This is Step 6 of the article I wrote, 7 Step New Health Pyramid, which you can read on this Page >>

By Reena A Jadhav

We truly live in the best of times – and the worst of times.

We have never had so much abundance and variety available. Mounds of delicious, addictive, affordable foods from all over the world are tempting us 24/7/365.

But the price of this abundance and excess is, guess what? Obesity and chronic disease.

Think about how the animal kingdom eats – horses eat hay, birds eat seeds, bees eat pollen. You don’t see bees chomping down hay or horses licking pollen off flowers. They instinctively know what their bodies need and are happy eating just those foods. (Have you ever seen an obese bee?)

We have the same innate intelligence… however, we also have a problem: a brain that fears starvation and wants us to stock up. Our brain also loves dopamine rushes which – unfortunately – food provides in abundance. This creates a deadly combination of addiction and overindulgence (for me it was sugar, chocolate, flour, and butter).

Living in our world of rich Starbucks aromas and cheap Krispy Kreme donuts we are all paying a heavy price for overindulgence.

So you need to ask yourself, “is this food my fuel – or my funeral?”

And there’s a bigger, hidden issue. (Yes, another problem.) We don’t know what’s healthy and what isn’t. Do we?

One day coconut oil is good for you, another day it isn’t. Yesterday eggs were causing cholesterol but today they don’t. It’s enough to make us all throw up our hands in confusion as the so-called “experts” change their minds.

Fake health news is everywhere. Companies fund studies (with top researchers of course) to support the “health” benefits of their poisonous products. Greed has beaten integrity and it’s impossible to know the real truth around research any more. No, a glass of wine daily is not healthy (not that you want to hear that!).

And then there are the thousands of additives, chemicals, and GMOs, plus of course glyphosate, which all lace supposedly healthy foods with poison. It’s like having an evil stepmother at every store, feeding us their poisoned apples with a smile. Berries may seem like manna from heaven – but only if they don’t come gift wrapped in glyphosate which will obliterate your microbiome and create disease.

False advertising is rampant, tricking us into thinking we are eating healthy. There is nothing natural about “natural flavors”. Packages have big bold words about health – and tiny print that reveals toxic chemicals (like carrageenan). Eating healthy can feel like a lot of hard work.

Foods created in a lab – designed to be addictive – are everywhere. Addictions drive so many of our daily food habits. From that morning Starbucks run to the packets of chips you just can’t put down, we don’t stand a chance against all this masterful manipulation!

As if that’s not enough, we’re not all the same. One person’s medicine is another person’s poison. An apple a day may keep the doctor away for you but it creates inflammation for me (fact – per my FIT test). Our bodies actually tell us quite clearly when something doesn’t agree with them, but we’ve lost touch and no longer listen to their whispers. At least, not until they start screaming out loud – and then we take pills that we’ve confused with “cures”.

Eating out of season is yet another confusing experience for your body. Our physiological needs change with the seasons – yet we eat exactly the same all year round. We fly in blueberries from Mexico and lychees from China. We eat pumpkin in summer and plums in winter. Worse, we eat complex, heavy, hard to digest meals as the norm rather than the exception as they are so easy to procure. What would have taken half a day to cook (and hence only cooked weekly or monthly) is now available any time, anywhere.

Take a moment to read those points again. Then pause to consider this: your right to healthy food has actually been taken away from you.

If you want to eat to create health, you are going to have to break out of your current state of acceptance and trust. How many of these dangerous beliefs do you have?

• Believing that all fruits and vegetables in the grocery store are equally healthy (they are not, buyer beware!).
• Believing that the newest fad diet (right now it’s Keto) must be the cure-all because so many famous people are touting it. (It never is – just yet another marketing ploy to sell more of something.)
• Believing the claims of the labels on your food (no, you can’t trust them – you need to read the fine print and ingredients list).
• Believing that manufacturers have your best interest at heart (of course not – they care about their profits and bonuses way more than your health).
• Believing that your doctor knows about nutrition and has the answers to everything (there are still MDs out there saying that nutrition has nothing to do with cancer).

Are you wondering if I’m a conspiracy theorist who made all this up? Let me assure you that what I’m sharing was distilled from the 75 interviews I conducted with renowned MDs on the Healthier Podcast. From Dr. Mark Hyman to Dr. Zach Bush to Dr. Joseph Mercola, these doctors are all desperately trying to get this message out: buyer beware of your food choices today!

If you are overwhelmed with what to do next, here’s my very simple plan that I started following two and a half years ago. I completely reversed all my symptoms (28, remember!) and experienced food as medicine first hand. Ok, ready to eat to heal? Here’s how you do it!

