut butter at home from sprouted nuts. Check out the video below to learn more about making sprouted almond butter, and be on the lookout for a video from us to see how we do it, coming soon. 

Most Healthy (Homemade Alternatives)  

Homemade Peanut Butter Cups 

We use a nut butter and Lily’s chocolate chips to make peanut butter cups. I have not made peanut butter cups without Lily’s chocolate chips, but since they have soy lecithin, there are better options.

To make peanut butter cups, I like to take a bowl full of peanut butter or nut butter and put it in the freezer to firm up. In the meantime, I melt a bag of Lily’s chocolate chips on a double boiler until they’re melted. Then I take silicone cup molds, and pour melted chocolate in the bottom, spreading the chocolate up the sides. I roll spoonfuls of the chilled peanut butter into balls and put them in the silicone cups. Then I cover the peanut butter with more chocolate and chill it until it is solid. These peanut butter cups are much better than store-bought because you can add as much or as little peanut butter and chocolate as you want! Truthfully, I don’t know how well these keep because I’ve never had them survive for more than 30 minutes They’re definitely a fan favorite. 

Date Balls 

You can experiment with different flavor combinations with date balls forever. The simplest way to make them is to put pitted dates in a food processor with nut butter and/or nuts, and a little bit of salt. Blend until you get the right consistency to roll them into balls. You can experiment with adding different nuts, nut butter, seeds, and even berries. Roll them into balls and then roll in chocolate powder, or shredded coconut, or even sliced almonds. The possibilities are endless! I don’t make date balls all that often, so I don’t have a go-to recipe. 

Homemade Honey Mama’s Chocolate Bars

If you like Honey Mama’s chocolate bars, you should try making your own! They’ll be better for you because they’re homemade and you can control the ingredients, and you can make them less sweet. (As much as we love Honey Mama’s, they’re way too sweet). So check out this recipe for homemade Honey Mama’s chocolate. Use homemade nut butter from sprouted nuts and as little raw honey as possible for the healthiest version of these bars. I’ve yet to try it, but I suspect you could use homemade Honey Mama’s chocolate bars, with homemade nut butter from sprouted nuts, and make the healthiest peanut butter cups possible. 

Homemade Ice Cream

Another one of my favorite desserts is homemade ice cream. Store-bought “healthy” ice cream is expensive, and also, not healthy! At home, we like to make tart berry-banana ice cream, cranberry-banana, raspberry-banana, blackberry-banana, etc. We like to use tart fruits, especially cranberries because bananas are very sweet. We take 12 bananas, cut them up, and freeze them and our fruit ahead of time. We then pull the bananas out to thaw just a little bit, add 1.5 cups of frozen tart berries, and add salt and cinnamon to taste. Put everything in the food processor and blend to combine for 5 generous servings. This, like most of our recipes, is a loose recipe. Don’t be afraid to set guidelines for what is healthy enough and experiment within those guidelines to find a version that you like best. 

Pies

Pies are a favorite of ours. We make pie crust using butter, sourdough starter, organic flour, and a pinch of salt. If you find that you still have a problem digesting gluten even after healing the gut, you’ll want to use chickpea flour (ideally homemade chickpea flour from sprouted chickpeas) and water instead of sourdough starter. 

Add 2.5 cups of your flour and a pinch of salt to a bowl. I recommend Bob’s Red Mill organic all-purpose flour if you’re using storebought, but personally, I prefer to buy organic local from a farmers market. Then add 1 cup of ice-cold butter. Begin to break up the butter and combine the flour and butter with your fingers into smaller and smaller pieces, until you have a mixture resembling Kraft parmesan cheese (a tip from my Sister Pie cookbook, and after lots of experimentation, I can confirm this is the way to achieve the best pie crust). Add half a cup of active sourdough starter and mix until combined. Use your hands to bring the mixture together into a dough. You’ll want to refrigerate this dough for at least 2 hours and up to 2 days. If you’re not planning on making the pie anytime soon, you can freeze the pie dough.

Pie filling is generally experimental at our house. I usually take a large bowl of fruit, add lemon juice, ¼ cup of tapioca starch, anywhere from ¼ cup to ¾ cup of granulated monk fruit (sometimes I add a teaspoon or less of molasses to the monk fruit for a brown sugar substitute), and salt. I’ve used this with apples, apple-rhubarb, plums, cranberries, peaches, and cherries. Again, I recommend playing around with fruit combinations and ratios. Cranberry pie needs more monk fruit than peach pie, and apple and plum pie go great with cinnamon and other similar flavors. It’s super easy to google your favorite fruit pie recipe and convert it into a healthier version. 

