Avoid These Common Mistakes To Optimize Your Health Quickly

For most people, learning about natural health (which, incidentally is the only kind of health there is) includes many of these common pitfalls that impede healing. The average person, especially those under 50, can achieve a high level of health very quickly, but it’s rare. The reason for this is brainwashing. Health is not nearly as complicated as we’re led to believe. Deprograming our brains, getting rid of all of the nonsense, is the challenge that takes people weeks, months, or usually years to achieve in order to restore health.

If you’ve had enough of the aches and pains, disease, doctors pilling on medications, or you just feel it’s time to avoid the fate you see your friends and family fall into, here’s what you can do to radically accelerate your learning curve and achieve a truly wonderful state of natural health and vitality, quickly.

No More Diet Foods

Diet soda, lean microwave dinners, healthy this and low fat that… are almost always garbage! If they reduce the fat, they increase the sugar. When they reduce the sugar, they increase the MSG. If the processed food does not have any fat or sugar, it almost always has artificial chemicals.

Stop Reading Labels

That’s right, I said stop reading labels, for a little while. Now that I’ve got your attention, I mean stop buying packaged foods. It’s important to learn how to read labels, but it’s much more important to shop in a manner that doesn’t require a lot of reading.

Typical self-proclaimed health-nuts love their junk food just as much as the conventional, sugar and caffeine addicted, soda drinking, GMO eating, processed food-buying consumer. The difference is that the health-nut generally buys foods labeled organic, or all natural, or something similar. Under many circumstances these words mean next to nothing. All natural is practically an industry joke played on gullible consumers. The phrase “Made with organic ingredients” is often simply a way to mark up the price. There are exceptions, and there is some junk food that I personally purchase from time to time, but organic junk food is still junk food!

Know What Health Food Really Is

Look at it this way, food has three levels: healthy, neutral, and not healthy. Healthy food heals. Neutral food has lots of benefits, especially when eaten with healthy foods, but it doesn’t really heal the body on its own.

Healthy food is produce. – raw, fresh produce. Foods that are alive are foods that heal and help rebuild the body. The fresher, the better. Enzymes are the key to assimilating nutrition, the key to vitality, the key to health. Very few people get enough enzymes. Enzymes are in raw foods, not in cooked foods. Cooking kills enzymes.

It’s important to understand that every time we eat foods void of enzymes, we’re taxing our bodies and reducing our lifespans, even when those food choices are of the healthier variety like rice and beans.

Brown rice, beans, quinoa, and lentils are examples of good foods to eat that should be considered neutral foods. These foods are wonderful sources of protein, bulk calories, minerals, and some vitamins. While raw food is best, it can be difficult for most, and impossible for some, to get enough minerals, protein, and calories from raw foods alone (for instance, I know plenty of people who have very poor access to fresh produce, or cannot afford it). Obviously, when cooked right, these foods have lots of benefits, but they don’t come close to the amazing health benefits of a salad. On the other hand, brown rice and beans with some raw produce such as avocados, diced tomatoes, chopped onions, crushed garlic, and ground turmeric is an incredibly healing, very beneficial, warm, and truly healthy meal. But, it still doesn’t even compare a big, diverse salad.

Cut Out the Sugar (this includes juicing)

Brown rice syrup, agave nectar, honey, coconut sugar, maple syrup, apple juice, beet juice, and sugar cane juice are much healthier choices than conventional sugar and high fructose corn syrup. They are “healthier” choices, but they are not “healthy” choices. To rid the body of disease and other ailments, cut it all out. Even allergies are a sign of too much sugar; that includes seasonal, pet, dust, and food allergies. Cut out the excess sugar completely for a while.

For a treat every now and then, wait until the body’s health is where it needs to be, and then eat some of those foods occasionally, while paying careful attention to the body. As soon as an allergy, an ache, or some other ailment starts creeping back, cut back your sugar intake.

Sugar is sugar, which is to say sugar weakens the immune system and deteriorates the body in many ways, unless it is within whole foods.