1. Get Personal
   Figure out which foods are medicine – or poison – for your body. (It doesn’t matter what works for anyone else!) The shortcut for this is food sensitivity tests. I’ve done Viome, FIT, ALCAT and the common insurance covered food allergy test. The harder way is to keep a food diary and start with an elimination diet. Then as you add food items back in, see which ones make you lethargic and tired or symptomatic (gas, bloating, rashes, headaches). Exclude those completely.
2. Buy Quality
   Eat only what’s grown organically, locally and in season, at least five days a week. There are wonderful local farmers’ markets in each town and that’s a Saturday morning date I never break. Once you start eating local produce you’ll never go back to packaged grocery store produce – it just doesn’t taste the same, not even the organic produce. It’s harvested too early, coated with wax and has been sitting around for a month before you buy it. Freshly plucked vine-ripened foods have a whole different taste and texture that you will crave once you try them. (This is a healthy craving!)
3. Cut the Packages
   Eat less than 10% of your daily food out of a package. If it’s bought in a package it’s been processed. If it’s processed it’s not creating health. See how long lettuce lasts when not packaged vs packaged. There is something that’s added to packaged organic foods that makes them last so much longer. Because adding chemicals, that sounds like a great idea, right? And I’m not putting that inside me if I have an option.
4. Cut Down
   Eat less. Give your body 4 to 6 hours of breaks in between eating meal. Time to process your food. To clean out the junk. To take some rest and recover. Overeating is an epidemic – portion sizes in America are out of control. Restaurants have been using larger portions to attract more customers and the outcome has been obesity and addiction. No one needs a venti latte or a “supersize” meal. We are not exactly running marathons daily. (More likely sitting in the car or on the couch.)
5. Get Fasting
   Fast one day a week to help your body “reset” itself. Traditionally, most cultures used some kind of fasting. Now we all seem to be eating non-stop! But science now supports intermittent fasting as a path to longevity. Really, we shouldn’t need science to tell us that eating less (but high quality) food will make us live longer! It’s common sense – which we have all but given up on (preferring to worship at the altar of research, letting some ‘expert’ tell us what to think).
6. Go Simple
   Eat simpler meals. Don’t combine too many different foods in one meal – instead, eat larger quantities of fewer types of food. Make it easier for your body to digest what you’re eating and you’ll feel a surge of energy after meals instead of looking for a pillow.
7. Go Raw and Natural
   Try to eat half your meal as raw salads and fruits which have structured water to charge you up. In winter eat more warming soups, in summer more salads.
8. Read, Read, Read
   If you’re going to buy packaged food, read the ingredients list first. If you can’t pronounce it, or it sounds like a chemical, take a breath – and put the package back. It takes a little getting used to but then it becomes a habit. My 13 year old doesn’t buy anything without first reading the label. Now we’re so efficient that in an instant she knows whether to even read the label or not – she just looks at the number of ingredients and puts it back on the shelf!

Your diet should be a priority, not an afterthought. What you eat creates your reality. Your joy – or misery – is linked to your food. So why not eat to LIVE – to create a longer happier healthier life?

It’s worth the time and money.

You’re worth it!

And we are here to help you with our programs.

Follow Reena on Twitter @reenajadhav Linkedin www.linkedin.com/in/reena or Facebook Reena Jadhav

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This is Step 6 of the article I wrote, 7 Step New Health Pyramid, which you can read on this Page >>

By Reena A Jadhav

Every second that we are alive we are being (in)toxicated! Think about it: we’re living in a toxic soup of chemicals. In our food, in the air, in the stuff we touch and even in what we hear, see and feel. When you suddenly want to accelerate and ram into the car in front, that’s a toxic thought that creates a cascade of chemical reactions.

The simple math for health is this: what goes in must come out. Our bodies are giant processors that take stuff in, suck out the nutrients we need, and throw out what’s harmful or unwanted. Your body is a brilliant self-cleaning machine (like some kind of super robot – only, you know, wetter) with a whole system of outputs – sweat, breath, urine, and poop. Most of our critical organs such as the liver, kidneys, lungs, lymph, skin, and the digestive system passionately scrub and squirt and clean all day long.

Even the trillions of bacteria in the gut have the fun job of gobbling up whatever comes hurtling down the tube and digesting it into a waste matter that gets pooped out.

Without such efficient cleaning, we would be a large stinky swamp! And sometimes we are…

From bad breath to smelly gas, sour sweat, and weird growths, we have all experienced bouts of toxicity without realizing that’s what it is.

Trouble really begins when crap starts to build up. And up. And up.

And what goes in sometimes, somehow gets stuck. (Lovely!)

This trouble is called toxicity and it’s the root cause of chronic illness and most disease according to Ayurveda (an ancient science of health from India). Ayurveda calls this toxicity Ama and recommends a serious 7-day program called Panchakarma to rid the body of toxicity from all layers.

All layers?

Yes, toxicity builds layer by layer. Initially, the toxins sit superficially ‘on the surface’ (a bit like a coat of paint) but with time, the toxins move into organs and then cells, disrupting normal cellular function and creating havoc. Like a car engine can’t function with residue, nor can your body function with toxins circulating all over.

I had colon cancer at 35 years and an autoimmune crisis at 45 years – yes, that was my party of 28 symptoms. After months of research, I was able to self-diagnose myself with the MTHFR gene mutation (which afflicts a significant number of Asians) which makes it hard for the liver to do its job. When the liver is backed up you end up basically dying, little bit by little bit. That was me, with my deluge of symptoms coming from auto-intoxication and a gut that no longer digested anything properly. I had SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth – sounds delightful, right?) and gut dysbiosis adding to my toxic overload. My sugar addiction didn’t help. It took me 15 months to clean out the toxins that had been layering on for decades.

