Regular for me was a once a week effort.
My normal was abnormal: pebbles, small and hard stones. This was my reality for some forty something years. When our daughter was suffering from abdominal pain, we took her to every specialist and did every test available. As a matter of fact, to this day we never got a definitive answer only the popular I.B.S. label.
Today’s modern world amasses data: detailed information on every subject and experts ready to scrutinize every bit. When our expertise is directed inward, however, we fall short of the mark. Internal signals regarding our feelings and our health go undetected for the most part, so detached are we from ourselves.
When we are feeling under the weather, we will automatically look towards our physician for answers. We fail miserably at translating the signals that our wondrous bodies constantly send. We require the help of a translator. No good are we at foreign languages and our body’s language is of the most foreign kind.
Our body speaks routinely.
We choose, whether it be a conscious choice or not, to ignore the signals that our body consistently sends. Surrounded are we by masters and brilliant minds but far too few are those who can teach us the body’s language.
Once I was waiting to see a neurologist. There was a new immigrant waiting with me. She was an older woman, an English teacher, but she did not know a word of Hebrew. As the doctor did not know much English, the woman asked me to come in with her to translate. She began to tell him about the handful of pills she took on a daily basis and of the horrific headaches she was suffering from. Without being an expert on any subject, it was clear to me that this poor woman was suffering from painful side effects that her medicinal cocktail was giving her.
It is a sorry state of affairs that our physicians are terribly lacking in a nutritional background. Medical schools devote precious few, if any, hours to this important subject. Much time is devoted to science of prescription of medication both to ease the patient’s pain and perhaps cure his affliction. All too familiar are the stories of the dark side of big pharma and its efforts to woo the physicians to promote more of its medications. Between us, who is going to get rich by promoting glorious greens?
On my journey I sought health or rather a prescription to health.
When I met a doctor who endeavored to rule out food based pain and allergic reactions, I was highly skeptical. After reading a book by a physician who claimed that today’s foods are severely lacking minerals, vitamins and antioxidants, I immediately began taking a handful of colored supplements: an assorted collection of pills at every meal. Although at first I was unaware (I too did not speak the tongue of “Body Talk”), the immediate reaction was more pain and more complaints.
My journey has taught me a valuable life lesson.
Our choices today have a huge bearing on the outcome of our life: our health, our happiness and our legacy. These are not necessarily life changing ones; they may be mundane every day choices that we make daily.
What did you put on your plate today?
Did you venture?
Did you breathe?
Did you laugh?
Did you dance?
Did you love?
We write our story daily and it begins with what we put on our plates.
I am enclosing a short insert from the book “Whole”. It is a very poignant and moving narrative. It is my hope that you will take the subject to heart and give it your full attention.
By the way, should you inquire as to the health of my stones … Today regular for me is a daily affair, at least two or three times. It is effortless and the product is soft, supple and a fine a specimen of health!
If The WFPB Were A Pill
“Just how healthy is the Whole Food Plant Based Diet (WFPB) diet?
Let’s pretend that all its effects could be achieved through a drug. Imagine a big pharmaceutical company holding a press conference to unveil a new pill called Eunutria. They unveil a list of scientifically proven effects of Eunutria that includes the following:
♦ Prevents 95% of all cancers, including those “caused” by environmental toxins
♦ Reverses even severe heart disease
♦ Prevents nearly all heart attacks and strokes
♦ Prevents and reverses Type 2 diabetes so quickly and profoundly that after three days on this drug, it’s dangerous for users to continue to use insulin
What about side effects, you ask?
Of course there are side effects. They include:
♦ Gets you to your ideal weight in a healthy and sustainable fashion
♦ Eliminates most migraines, acne, colds and flu, chronic pain, and intestinal distress
♦ Improves energy
♦ Cures erectile dysfunction (that makes the pill a blockbuster success all by itself!)
Those are just the side effects for individuals taking the pill. There are also environmental effects:
♦ Slows and possibly reverses global warming
♦ Reduces groundwater contamination
♦ Ends the need for deforestation
♦ Shuts down factory farms
♦ Reduces malnutrition and dislocation among the world’s poorest citizens
How healthy is the WFPB diet?
It’s hard to imagine anything healthier – or anything more effective at addressing our biggest health issues. Not only is WFPB the healthiest way of eating that has ever been studied, but it’s far more effective in promoting health and preventing disease than prescription drugs, surgery, vitamin and herbal supplementation, and genetic manipulation.
If the WFPB diet were a pill, its inventor would be the wealthiest person on earth. Since it isn’t a pill, no market forces conspire to advocate for it. No mass media campaign promotes it. No insurance coverage pays for it. Since it isn’t a pill, and nobody has figured out how to get hugely wealthy by showing people how to eat it, the truth has been buried by half-truths, unverified claims, and downright lies. The concerted effort of many powerful interests to ignore, discredit, and hide the truth has worked so far.”
T. Colin Campbell, PhD, Whole, Rethinking the Science of Nutrition, (Dalas, Texas, U.S.A., :BenBella Books, Inc., 2013), 7-9