Nutrition Trumps Toxins

Avoid GMOs at all costs. Choose organic first, but when you can’t, avoid the “dirty dozen,” the foods most heavily contaminated with pesticides, especially if your health is in a poor state (see the last source below the article). Otherwise, fresh is best! When choosing between conventional, fresh produce, and organic frozen, canned, or otherwise processed, prepackaged foods, choose fresh. Get the enzymes. Unless someone is extremely sick, when the diet is balanced, the body can detoxify the chemicals and use the nutrients. More often than not, a person with a lack of nutrition and very low toxic load is typically less healthy than a person with a considerable toxic load and an abundance of nutrition. There are exceptions and a lot to learn, but doing research while eating lots of raw fresh produce is better than putting off dietary changes.

No More Vaccines, Prescription Medicines, or Over the Counter Drugs

There are some cases where prescription drugs are absolutely necessary. Most of those cases are for a limited period of time. It’s impossible to be truly healthy when the body is bombarded with chemicals. There is no drug that is healthy. Some drugs can help in some ways, but that doesn’t make them beneficial to your health. It’s not possible to reach the highest state of health and vitality while taking prescription drugs.

This is a question everyone taking drugs should ask themselves if they want to be healthy: “If I were stranded on an island, surrounded by the healthiest food imaginable, would I die without my drugs and/or vaccines?” If the answer is yes, then health will continue to elude you. If the answer is no, it’s time to do research and take control of your health.

There is the hard truth about vaccines that so many are unwilling to hear or understand. Regardless of a vaccine’s efficacy to prevent disease, there are two key problems with them:

  1. Vaccines are toxic – just read the ingredients. It doesn’t take an MD to know that injecting those ingredients into the body can, and will, damage health.
  2. Parasites, infectious disease, all the little critters that harm us go after weakened immune systems. The best defense against anything, from cancer to Ebola, is an incredibly strong immune system!

There’s no excuse for the flu shot. Even if they worked, which they don’t, it will still degrade your health. The real flu fighters are in the foods we eat.

Buy Whole Foods

Unadulterated, unpackaged, unprocessed, unmolested foods are what counts. This includes herbs and spices. The most benefit you can get from turmeric, or ginger, or garlic, or pepper for instance, is from the whole form that you crush, grate, crack, etc. Turmeric is an incredibly beneficial spice, and should be included in any healthy diet, but if the unprocessed root in unavailable, go ahead and get the packaged pre-ground version. But try for the whole food version whenever possible.

Drink Clean Water

Tap water is not good for us. Soda is extremely toxic to us. Milk feeds infection. Fruit, carrot, and beet juice has its place, but they have too much sugar to drink regularly for most people. Drink lots of clean drinking water. Spring water from a good, clean spring, or distilled water are the best choices. Check out the recipe for cranberry stevia lemonade, and try drinking a gallon a day for a powerful detox.

Stop Taking Cheap Supplements

Cheap supplements are ineffective and toxic. Supplements are so much safer than medications, but most of the time they are still a hindrance to good health. Be careful with supplement purchases, and don’t use supplements to replace a good diet. Supplements should “supplement” a healthy diet instead.

Where To Start?

Salads and lots of good water. Try this for two weeks: make a salad every single day with lots of fresh, raw produce. Check out the recipe from the first source below. Only eat salads, huge, diverse, nutrient rich salads, every day. Make the kind of salads that get finished in three sittings, not one. And make a gallon of cranberry lemonade sweetened with stevia. Eat fruits for snacks. Spend these two weeks researching and listening to the body, and slowly add more foods into the diet after ailments subside.

Recommended Supplements:
Further Reading:



8 Easy Steps to Health

We are quickly approaching New Year’s Day and the annual accounting that accompanies it. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions last year? The year before?

Most of the time, resolutions focus on health issues.

  • I will lose weight.
  • I will get healthy.
  • I will completely change the way I eat.

Within weeks we give up, defeated.