Generally, I top my pies with some sort of crumble. I use about a cup of cold butter, and about ¾ cup of chickpea flour, ¼ cup of tapioca starch, a couple of spoonfuls of monk fruit depending on how tart your pie is, and a pinch of salt. Combine until you achieve the texture of sand. 

Roll out your pie crust into a glass pan (don’t put metal in the oven!) fill with your pie filling and top with your crumble. Bake for about an hour at 325 degrees Fahrenheit, until the topping is golden brown and your pie filling is bubbling. 

Don’t be afraid to experiment! I try new pies all the time. Some are better than others. I rarely measure ingredients when I’m cooking, which obviously makes it difficult to write out the perfect pie recipe!

Fruit 

Whole fruit is the absolute best thing, health-wise, to satisfy a sugar craving. Personally, if watermelon season took place during Halloween, I think we’d have no need for candy! One of our favorite sweet snacks is a bowl full of berries with a spoonful of homemade nut butter on top. You can add Lily’s chocolate chips or some unsweetened shredded coconut on top (although I’d skip the chocolate chips if you’re trying to be as healthy as possible). 

We also keep baking chocolate powder on hand to go with fruit. You can dip bananas, strawberries, oranges, or any other fruit in it that you think would go well with chocolate! You can add a bit of chocolate powder to your homemade nut butter berry concoction as well, if you want to forgo the chocolate chips. 

On farmer’s market days we come home with generally, half a bushel of apples, a case of berries, and 2 boxes of grapes (that is until orange season starts, then we add a case of oranges). With 5 people, this much fruit usually doesn’t even last all week!

Conclusion 

The first time I hung out with my friends after I had converted to a more organic lifestyle got a few funny looks. A lot of people recognize that sugar is bad for you, but would rather just enjoy sugar while they accept the inevitable health problems to come. Warning: some of these food combos might seem a little weird! I wanted to make sure I covered all my bases so I tried to include everything that I myself might eat when I’m craving something sweet. For this Halloween, I’ll be spending some time in the mountains with a couple of friends. I’ll probably make a small batch of peanut butter cups to snack on while they eat Halloween candy, but probably not much else. 

Please note that if your gut is unwell even some of the healthiest alternatives above may not be that healthy for you. Fruit that is blended or cooked down at all is not as good for you as fresh, raw fruit. But if you’re cooking at home, anything you make will be radically better than something you would get at a restaurant or grocery store. Even now, if I eat too much sugar, I may need to take SF722 to combat the yeast. If I skip a salad and eat a bunch of fruit or sugar, I feel the effects even more! So remember to plan accordingly and take care of yourself before, during, and after a day of eating too much junk food. 

Happy Halloween! 

It’s important to note that when looking at studies for supplementation to prevent or help treat coronavirus we’re usually looking at research on supplement efficacy for other viruses. We’re dealing with a novel virus with this pandemic. But, the body is a holistic, complex system. Having a body in homeostasis during a pandemic only makes sense. And while coronavirus is new and different, it’s still a virus. And we have a lot of good science on how to help prevent virus infections.

Vitamin C

Vitamin C has long been touted to cure everything from cancer to liver failure. Studies show that ingesting vitamin C supplements does not seem to be the cure-all we’d hoped for but the studies that administer intravenous vitamin C look very promising. If our pharmaceutical industry had our best interests at heart patients who are being treated for severe cases of coronavirus would be administered IV Vitamin C, and many lives would likely be saved.

Regular injections aren’t practical for normal people, and we suspect there might be a few side effects if people use injections regularly as a preventative measure. But Vitamin C injections do show a lot of promise for treating many diseases.

This is not to say that vitamin C supplementation is useless. If you don’t have enough vitamin C in your body when you get sick the vitamin C may reduce severity and duration, but not much. A better way to get enough vitamin C in order to prevent disease is to eat the right foods before there is a health issue.

If you think you may be low on vitamin C, liposomal is the more absorbable form of vitamin C.

It’s not a magical cure-all, but Vitamin C supplementation does make sense for most people with conventional diets.

Related: Homemade Vitamin C

Zinc

Zinc helps your immune system fight off infection, helps the body heal wounds, and is needed for making protein and DNA.

