CHAPTER 1

Whole Health

"We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them"

Albert Einstein

Health is a person's state of wholeness of mind, body and spirit. Thisstate of wholeness fluctuates as we move through our days and our life.Health does not mean you are without symptoms. You can live in wholehealth, co-existing with your symptoms, making the best of every day.The lifestyle choices we make daily walk our body either in the directionof health and healing or towards symptoms and diseases.

Our current health care system does not work with the wholenessof health, the wholeness of individuals. Truly, it is a disease care systemwhere problems are taken care of at the end stage, when the body hasalready broken down. You are medically treated with drugs, surgery,chemotherapy, etc. to turn off the symptoms presented. This is much likecutting the wire to your cars check engine light. You have rid your car of thesymptom, the warning light, but you have not solved the problem.

True "health care" IS about promoting whole health, preventing thebreakdown of healthy bodies and truly healing when symptoms appear.It is not about merely covering up and extinguishing symptoms of illhealth and disease. Symptoms are your warning light. Taking your healthinto your own hands, exercising self-responsibility for your health meansfiguring out the cause(s) of your symptoms and removing these causesfrom your life.

When we remove the cause of disease, the body can begin its naturalhealing process. Then we can cleanse the causes of symptoms and workto nourish and rebuild the body back to whole health.

Healing, returning the body to whole health, takes time. If creatingthe symptoms of disease has taken a long time to appear, have patienceand your body will heal. Quick fixes, silver bullets to health and healing,do not exist. Health and healing are a long-term commitment for you. Awise healer once told me to expect one month of healing for every yearit took to create disease.

Patience heals. Have faith in your innate, natural capacity to heal.

"Many things which cannot be overcome when they are together,yield themselves up when taken little by little."

Plutarch

You are a Micro of the Macro

The human body is a microcosm of the macrocosm. The macrocosmbeing Earth!

Think about how your body is comparable to the Earth as awhole:

• The blood running through your arteries and veins is like Earth'swaters running through the rivers and streams.

• The extracellular fluid - the fluid surrounding and bathing yourcells - is like the swamp land of our earth's rivers and streams.Swamp land is an exchange area between the rivers, streams,and the dry land beyond the swamp. Extracellular fluid is theexchange area between cells.

• Your tissues are like the soil of the Earth.

"Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand init. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."

Chief Seattle

A modern translation:

"What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves."

Isabel Clarke

Your body is truly a microcosm of the Earth, the macrocosm. Whenyou care for the Earth, you care for yourself and all life on this planet.When you keep the Earth's waterways, soil and air clean; you keep yourcells, tissues, and organs clean.

What befalls the Earth befalls humans!

Let's take care of ourselves, the living beings around us, and ourhome - the Earth - in a holistic, whole health manner.

The following Chapters have been written, with simplicity and lightheartedfun, to help guide you in making whole health choices to preventdisease, heal symptoms, and live a vibrant, whole health life.

The bottom line: Do the best you can every day to eat whole foodand live a whole health lifestyle. Be kind to yourself in every momentknowing you are being your best self for this moment. Each day is amoment for new beginnings, new possibilities with no guilt and noregrets.

Please read on to open your awareness, your true self, to whole foodeating and whole health living. Every little step you make to change yourlifestyle will have paybacks in your body's health and healing whetheryou are two or 82 years old.

CHAPTER 2

Principles of Whole Food Nutrition

"Let food be thy medicine, let medicine be thy food."

Hippocrates

Whole food eating means feeding our bodies the way nature intended.This means eating foods in their natural state, as close to the perfectly"whole" state in which nature provides them. This also means followingthe natural growing seasons and eating more foods that are locally grownand produced.

Whole food nutrition is eating in balance, which in turn keepsyour body's health balanced. Foods grown naturally develop with theright proportion of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats intended for thatparticular food. They contain balanced vitamins, minerals, phyto-nutrients,and enzymes. This natural balance for each food ensures thatthe body can properly utilize the nutrients. Foods that have been refinedor processed (parts of them removed or altered) or enriched/fortified(things added) upset this natural balance in food. Food that has beenaltered will upset the natural balance of your body.

The effects of moving away from whole foods and towards refined,processed and convenience foods are very prevalent in our society. Cancer,cardiovascular, bone, teeth, weight, and many other health problemsare directly related to this change to our "modern" diet. Traditionalsocieties, who still eat whole foods, suffer very minimally from thesehealth problems. As a society, we spend much time looking for cures.The cure is most often in the prevention. The return to whole health issimple: make the choice to return to whole food principles of eating andwhole health lifestyle choices.

"Men dig their graves with their own teeth and die more by thosefated instruments than all the weapons of their enemies."

Thomas Moffett, 1600 AD

"The cure is the same as the prevention. Let food be thy medicine."