If you’re not healthy, if you continue to say to yourself, “I wish I could eat like that, take care of myself that well,” then do it. If the change is radical, approach it with a project plan – one step at a time.

Step One

One of the reasons change is hard is because it usually starts with taking away something. Instead, start the other way around. Every day, drink a smoothie. It doesn’t matter if you have it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a snack. Just drink a nutrient-dense smoothie. There are two important ingredients: a high quality nutrition powder and, depending on the diet, a balanced oil supplement. In a blender, start with fresh or frozen fruit, cover with juice (not always necessary when using fresh fruit), add two tablespoons of nutrition powder, a tablespoon of flaxseed oil or an omega oil blend, and as much kale or spinach or other greens you can handle. See the Powerfully Healing Raspberry Cream Smoothie Recipe.

Step Two

Your enthusiasm for this project will grow as each step makes a significant difference in the way you feel. Step two is to eat a large salad every day. No, I am not talking about a bowl of lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers. I am talking about an incredibly nutritious salad filled with lots of raw veggies. Make it with at least 12 different vegetables, and throw in some herbs and seeds as well. Be sure to add fresh garlic, turmeric, and pepper for synergistic health benefits. Make it big and munch on it all day if you can’t finish it in one sitting. You might find it easier to make a bunch of this salad twice a week. See 80% Raw Food Diet (amazing salad and dressing recipe).

Step Three

It’s time to learn how to breathe properly. Breathing should be done deeply, in a manner that expands the abdomen as you inhale. Proper breathing dramatically increases stamina and mental clarity, elevates your mood, and helps the body detoxify more efficiently (more toxins are released through breathing than through the pores, urination, and defecation combined). For more information, check out How To Breathe.

Step Four

Between your daily smoothie and your daily salad, you are going to be feeling so much better. Your body is getting the nutrition it needs to repair damage and to thrive on a cellular level. Now that you are feeling better, are you ready to feel a whole lot better? If it’s time, move on to step four. Clean out your kitchen. Get rid of all the crappy processed food filled with artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, MSG, high fructose corn syrup, GMOs, trans fats, and other disgusting chemicals.

You want to eat whole foods, real foods, organic foods. But while we’re taking something away, let’s add something. One of the most amazing things you can do for your body is to take up drinking a gallon of cranberry stevia lemonade a day. Drink it throughout the day. Check out this recipe.

Step Five

Increase the amount of raw foods you eat. Aim for 80% raw – more vegetables than fruit. Produce heals. Munch on produce all day, and eat the aforementioned big salads.

Step Six

It’s time to detox, and balance the gut’s eco-system (though the aforementioned salads have made a huge difference already). True health is achieved by providing the body with the nutrition it needs and ridding it of the parasites, yeast, heavy metals, chemicals, and other garbage that doesn’t belong.

You have the choice to take each of these steps fast or slow. The point is, be sure each step is ingrained before moving on. Check out Kill Candida and Balance The Gut Quickly. See the previous link for a cheap and easy detox.

Step Seven

Do squats. Start with a few, and do a few more every day. Get up to 100 every day. Take your time, and work your way up.

Be sure to see the first link for more on diet and a great salad recipe.

Can you imagine making such a radical change and how it will impact your life? If you can imagine it, you can do it. Just start with step one.

Step Eight

It’s time to take up running! We are made by nature to run, just like we are made to do squats. Running seriously detoxifies the body, flushes the lymphs glands, produces lots of great hormones, and is incredibly good for you. For optimum health, work up to being able to run long distances but also mix it up, do sprints (sprints are great to jump start a thyroid that’s beginning to heal), do slow jogs, and anything in between. Running long distances with an unhealthy body (or with the wrong shoes) can be very bad for your health and lead to injury and many other issues. On the other hand, when you’re in excellent health, running long distances a couple of times a week is one of the best things you can do for yourself.

If running is too much for you right now, start with speed walking, rebounding, and jumping rope (other great exercises).