But I had asked my doctors on multiple visits about my mild annoying symptoms from indigestion to bloating to fatigue – only to be told to take some Tums and get more sleep. This drives me crazy. Guess what? There’s no test for toxicity. MDs are NOT trained to notice the subtle signs of toxicity that don’t show up on regular tests. These can be addressed pretty easily with minor changes and regular maintenance. (Yes, like a car.) In fact, I have begun writing an anthology called Deceived: what you don’t know and your Doctor isn’t telling you to reveal more such information and actionable tips from World’s leading doctors.

12 TIPS TO KEEP TOXINS OUT

So here are my top tips for ‘body maintenance’ and to your body thriving!

1. Got Gas?
   If your guts are gurgling at you, or you’re bloated like a balloon, it might sound funny but take it seriously. It’s creating the worst kind of toxicity that causes disease. Find the root cause and fix it! The root cause could be food intolerance (you can get tested for that), low stomach acid (take a supplement with each meal), stress (don’t eat while working), low enzymes (you can take a supplement for this with your meals too), overeating (eat smaller portions), SIBO or Candida, and fix your Leaky Gut with Restore.
2. Take Time…
   To keep your body’s cleaning mechanisms working, eat your meals at least 4 hours apart. Don’t snack as that interrupts the complex digestive process kicked off when you eat a meal. Don’t eat after 7 pm or 8 pm latest, as your body’s overall cleaning is done at night and if there’s food to be digested that process stops.
3. … and Take a Break
   Fasting once a week is a cultural tradition that makes a lot of sense to me now! It’s the quickest way to cleaning out any crap and giving your body a day off to recover. Intermittent fasting of 16 hours daily is also a proven way to address everything from obesity to diabetes.
4. Boost Your Body
   Dry brushing your entire body and then oiling it before hopping in the shower will transform your daily ritual into a cleansing one. A weekly bath with Epsom salts or dead sea salts is another great way to pull out toxins sitting close to the skin.
5. Heat it Up
   Sauna is my fun way to detox! Your skin is your largest organ for cleansing, so take advantage of it. Even the ancient Romans did it religiously. Join a gym or buy one for your home. A weekly sauna can be the easiest way to pull out toxins hanging out in fat cells and tissues.
6. Breathe, Baby
   Deep breathing first thing in the morning or Zach Bush’s Nitric Oxide Dump workout are simple ways to push out toxins via the lungs. Most of us are shallow breathers and the culprits are technology and stress. You have to train yourself to take slow, deep rejuvenating breaths all day long. In fact, one of the reasons we yawn while sitting for long periods is carbon dioxide build up. So mindfully breathing correctly all day is another simple way to keep your body humming.
7. Touch It…
   Massages are another fun way to get the circulation system working correctly and get the toxins out.
8. …Move It!
   Our lymph system is the only design that’s a bit flawed (in case God is accepting input on Human 2.0). It doesn’t work without movement. Trampoline is a great way to get all the toxins stuck in our lymph moving out of our body. A lymphatic massage is another fun way to deal with the sludge.
9. Sponge It, Baby
   There are some great food options such as Chlorella, Spirulina, and cilantro that literally pull out toxins from our gut. Supplements such as milk thistle and magnesium can also be critical to supporting the body’s detox efforts.
10. Are What You Eat
    Imagine trying to clean your home without a powerful vacuum… yup, total nightmare! Cleaning our body can be so much simpler with nature powered vacuum, which comes in the form of fresh herbs, fruits, and vegetables. Add a couple of these daily to have a spotless interior: Lemon/Lime, Broccoli Sprouts, Spirulina, Chlorella, Alfalfa, Wheatgrass, Kale, Olive Oil, Brussel Sprouts, Sauerkraut, Ginger, Turmeric, Coriander, and Fennel. Or take a shortcut and try this Detox tea!
11. Switch Off
    Do a digital detox daily or weekly – or at least monthly. Shut down all notifications and schedule a short time interval to check and respond to messages. Turn off all technology an hour prior to bedtime and don’t touch your tech in the morning until after (healthy) breakfast.
12. Switch Out
    Do an emotional detox where you identify people that trigger you negatively and disconnect from them for a day or a week. Give your emotions a break from negativity and schedule time to build positive emotions through gratitude journaling or watching cat videos (or whatever makes you giggle!).

Finally, get the MTFHR test done to determine if your liver could use additional support.

If you already have a chronic illness, prioritizing detoxing is critical. Our body cannot restore and rebuild if it’s fighting off invaders. What’s amazing is that the moment your body is free of toxins it literally blossoms! Your energy will go through the roof, your skin will glow, you’ll see better, you’ll smile more, you’ll poop at least twice a day effortlessly. (Yep, you wanted to know about the pooping, right?)

More importantly, you’ll know you are on the path to being disease free!

If you need help, we’re are always here with a Health Program for you!

Click here to read my next post Step #7: DIET>>

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