There have been several studies testing whether zinc supplements can help treat or prevent the common cold. A comprehensive review of 18 of such studies showed zinc is may reduce the duration of patients’ common cold.

Studies also show that colds, school absences, and antibiotic prescription rates are lower in for those who take zinc supplementation regularly, suggesting that zinc could also prevent colds.

The National Institutes of Health says oysters as the best food source of zinc avaialble. Another benefits of oysters is they have copper in just the right amount to make the zinc more easily absorbed and assimilated (if you don’t have enough copper you can’t get enough zinc). You can also get zinc from red meat, legumes, nuts, whole grains, and dairy.

Zinc has been proven to reduce symptoms of illnesses from rhinoviruses by messing with the viruses’ RNA replication, but there are no studies yet that look at zinc with COVID-19. We don’t know how similar COVID-19 is to rhinoviruses, but it is possible that zinc could mess with the RNA replication of coronavirus in a similar way. Regardless, getting enough zinc to keep your immune system strong makes sense for the other aforementioned reasons.

Related: Celiac, Zinc, and Tobacco Use

Glutathione

COVID-19 deaths are usually attributed to a “cytokine storm”, which is a physiological feedback loop where our body creates an excessive release of cytokines, a pro-inflammatory signaling molecule. A new study has evaluated the treatment of two patients with COVID-19 pneumonia who were given IV and orally administered glutathione.

Oral and IV glutathione, glutathione precursors (N-acetyl-cysteine) and alpha lipoic acid may represent a novel treatment approach for blocking NF-κB and addressing “cytokine storm syndrome” and respiratory distress in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia.

Science Direct – Respiratory Medicine Case Reports

Obviously, this is only two cases that were studied. We need a lot more information. But there are some other papers that support supplementing with glutathione, but there is nothing yet conclusive.

Dr. Richard Horowitz is a board-certified internist with a private integrative medicine practice. He is considered to be one of the best Lyme disease doctors and he’s built a practice around combining conventional treatments with alternative, naturopathic methods to treat Lyme disease. Dr. Horowitz has treated patents successfully with glutathione therapy.

“It is a miracle and it’s not,” says Horowitz of glutathione, which he has used on thousands of patients in his medical practice over the past 30 years. “It’s already in the literature—there are published articles on glutathione showing that it has anti-viral activity against herpes viruses, HIV, and hepatitis. The problem is, all of the COVID research is happening through pharmaceutical companies. No one is looking at natural approaches. You hear a little about how low vitamin D might put you at risk, so it’s coming out in dribs and drabs.” And just like with vitamin D, you can be deficient in glutathione—especially if you’ve been exposed to a lot of environmental toxins (which is everyone). Older people are also more likely to be depleted of the compound.

Two Potential Treatments for COVID-19 Unfold in the Hudson Valley 

Vitamin D

Dr. Rhonda Patrick at Found My Fitness thinks vitamin D may be what those who are getting hit with COVID-19 are missing. Other interesting points include:

• People with genetic predisposition to lower vitamin D levels are more likely to die of respiratory disease
• People with normal vitamin D levels are less likely to die from respiratory disease
• Too much vitamin D can be toxic, though concerns of hypercalcemia tend to be overblown
• Vitamin D and Vitamin K increase may increase bone density and prevent hypercalcemia
• Don’t be concerned with eating “too many leafy greens” and issues with oxalates, kidney stones, etc.

Gut Health

This is the key. Not just for coronavirus defense, but for our health in every physical aspect of our lives. You cannot have a healthy gut and be low in vitamin D, or zinc, or other nutrients. Gut health is everything. When the best farmers see a sick plant they treat their soil’s microbiome first and foremost. When we’re sick, our microbiome is off. When we’re well and everything is working optimally we have a balanced, healthy gut to thank.

In the first case of novel coronavirus reported in the U.S., the patient reported two days of nausea and vomiting along with diarrhea in addition to respiratory symptoms. In some small studies, researchers have linked patients with gastrointestinal issues to poorer coronavirus outcomes. Poor gut health seems to equate to severe disease symptoms including higher fevers and a greater risk of liver injury.

The suggestion is that the gastrointestinal symptoms are caused by the virus invading the ACE2-containing cells that are found throughout the bowel. This, together with the presence of the virus in the stool, suggests the gastrointestinal tract as another possible route of infection and transmission.