This would also be a great time to take up yoga. The more well rounded your fitness regimen is, the better it is for your health. Try not to get stuck on one thing. Check out Yoga, A Beginner’s Guide. Also see, Running Without Knee Pain.

Check out and bookmark this list of “Foundational Articles.” See the top one for a Cheap and Easy Detox recipe for the lemonade recipe and a good detox protocol. For a recipe to make your own nutrition powder filled with vitamins and minerals check Make Your Own Homemade Nutrition Formula.

Recommended Supplements:
Further Reading:



Powerfully Healing Raspberry Cream Smoothie Recipe

This is a powerful smoothie. The health benefits are enormous. If you have arthritis, diabetes, cancer, or any other major health ailment, or your goal is to prevent these diseases, this is a smoothie you should drink regularly.

For a massive boost of enzymes, tons of antioxidants, and a tremendous amount of anti-inflammatory healthy fats, you can’t do much better than this recipe.

If you suffer from Candida, we recommend you take some SF722 or some other yeast killer, as pineapple is very high in natural sugars. We also recommend adding a few scoops of Total Nutrition Formula for extra nutrition.

This smoothie is absolutely delicious; I’ll bet it’s the best you’ve ever had. And it’s kid friendly!

Just watch the video below and we’ll prove it.

A few of the many benefits of avocados

  • Helps lower cholesterol
  • Reduces the risk of diabetes, stroke, and coronary artery disease
  • Promotes a healthy body weight and BMI
  • Reduces the risk of cancer
  • Anti-inflammatory
  • Promotes a healthy immune system
  • Promotes healthy hair and skin

A few of the many benefits of pineapple

  • Prevents free radical damage
  • Helps build strong bones
  • Promotes healthy gums
  • Helps prevent macular degeneration
  • Reduces the risk of diabetes, stroke, and coronary artery disease
  • Promotes a healthy body weight and BMI
  • Reduces the risk of cancer
  • Anti-inflammatory
  • Helps lower cholesterol
  • Promotes a healthy immune system
  • Promotes healthy skin
  • Detoxifies the liver

A few of the many benefits of coconut oil

  • Helps lower cholesterol
  • Reduces the risk of diabetes, stroke, and coronary artery disease
  • Promotes a healthy body weight and BMI
  • Reduces the risk of cancer
  • Anti-inflammatory
  • Promotes a healthy immune-system
  • Promotes healthy hair and skin
  • Antifungal, antibacterial, and antiviral 

A few of the many benefits of raspberries

  • Helps lower cholesterol
  • Reduces the risk of diabetes, stroke, and coronary artery disease
  • Promotes a healthy body weight and BMI
  • Reduces the risk of cancer
  • Anti-inflammatory
  • Helps lower cholesterol
  • Promotes a healthy immune system

Recipe

This is about as easy as it gets. The recipe serves four. It’s perfect for a Vitamix. If you have a smaller blender, you may need to cut the recipe in half. Of course, all ingredients should be organic whenever possible.

Ingredients

  • 1 whole, fresh, medium pineapple
  • 10 ounces frozen raspberries
  • 1 medium to large avocado
  • 4 tablespoons coconut oil

Instructions

  1. Blend pineapple first.
  2. Then add avocado and coconut oil.
  3. After the first ingredients are fully blended, add the frozen raspberries and blend until smooth.
  4. Enjoy!

Recommended Supplements:
Further Reading:



Seven Ways to Help Your Body Detoxify

When you choose to do a cleanse or detox, your goal is to rid the body of as many toxins as possible. Pathogens, parasites, heavy metals, chemicals, and Candida are all targeted for elimination. A really good detox diet helps to cleanse the digestive tract, the kidneys, the liver, and the gallbladder, followed by the rest of the body. So what other actions can you take to help the process?

Exercise

Exercise is an important part of any health regime, and it is important during a cleanse or detox as well. Your health should dictate how hard you exercise. Obviously, a radical detox is not the best time to push yourself too hard. The focus is on healing, not fitness

Your lymphatic system needs movement in order to circulate. Rebounding is great for the lymphatic system. Walk, jump rope, yoga–all are great. Running also stimulates and detoxifies the lymphatic system and is a very natural exercise with tons of benefits.