Hippocrates

On a very simple level, anyone can tell that a baked or steamed, wholepotato is more nutritious than potato chips. When you use that thoughtprocess with every food choice your health improves. Ask yourself, "Howclose is this food to its natural, whole state?" This question makes it veryobvious what food should be included and what food should be excludedfrom our daily fare.

The following grouping of whole foods will get you started on thewhole food nutrition concept:

Vegetables: Buy fresh, seasonal produce (better yet, grow as much asyou can of your own food or make friends with farmers who grow it foryou) and eat it as whole as possible: raw or very lightly steamed. Lightlysteamed means vegetables should retain their color and crisp texture, 2to 3 minutes for small vegetables and greens, and slightly more time forlarger vegetables. Soups and stews in the winter are cooked longer andslower to nourish you in cold weather.

Fruit: Raw is best. Dried, frozen, and canned, local fruit is goodduring the off-season. Eat dried fruit in moderation. It is a concentratedsugar source. Frozen is better than canned. Fruit juices are merely liquidfruit sugar and are best avoided. Opt to eat the whole fruit. (Juice fastingis another book!)

Beans and Legumes: Fresh, in season is best; very good raw andlightly steamed. Dried beans, in the off season, are a nutritious sourceof protein, vitamins, and minerals. It is an enjoyable art form learninghow to cook and create meals with them: soups, dips, sandwich spreads,casseroles, bean milks, bean burgers and loafs, hearty additions tobreads/muffins/cookies -- the list is inexhaustible. Try sprouting foradded nutrition. Sprouting of some beans makes them enjoyable in theraw, sprouted state. Other beans are not edible in the sprouted state untilyou cook them. Cooking time is much less for sprouted beans, which isan extended soak process.

Nuts and Seeds: Whole and raw is best with most nuts and seeds.Raw nut butters are a delicious and fun alternative. Raw peanuts andpeanut butter are not recommended. Eat both roasted. Peanuts areactually legumes/beans. Nuts and seeds are a good source of healthyfat; just remember to eat in moderation.

Grains: Learn to cook and enjoy whole grains: oats, rye, millet, rice,kamut, buckwheat, teff, wheat berries, barley, quinoa, spelt, corn, andamaranth. They can all be cooked and eaten like whole grain brown riceand enjoyed cold in salads, hot in soups/casseroles/pilafs. Cooked wholegrains are tasty hot cereals or use dinner leftovers as cold cereal. Mixthe leftovers with plain yogurt, nuts and seeds, cinnamon, vanilla, anda touch of raw honey or maple syrup. Maple syrup may not be a locallyavailable sweetener for you. Seek out the whole food sweeteners that aretraditionally used in your geographic area.

When choosing flour and flour products (breads, pastas, pastries,cookies and baked goods) make certain that all flours used in theproducts are 100% whole grains. Avoid the refined, bleached, enriched,unbleached, all-purpose and cake flours. Better yet, make your own flourproducts if you can. That way you are in total control of all your bakingingredients being whole foods. Grains are easy to grind into flour in ahigh-quality blender or grinder made for this purpose.

All of the above grains can be ground into flour. If you play inthe kitchen with recipes, you will figure out which whole grain flourswork best for different foods. I like spelt and oat flour for cookies andcakes. I will also use corn, teff, amaranth, quinoa, and buckwheat flours.Remember to try all of these whole food flours when making the wholefood treat recipes in Chapter 10.

Nuts such as almonds, hazelnuts, and coconut can also be groundinto flour and used to replace grain flours. Many people do better, healthand weight wise, keeping the grains to a minimum in their diet. Grainsare used to fatten cattle and life stock – need I say more?

Fats and Oils: Your healthiest option is fats from whole foods, notoils. All of the above whole foods contain varying amounts of fat. Thefoods listed below contain high percentages of healthy fat and shouldbe eaten in moderation. Getting healthy fat from whole foods meansmaking choices like these:

• Sesame seeds or tahini, not sesame oil

• Almonds or almond butter, not almond oil

• Olives, not olive oil

• Flax seeds, not flax seed oil

• Avocados, not avocado oil

• Fermented soy foods, not soy oil

When oils are used, make certain you are buying high quality coldpressed oils, not refined, chemically extracted oils. Most supermarket oilsare poor quality and chemically extracted. Cold pressed is more expensive,but remember your health is worth it. Think preventive maintenance,restorative health and healing!

My favorite cooking oil is sesame, some people enjoy coconut oil.Both hold out well to the heat of normal cooking. I truly prefer agood quality, grass-fed butter for cooking and baking. I use extra virginolive oil for raw purposes: homemade salad dressings and splashing onvegetables. If you prefer, as I do, let grass-fed butter melt on cookedvegetables!

Fish: Fish caught in the wild or naturally raised fish are a good sourceof protein and fat. Avoid fish raised in fish farms. Fish raised in farms arefed unnatural diets of manufactured pellet food. They are given antibioticsto combat diseases acquired from living in close quarters and unnaturalconditions (much like factory farm raised animals). Naturally raisedmeans the fish are eating the same foods they would eat in the wild.

Animal Products: This includes meats, poultry, eggs, milk, anddairy products. Buy products from animals fed naturally and raisedfree range. Organically, free-range raised is even better. Example: cowswho graze and eat natural grasses, not grain fed cows. Natural lifestylesensure animal products that are lower in saturated fat and high in health-promotingomega-3 fats.

If an animal is raised in a natural, healthy manner the animal productswill be naturally balanced and healthy for consumption. Think abouteating wild fish. Wild fish create healthy fats and proteins because theyare eating their natural, whole foods and living a natural, whole healthlifestyle. If fish can accomplish a personal healthy fat ratio by eatingtheir natural diet obviously other animals do too. Fish do not have somemagical ability that no other creature on earth has!

This is about your cell biology. If you eat a diet that is 100% wholefoods and those foods were raised naturally, your body cells are healthy.When organisms live a whole health lifestyle the result is whole beings.It is that simple.

On the other hand, if animals are fed unhealthy and un-natural foodsthe animal will be unhealthy. Think about what happens to humanswho feed themselves unhealthy and unnatural food. I am referring tothat cell reproduction, the cell biology lesson down a few paragraphs.The body cells of animals, being fed un-natural diets, degenerate. Theirbodies become unhealthy when they are fed un-natural diets. Eating theresultant animal products is not going to be a health promoting choicefor you.

Unwrapping Butter's Bad Rap

The information below is going to fly in the face of everything youhave "learned" about cholesterol. Take a deep breath when you read itand let your common sense prevail. Think about Native Americans, didthey shun animal fat? How about the Inuit Eskimos who lived on whaleflesh and blubber? Not a chance! Traditional people gobbled up the fatknowing it held amazing life giving energy and nutrients.

As soon as animals birth their offspring, their mammary glands rollinto production and milk (a life sap) becomes plentiful. Along with milkcomes cream, the precursor to one of my favorite condiments -- butter:yummy, sweet cream butter!

Over the years, butter has been given a bad rap. Just what is said aboutbutter (and fats in general) and how much truth is in this information?Butter has been blamed for cardiac disease and all the symptoms leadingup to it (high cholesterol, high blood pressure, etc.), cancer, and a host ofother symptoms that get compiled together into various diseases.

I have many questions surrounding this information:

1. Are saturated fats really bad for human health?

2. How does the quality of the animals' food and lifestyleaffect their health? Does their health, or lack of it, affectyour health when you eat their products?

3. How healthy are synthetically produced saturated fats:hydrogenated oils, margarine?

4. Which is healthier: animal or plant fats?

5. What is the logic behind the warning: "fats that are solid atroom temperature should never be eaten"?

Back to butter and saturated fats for thoughts on question #1.Saturated fat is needed by the body for:

• endorphin and neurotransmitter production

• fat soluble vitamin absorption, metabolism, and usage of omega3 fats

• eye health and prevention of macular degeneration

• proper function of the thyroid and bodily metabolism

• healthy cell membranes

• incorporation of calcium into your skeleton for the formationand maintenance of healthy bones

• protection of liver from toxins such as alcohol, prescription, andOTC medications

• immune system enhancement

• hormone production and fertility enhancement

"Saturated fat is not the root of all evil ... and it is not to blame forthe modern disease epidemics facing Americans. Saturated fat is actuallyan incredibly healthy, nourishing and all natural fat that humans havebeen thriving on for generations." Quote from Sally Fallon and MaryEnig, leading researchers and nutritional experts who wrote the bookNourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition andthe Diet Dictocrats.

Where did the idea that saturated fats are bad begin? In 1953, Dr.Ancel Key published a paper on fat intake and heart disease. His researchanalysis and findings have since been proven flawed. However, in the1950's his theories linking animal fats to heart disease caught on quicklyand persist today. Most people refuse to let go of the theory that butteris bad for us, clogging our arteries and creating disease.

Margarine (hydrogenated, artificially flavored vegetable oils) wasintroduced to our food culture in the late 1800's. It was marketed as amuch healthier alternative to butter because it was from plant-based oils.Margarine was widely distributed during WWII and then a decade or solater Key's "research" pushed margarine's popularity even further.

Butter is a naturally occurring saturated fat. Because of butter'ssaturated state, it resists going rancid much longer than liquid, veggieoils. Hydrogenated oils were created to mimic butter's ability to resistgoing rancid but at grave consequences to the health of those who eatthe hydrogenated fats.