The Conversation – Worried about coronavirus? Pay attention to your gut

But it’s not just that the virus attacks the gut. Science is on the verge of discovering that our gut microbiome supplies our entire body with its microbiome. And what they don’t yet know, but is nevertheless true, is that a body with a healthy, diverse, and plentiful microbiome is a much less hospitable host for foreign invaders.

The health of our gut bacteria plays a crucial role in how our immune system reacts to every disease, including coronavirus. Diet is crucial to developing and maintaining healthy gut flora. The wider variety of raw vegetables and herbs one consumes, the more diverse one’s gut bacteria will be. And diversity is key to a healthy microbiome.

This article, How To Heal Your Gut, goes into detail about how to develop a healthy gut microbiome and is the basis for ridding the body of and being less susceptible to nearly every disease.

From our sister company, Green Lifestyle Market, here are our top supplement picks for anyone concerned with COVID-19 or just wanting to keep their immune system strong:

• Liposomal Glutathione
• Liposomal C
• Forumla SF722 (gut health)
• Abzorb (gut health)
• Vitamin D/K2 Liquid
• Elderberry Plus (with zinc, vitamin C, and echinacea)
• Organic Root Cider

But don’t skip the aforementioned gut health article! Diet is far more important than supplements, and if finances are tight, put your money towards healthy food before you purchase supplements.

A new study from the Environmental Working Group found glyphosate, Bayer’s controversial weed-killer, in nearly 90% of non-organic chickpea and hummus samples tested and was also detected in several organic brands as well. The organization tested 37 different conventional samples and 18 organic samples. All but two of the organic samples contained detectable levels of glyphosate.

Beans, peas and lentils are a nutritious, affordable source of protein and an important part of the American diet…These excellent foods would be much better without glyphosate. Toxic weedkiller should never be allowed to contaminate these products, or any other foods, that millions of American families eat every day.”

Olga V. Naidenko, Ph.D., EWG’s vice president for science investigations.

Related: How to Eliminate IBS, IBD, Leaky Gut 

Of the samples tested, a conventional dry chickpea sample had the highest levels of glyphosate. Whole Foods Market Original Hummus has the highest tested levels among the hummus sample, with over 2,000 parts per billion. Other hummus samples with notable amounts of glyphosate detected were three samples of Sabra Classic Hummus, Sabra Roasted Pine Nut Hummus, two samples of Whole Foods Market Original Hummus, Whole Foods Market organic-label Original Hummus, Cava Traditional Hummus, and two samples of Harris Teeter Fresh Foods Market Traditional Artisan Hummus. The hummus and chickpeas for the study were purchased at a range of grocery stores in Washington D.C., San Francisco, and New York City.

Italian scientists studying the Mediterranean diet have found evidence that the quality of your food matters when it comes to health benefits. Researchers from Mediterranean Neurological Institute (I.R.C.C.S. Neuromed) released their findings in 2017 after studying more than 18,000 men and women since 2005. The Molisani study saw that wealthier participants experienced a greater reduction of cardiovascular risks.

Given a comparable adherence to the Mediterranean diet, the most advantaged groups were more likely to report a larger number of indices of high quality diet as opposed to people with low socioeconomic status…For example, within those reporting an optimal adherence to the Mediterranean diet (as measured by a score comprising fruits and nuts, vegetables, legumes, cereals, fish, fats, meat, dairy products and alcohol intake) people with high income or higher educational level consumed products richer in antioxidants and polyphenols, and had a greater diversity in fruit and vegetables choice. We have also found a socioeconomic gradient in the consumption of whole-grain products and in the preferred cooking methods. These substantial differences in consuming products belonging to Mediterranean diet lead us to think that quality of foods may be as important for health as quantity and frequency of intake”

Licia Iacoviello, head of the Laboratory of Nutritional and Molecular Epidemiology at I.R.C.C.S. Neuromed

Recommended: How to Eliminate IBS, IBD, Leaky Gut 

Here is yet another insidious way lower-income people are disadvantaged.

The Mediterranean diet is characterized by a large quantity of olive oil, unrefined grains, legumes, and diverse fruits and vegetables. It includes moderate amounts of fish, dairy, and wine. In addition, not all items are created equal – cheaper versions of things (like canned vegetables as opposed to fresh) do not contain the same nutritional makeup as fresher, more expensive options. Lower-income people are less likely to be able to afford the quality and diversity of products needed to reap the benefits of the Mediterranean diet.