Did you know squats can also help detoxify the body? They help stimulate your elimination organs and they produce beneficial hormones.

We release more toxins through our breath than we do through bowel elimination and urination combined. When the blood gets pumping, and we’re breathing heavily, the body is flushing itself. Sweating is also great for detoxing. But again, If you are healthy and you exercise vigorously on a regular basis, just listen to your body and take is slowly if need be. And if you’re not physically fit, or if you are considerably toxic and unhealthy, be careful.

Hot and Cold Hydrotherapy

Hot and cold hydrotherapy really moves the blood through the body. Heat dilates the vessels, pulling the blood to the surface. Cold does the opposite, constricting the surface vessels and driving the blood deep into the body. Use a shower wand or stand in a shower to alternate hot and cold.

Dry Sauna or Steam Room

A dry sauna or steam room makes you sweat, helping you eliminate toxins through the skin. Sweating is also great for your skin, as it opens your pores allowing dirt and debris to be washed away. Remember to hydrate after sweating. As you detox, you should be drinking large amounts of clean water. A gallon of cranberry lemonade will aid in your detox and rehydrate your body after sweating.

Massage

Massage helps release toxins from the muscles and tissues, oxygenates the tissues, and moves the blood and lymph throughout the body. The movement of the two circulatory systems filters the blood, removing waste products from the cells and aiding the immune system in dealing with pathogens.

Massage can be therapeutic on other levels as well. Deep massage frees up muscles that have become held in place by scar tissue or sheathing after years of poor posture, repetitive movement, injury, or illness. This kind of massage can actually be quite painful, but the results are amazing.

Epsom Salts Bath

A proper Epsom salt bath pulls toxins from tissues and allows the body to soak up minerals. Make sure that you spend a full 40 minutes in the tub. The first 20 minutes pulls out toxins. In the second 20 minutes, the body soaks up magnesium and sulfates.

Turbocharge any Detox with Niacin

Niacin (B3) is an inexpensive way to boost the efficacy of a detox. Most doctors recommend starting with 100 mg. I weigh 220 pounds and I took 1,500 mg for three days. Don’t take it for more than a few days. Drink lots of fluid (like the cranberry lemonade) and sweat out the toxins. Niacin won’t do you much good if you aren’t flushing out the junk while you do it. It’s powerful. You’ll be itchy, hot, and flush red all over. The effects last about an hour. Most people without damaged seriously livers can easily handle 500 mg for a few days.

Perhaps 15 – 25 mg would keep first timers from screaming bloody murder, and allow for a more gentle, beneficial  experience.

A word about the process might also be appropriate, as in the patients where I worked for seven years did not appear to have a clue about how to best utilize this vitamin as a cleanse.  (Take a small amount to start, if no effects, i.e., the flush, observed, up the dose by the same increments, until it occurs.  Then stay at that dose until no more effects felt, followed by upping the dose until next flush.  Maintain until no more effect, then up the third time, repeating this process.  Three times through should then be put on hold for weeks to a month or two depending upon health status, before starting again.)  Hopefully, a side note or a foot note, will save beginners that pain and frustration from overdosing the first time around, i.e., a simple word of strong caution.  This note of concern is from one who has used this cleanse for many decades, as well as assisting others through the process.” – Richard

Cranberry Lemonade

Make a gallon of cranberry lemonade sweetened with stevia. This will help balance the body’s PH, flush toxins, detoxify the liver and kidneys, flush all of the glands, and clean the blood.

In Conclusion

A cleanse or detox is a wonderful way to aid your immune system in eliminating waste, debris, pathogens, and parasites from the body. Using all available resources in addition to diet, will aid you in a more complete and rapid detox. The most important aspect of a good detox for most people is eliminating excess candida and balancing gut flora.

Our Detoxification Protocols & Information:
Recommended Supplements:
Recommended Reading:



How To Use a Neti Pot For Sinus Infections

A neti pot is a device to aid in nasal irrigation, a practice of using salt water to flush out the nose and sinus tissues along with excessive mucous, dust, debris, and pathogens. This practice can also reduce swelling of the sinuses and nasal passages.

While you can put water in your hands and sniff it up your nose, use a spoon, or use a bulb syringe, a net pot gives you more control and does not force water into sinuses – it merely flushes them.

To make your own saline solution, use 1 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda to 16 ounces (2 cups) of warm water.

Be sure that you use the following:

  • Distilled water or boiled water.
  • Real salt. Sea salt is not a good choice because it might contain traces of algae. Make sure the salt is fine and has no additives (no iodine or flavorings).
  • Baking soda without aluminum.

Heat the water until it is close to body temperature – around 98 degrees.

Irrigating the sinuses is a very old tradition of Ayurvedic medicine (2,000 – 3,000 years old), a daily practice for yogis. Though we do not recommend daily irrigation, the practice is very helpful at the onset of illness (along with gargling to reduce the number of pathogens in the throat) and throughout an illness if mucus is thick and is making breathing difficult.

To use the neti pot, simply lean over a sink, turn your face toward the hand holding the neti pot, place the spout in your upper nostril, and tilt the pot until the water runs in your nose. The water will run up your nostril and come out the lower nostril. You can direct the stream of water towards sinuses by how you tilt your head. Do both sides gently blowing your nose after each side is completed.

To purchase a neti pot, salt, solutions, etc. see Green Lifestyle Market.

Recommended Supplements:

Further Reading:

 




Staying Healthy In This Toxic World

There’s no question our bodies were not meant to battle the number of toxins we are now exposed to each day. The rise in cancer rates is enough of a barometer to incite fear. We can also find warning in the rise of asthma, autism, ADHD, dementias, and auto-immune diseases. So how do we survive, and better yet, achieve optimal health?

What to eat in a toxic world

First and foremost, eat organic whenever possible. This is such a no-brainer. Why would you want to add herbicides, fungicides, and pesticides to your body?

If you eat meat or dairy, remember you are eating on top of the food chain. Organic is vitally important for meat and dairy foods. If you eat conventional, you are exposing yourself to all of the toxins that animal has accumulated, which include those above plus GMOs, antibiotics, and hormones.

Do not ingest artificial chemicals. In other words, do not eat any food with artificial flavorings, colorings, or preservatives. No BHA, BHT, MSG, GMOs, or trans fats. And if you want your immune system to work right, stay away from processed sugar – all processed sugars. The bottom line is this: eat real food – unprocessed, fresh, organic, whole, nutrient dense food. The best possible diet is for 80% or more of your diet to consist of raw produce, more vegetables than fruit.

Drink clean water -distilled or spring water is best. At the very least, filter your water.

Diet is the most important factor in our survival – it is the basis of good health. Even in a cesspool of environmental toxicity (Okinawa) a good diet results in low cancer rates. Yet these same people immigrate to the United States, adopt a Western diet, and their cancer rates mirror our own.

How to cook and store food

Don’t use a microwave and never cook in aluminum. Don’t use non-stick bakeware of any kind. There is a new breed of non-stick pots and pans, but why risk it? Use cast iron, glass, enamel, ceramic, and stainless steel. Cast iron is the original non-stick pan. If you season it right, cast iron is always easy to clean. Even if food is glued to it, a ten-minute soak in hot water is all it takes to completely loosen the food. A quick scrub and it’s clean.

Don’t cook with high heat, and don’t cook quickly unless you’re boiling, steaming, or using a pressure cooker.

Cook with whole herbs that have superfood qualities like turmeric, ginger, garlic, onions, and oregano.

Don’t cook so often. Prepare raw meals and eat lots of raw produce and big salad with the aforementioned herbs.

Store leftovers in glass, not plastic. Chemicals from plastics leach into food. And do your best to avoid buying food in plastic containers. Again, whole foods avoid the packaging issue so common to processed foods.

Don’t pollute your environment

Whenever possible, surround yourself with non-toxic furnishings, carpeting, paints, etc. But since we can’t always take control of what’s already built in to our environment, the least we can do is avoid adding to our home’s toxic load. Use natural cleaners like vinegar, baking soda, and lemons or purchase toxic free cleaners. Do not use air fresheners. If necessary, use essential oils or boil citrus peels on the stove to freshen the air.

Don’t add toxins to your body through your skin

Our skin absorbs any and everything we put on it. So choose organic skin products – soaps, shampoos, conditioners, shaving cream, lotions, and make-up. Use oils for lotions (like coconut oil or almond oil).

Kill Candida and detox at least twice a year

A bi-annual detox is a necessity, even when you are living as clean a life as possible. There are just too many toxins in the food, water, and air to miss this opportunity to cleanse the body. For more on detoxification, check out Balance Your Eco-system and The Cheap and Easy Detox.

Recommended Supplements:
Further Reading:
Sources:

 




4 Steps to True Health

So you’ve decided it’s time to get healthy, but you’re not sure where to start. You know you need to lose weight. And maybe, just maybe, you should stop being a couch potato.

So what now? Prepackaged meals? A gym membership? Less caffeine, chocolate, and alcohol?

There are a hundred things you can do to be a little bit healthier. There are 4 things you can do if you want to become truly healthy.

  • Eat a truly healthy diet
  • Detox
  • Exercise
  • Get good sleep

The Healthiest Diet

A truly healthy diet isn’t found in a package. It doesn’t have a fancy name. It is a diet that eliminates artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, MSG, trans fats, and GMOs. Stop eating sugar. A full 80% of the diet consists of fresh, raw, organic produce – more vegetables than fruit. It does not include processed, boxed, packaged foods. It is a diverse, organic diet filled with nutrient dense foods and plenty of clean water.

Eat salads. Make big salads (at least 6 cups) with at least 10 different vegetables. Add fresh garlic, turmeric, and fresh cracked pepper.

Detox

It is not enough in this day and age to simply eat the best food. Though diet will always be the foundation of health, our toxic environment requires us to cleanse our bodies of chemicals, heavy metals, parasites, and pathogens twice a year (or more) if we are to achieve optimum health.

Although a full cleanse involves the entire body, the gut is the first and primary focus. The goal is to cleanse the intestinal tract of bad bacteria and Candida and repopulate it with good bacteria. Candida feeds on our body’s tissues as well as our nutrients as does bad bacteria. Both exude toxins. Cleaning up the gut also aids the immune system. Two of the best things you can do to aid in a detox is to drink a lot of cranberry lemonade sweetened with stevia, and eat salads with garlic.

Exercise

Exercise is crucial for a healthy body and a healthy immune system. If you are a couch potato, start slow. Walking and rebounding are gentle exercises that help the lymph circulate in the body. There is no pump for the lymphatic system.

Do bodyweight squats. It’s likely the best exercise there is. We are naturally built to squat. It does much more than just build leg muscles.

For those who cannot squat, “get ups” are a wonderful exercise that works out the whole body. Simply lie down on the floor on your back. Now roll to the left and get up. Lie back down. Roll to the right and get up. Each time be sure to use the other leg to push off the floor. Each day, do as many as you can. You will find the number rises quickly. This is a great work out for the beginner. If that’s not possible try getting in and out of a chair repeatedly. A chair that you can lower as you progress is great for this. As you get stronger, try using as little momentum as possible.

Sleep

Is coffee what gets you through he day? How many hours of sleep do you need? If you sleep more on your days off, catching up on lost sleep, you are not getting enough. How many hours do you need to sleep a night when you are on vacation? For most adults, eight hours is the absolute minimum. If possible, get off of any and all drugs, and that includes caffeine.

Recommended Supplements:

Further Reading: