Frederic Patenaude Raw Foods Diet

Healthy looking skin is something that almost everybody desires.

Your skin, along with being the largest organ of your body, is typically the first thing people notice when they see you. Considering it covers you from head to toe, healthy skin means more than just a healthy complexion.

Check out this video today where Dr. John McDougall discusses the correlation between diet and the health of your skin, specifically acne.

In it you’ll learn:

• Why the health of your skin affects much more than just how it looks.
• Why it is that many people today still don’t associate their diet with having anything to do with acne or their skin health.
• Which study has been falsely credited as proving that diet has no effect on acne.
• How the standard Western diet many people around the world eat changes the production of hormones in your body and why these imbalances cause issues in the skin.

Many people around the world experience skin problems, and it certainly can cause a greater impact on their health and wellbeing besides just how their skin looks.

Your skin is important and deserves the right diet and circumstances to look it’s best!

What have been your experiences with acne, skin conditions, and your diet? Let us know in the comments below!

I started experimenting with my diet back in 1996, and ever since I’ve been searching for the healthiest, yet most practical way to eat and live.

I first went on a very strict (and confused!) natural hygiene diet. From there I began making my way into raw foods and experimenting with various types of raw food diets.

After that I experimented with cooked foods again, then back to raw foods, and have since been fine-tuning my diet to find the ideal.

There was a time when I wouldn’t have touched a piece of bread with a 10-foot pole, but was perfectly fine with gorging myself with fancy raw recipes and avocados, just to make sure that I wouldn’t awaken my “cooked food cells” and stayed raw.

There was a time when I did everything in my power to eat the freshest, best organic raw foods there was, yet was not feeling the vitality or mental clarity I had before I was even a vegetarian.

There was a time when I binged on all sorts of cooked foods I had sworn never to eat again, out of the frustration that the raw diet was not working for me, and the shame I had for not having succeeded.

I now look back at these difficult days and realize that all of this turmoil was unnecessary. I worked things out using the empirical approach — that is to try everything out in order to come to my own conclusions. This is a time-wasting technique, but it did allow me to truly learn these things for myself. 

In that process, I learned that:

• The means is not the end. Being a raw-foodist for example, is not the point. We shouldn’t focus on that.
• We have to keep in mind what we’re doing this for. In that search for the perfect diet, we’re doing this to be healthy and enjoy life more — not to achieve an “ideal.”
• Willpower is not enough to maintain, we need knowledge too. You can have the willpower to climb 10,000 stairs, but why waste so much energy when there’s a lift that will take you to the top in no time? Using the lift is like utilizing proper knowledge.

My Introduction to Rawdom

In 1996, I was 20 years old and quite easily impressed by what appeared to be logical or scientific information.

The piece of advice that I came across when I first heard of the concept of raw eating seemed logical, but proved to be quite misleading to others and myself. It went something like this:

“Eating raw foods is the most natural way to eat. All that you have to do is follow your instincts and eat as much as you want, as long as you are eating fresh raw fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds.”

Impressed by the simplicity of this system-less-system, I embarked on a journey that led me through deep nutritional imbalances.

But first, the advice worked. I packed my fridge with fruits and vegetables and was eating all day long. I didn’t know about recipes or durian. I ate lots of food and went through a quite intense period of detoxification. I went through it and was feeling mostly good, even though I was still struggling with cravings. My will was as strong as could be and I was ready to be a raw-foodist for life and change the world along the way.

The next part of my journey took me to California, where I discovered raw food recipes, an exciting world where all my repressed cravings could express themselves again.

Pizza, chocolate cake, and pasta were back on the menu again. All raw of course.

I was eating lots of fat, lots of raw food recipes, and lots of fruit, and I was just not feeling right.

More Misleading Advice

Two new pieces of raw food lore would prove to be fatal for me. The first was, “Anything raw is better than anything cooked” and the second, “it’s probably detoxification.”

So I kept eating and eating and kept saying to myself: “well, it’s raw.” I kept feeling bad and kept saying to myself: “it’s probably detoxification.”

The Raw-Food Movement

Since then, the raw-food movement has been changing the way that it’s presented and many of the ideologies behind it.

Yet many raw food books are still filled with made-up facts, bogus science, anecdotal evidence that just isn’t relevant to everybody.

One person says that eating fruit will make you sick; the other one says that you should only eat fruit.

One says that eating oil is bad for you; the other one recommends that you should eat lots of oil.

Here are a few false statement made by raw-foodists I’d like to clear the air on once and for all.

“Cooked food is toxic.”

Statements like this are what tend to give the raw food movement a bad name.

Cooking food doesn’t immediately turn it into something toxic. If this were as true as some people say, no one would be alive!

It is true that certain methods of cooking, such as frying and barbecuing, create many carcinogenic substances in the process.

But claiming that all cooked food is toxic is just silly.

“Anything raw is better than anything cooked.”

Reality check: Many raw food meals prepared at most raw restaurants do not fall in the category of “healthy food.” Many of them contain unnecessarily high amounts of salt, oils, and spices.

The fact that a food is raw doesn’t make it necessarily healthy. There is more to a healthy diet plan than just eating raw, just as there is more to health than just eating.

“Fruit is bad for you.”

Most raw-foodists are living on such a high-fat diet (often more than 60-70% fat) that they can no longer handle fruit anymore. It has been proven that high-fat diets decrease insulin sensitivity (the effectiveness of insulin in carrying sugar to the cells), and thus raise blood sugar levels.

So those living on high fat a diet, that is most raw-foodists, will inevitably experience more blood sugar swings when they eat fruit.

Thus, the myth has spread now that fruit is not very healthy and that we should all aim at eliminating or reducing the quantity of fruit in our diet.

Fruit is definitely one of the healthiest (and most palatable!) raw foods you can eat.

So whenever you hear a bold statement that is the contrary of all common sense, such as “fruit is not a healthy food” — don’t take it for cash. Study the facts first and decide for yourself.

Raw Food Hype

The raw food diet has become more and more popular over the years. Celebrities are now jumping on board; raw food restaurants are popping up in most major cities, the media is talking about it, and articles have been published in many magazines and newspapers.

Raw-foodists usually rejoice when they see another article in the mainstream about the raw food diet, yet many of the time the message being conveyed to the masses really isn’t the healthiest one.

Many of these articles start by quoting raw-foodists (mostly out of the context) expressing statements such as “cooked food is poison” or “cooking kills your food,” then they go on to talk about all the movie and pop music stars who are supposedly into it, they mention raw gourmet cuisine and raw-restaurants, and then conclude the article with a few nutritionist bashing and scoffing at the whole theory.

There is more validity and merit to the raw food diet than just a passing phase for the media to take advantage of or for celebrities to temporarily hop on board with!

“Raw Food” Means Really Raw

Raw foods are fruits and vegetables in their natural state, not dehydrated for hours and turned into crackers, raw cookies, and cakes.

Prepared raw foods can still have a place in a healthy diet, but it really isn’t what the whole prospect of eating raw foods is really about.

A plate of steamed broccoli is closer to being a natural food than a raw cheeseburger or raw cake sold at a raw restaurant somewhere.

Eating raw is about filling our bodies with an abundance of natural vitamins, minerals, organic water, fiber, and all the nutrients needed to meet our needs, both for energy and maintenance. Time and time again, these needs are met the best with foods that are in their freshest, most natural form.

Beyond Fanaticism

If you are 100% raw and feel wonderful and someone comes along to tell you that what you are doing is killing you, I recommend you don’t waste any time discussing it. Just go along with your life and let them think what they will.

If you are eating 50% raw and feel great and some annoying raw-foodist comes along and just, “can’t believe that you don’t eat 100% raw” — just forget them too. You are here to eat and do what makes you feel your best, not rise to the expectations of others around you.

What are you doing this for anyway? Because you want to call yourself a raw-foodist or a vegan? Hopefully not!

Hopefully, you are eating and living the way you do because it’s what feels right to you and allows you to look and feel your very best.

Eating raw is not the end-all, it’s simply a means to get you where you want to go.

What have been your experiences with raw-food-fanaticism and everything in between? Let us know in the comments below!

All around the world you’ll find people in varying degrees of health. While most health-enthusiast tend to get down specifically on the U.S. and other western countries, other countries are increasingly becoming more and more “westernized”.

They’ve begun to abandon their traditional diets, typically based on starches, vegetables, fruits, and smaller amounts of meat, in favor of the more western approach: lots of meat, animal products, and processed foods.

Yet it’s surprising to find that many people, even those in modern western countries, simply aren’t aware of how profoundly their diet impacts their health, and instead are concerned about other unfound health hazards.

Check out this video today where Dr. Milton Mills gives a presentation on why exactly there are so many sick people in the world and how that can be changed.

You’ll learn:

• How many people actually die per year from diet-related diseases in contrast to how most people fear they will die.
• Why more children in the US are put on behavioral-disorder medications every year.
• How a high intake of meat and animal products has been linked to depression and other psychological disorders in children.
• What people can do to shift their focus to the things in their lives that really do impact their health and as a result live long, happy lives.

Dr. Mills points out several important points when it comes to the importance of prioritizing our health. Many people spend hours every week talking and worrying about things that ultimately do very little to negatively impact their health.

Many of those same people are more afraid of being eaten by a shark than experiencing bad health from their poor diet, too.

Considering that there are so many things in the world that you “could” be afraid of, it’s important prioritize what actually impacts you and then taking control of the things that you do decide.

What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments below!

Let me start off by asking you a simple question: do you feel you’re getting the best results from your current food program?

After all, we all want the same things: increased energy, a fit and sexy body, to live longer and healthier, avoid and heal health challenges, and attain a sound nutritional approach to the way we eat and live.

Sometimes it happens that you may be doing well for a while with your diet, but imperceptibly you move away from the results you’re looking for, and sooner or later you realize, “this diet isn’t working for me anymore!”

Nobody wants to have to go through this experience, so here are some warning signs to watch out for and what to do about them.

1. Cravings

It’s perfectly normal to experience cravings for cooked and processed foods when you transition to a mostly raw or all raw diet. The problem comes to be when these cravings persist and don’t go away, or they are so powerful they are difficult to control.

In my experience, there are two causes for cravings: nutritional and emotional. I will review nutritional causes now, as emotional causes are much more complex and beyond the scope of this article.

However I will say that emotions and your food do go hand-in-hand, and identifying the emotional triggers and reasons why you eat what you do can help you attain a healthier, more conscious approach to eating.

Nutritional causes are fairly simple: if you’re not eating enough calories from fruits and vegetables, you *are* going to crave cooked and processed foods. At least eventually.

The trick is to be able to consume enough fruits to get your calories, without consuming more fat than you need to (and at the same time consuming enough greens for minerals).

Eating enough vegetables and other nutritionally-dense foods is important as well.

Some cravings stem from the body’s cry for minerals or certain nutrients. Everybody has a much different history and intake of specific vitamins and minerals in their lives, and our body’s all have varying amounts and stores of them.

So follow your intuition if you’re craving something for a nutritional reason, which only you can decide for yourself.

Eating too much fat also has a tendency to slow the body down and cause cravings, typically for starchy or sweet foods.

Just eating enough calories on a daily basis to support your body is usually enough to keep cravings away, but if you find yourself craving something particular over a period of time, use your own head.

2. No Energy to Exercise

If you have no energy to exercise, or are not making progress in your fitness program, it’s likely because you’re not consuming enough calories and/or you are consuming too much fat/not getting the right minerals.

An energy deficit will be obvious when you follow a fitness program. If you’re barely consuming enough fruits and vegetables to meet your dietary needs, you can’t expect to have extra energy to exercise.

People often tend to “under-estimate” the amount of fruits and vegetables they need to eat to support themselves, and “over-estimate” the amount of fat that they need to eat. This combination leaves people feeling sluggish and tired.

3. Waking up in the Morning Tired

Waking up in the morning still tired is also a sign that your diet may not be balanced.

Many people experience this on a raw food diet after overdoing the avocados and nut butter. So if you’re experiencing the morning fog, I recommend you look at how much fat you’re eating and if it’s in the right amounts for you.

You may experiment with eating just low-fat fruits/vegetables for several nights, and finishing your meal several hours before bed, and see if that has on impact on your energy levels.

Chances are that you’ll start waking up in the morning much more refreshed and energetic!

4. Inability to Maintain Weight

Two things can happen here. Either you haven’t been able to *release* the weight you were carrying around in excess, or you’re getting thinner than you’d like to be.

In the first case, if you’re still struggling to reach your ideal weight, even though you’ve transitioned to a raw food diet, you may simply have the wrong nutritional and lifestyle approach.

Releasing excess weight is a taxing process on the body and needs to be allowed the proper amount of time to happen.

Everyone will need to eat slightly different combinations and amounts of foods to feel their best too, so I encourage you to trust your body and not invest everything into a “guru” to tell you what to eat!

If you’re getting thinner than you’d like to, know that the best thing you can do is to combine strength training (basically lifting weights or high-resistance bodyweight exercises) and eating plenty of food. More than you may be used to.

If you wish to gain significant muscle mass, you can, even on a raw food diet.

But you’ll need a good training program and to consume the right amounts and combinations of calories and nutrients to get the results you want.

5. You’re Confused

Another sign that you may be heading towards a diet “disaster” is having the feeling of confusion and doubt. Eventually, that feeling may intensify and lead you to either give up entirely or spend all sorts of time and money trying other programs that won’t work either.

The solution to this is to gain sufficient knowledge to avoid this confusion, go to the root of emotional issues behind food, and find a group of people for community and support that can provide you with constant encouragement and inspiration to continue on the path of radiant health.

And ultimately if you still find yourself confused, listen to your own needs. You know them better than anybody.

What have been your experiences with changes in your diet, cravings, or any other roadblocks you faced in your diet journeys? Let us know in the comments below!

People often ask me, “How do you survive in the wintertime eating this diet, given the limited availability of fruits and vegetables?”

I just spent a month on Maui and came back to Montreal to freezing temperatures.

And I still think that you don’t need to live in a tropical paradise to follow a high-raw diet!

It’s a common myth to say that living in a tropical country necessarily makes the raw food lifestyle easier.

I know, I know. It sounds like a contradiction. What could be better than living in a country where your fruits can be picked fresh and ripe right off the tree?

Unfortunately, the reality is a little different. That’s what I found out by living in different tropical countries at different times throughout my extensive traveling around the world.

Costa Rica

I spent roughly two years of my life in Costa Rica, spread out between a few winters.

I got a pretty good idea of the fruits and vegetables that were available there throughout the seasons.

Yes, there is a LOT of fresh fruit available. Yes, it is much cheaper than what you would pay for the same fruit in North America. And yes, the weather is great, most of the time.

But whenever I came back to my home in Montreal after a long trip in Costa Rica, I was always shocked by the variety and quality of fruits I had available to me in my hometown.

Part of this is due to fruits in Costa Rica being very seasonal. You will find papayas and bananas year-round, but even the mangos are fairly seasonal.

As for vegetables, that’s where it gets a little trickier.

Typically, vegetables don’t grow very well in tropical countries, specifically greens, and the availability is limited due to this reality.

Vegetables such as kale or romaine lettuce, for example, just don’t grow well in these areas, and you won’t find things like this as often.

You’ll find things like cabbage and some lettuce, but nothing near the variety you’ll get in the organic stores everywhere in North America or Europe.

There are a few more things I missed while living in Costa Rica as well.

Like: good roads.

For physical activities throughout Central America and other countries, the roads are not properly set up for walking or running.

They can be dangerous if you’re not watching out, and Costa Rica specifically has high rates of accidental traffic deaths involving pedestrians.

You do get beautiful weather, a proper “tropical paradise”, and you get great fruit at a great price. But you do not get all of the modern amenities of North America that many people have grown used to and take for granted.

Modern health-food restaurants, gyms, and roads that are suitable for walking and cycling just are not the common thing in Costa Rica and many other countries.

Hawaii

Fruits of Maui. However, these goodies from Ono Farm are difficult to purchase…

Hawaii offers a beautiful array of landscapes and microclimates, and I find myself wanting to move here every time I visit. I love the Aloha spirit, the people, I love the water, and I love the islands.

But as most people know, the cost of living in Hawaii is much higher than in other parts of the country.

For someone living on a standard American diet, you could probably get by shopping at Costco, going to the farmer’s markets, and growing some of your food.

For most people, however, if you’re going to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, it’s going to get expensive.

Surprisingly, the variety isn’t all that great either. Last month, while I was on Maui, I made a few runs to Costco for pineapple, as it’s the only place I could find it for a decent price!

The fruits I was eating were : pineapples, bananas, papayas, and apples.

The only exotic thing I was able to get was freshly picked starfruit, which were amazing, but in short supply.

You can get a lot of great greens and other produce imported from the Mainland, but they are very expensive.

Everything else involved with following a raw food lifestyle is perfect in Maui, but it comes at a price.

Other Tropical Countries

I’ve visited the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, Fiji, the Philippines, and many others.

Out of all those places, the place that I would say that is most appropriate for the raw food lifestyle would be Thailand and Southeast Asia, in general.

The variety and amount of fruits available there is just astounding. There aren’t as many greens, but it’s the place to go for fruit.

It’s hard not to feel like an outsider, and it’s difficult to be really accepted into the culture, however. The language can be difficult to grasp, and many people find it difficult to feel like home.

The same goes for the rest of Southeast Asia.

As for the South Pacific, this is the part of the world that I find the most beautiful.

The islands of French Polynesia, the Cook Islands, and Fiji are simply stunning.

If you think Hawaii is beautiful, you need to go to the South Pacific to be truly blown away!

Surprisingly, although these islands are more remote and less accessible, I found a better variety of fruit in French Polynesia than I did in Hawaii. Although Hawaii has more shopping available, they seem to grow more local produce in the South Pacific.

Of course, it’s expensive to live in these places. Immigration is not possible for most people, and there’s a good chance you’ll miss home, being so far away from everything.

Conclusion: The Grass Is Always Greener….

So whenever I come back to my cold city of Montreal, which has great weather for parts of the year, but not-so-great for the most part of the year, I always feel happy because I know I live in a great city.

It’s not a tropical paradise, but I do have better access to produce than almost anywhere else I’ve been. It’s also a great place to live a healthy lifestyle, like many modern cities in North America. Especially on the west coast!

We have farmer’s markets, modern gyms, bike trails, places to run and exercise, and a temperate climate that isn’t conducive to the spread of many tropical diseases.

So there are a lot of great advantages to living in more Northern latitudes. I don’t think we can say anymore that a lack of produce is an issue in almost all of North America, with the exception of maybe extreme northern areas.

You’re likely going to find a better variety of produce in major cities than you will in many tropical paradises. Bigger cities have better infrastructure, and more people demand more luxuries that can be imported from all over the world.

More people are living healthier lifestyles in these areas of the world, so there are simply more resources available to provide for this.

The Weather

Finally, I think the only major drawback to living in a cold climate, is the weather.

It can be truly difficult to get through six months of winter, or three months depending on where you live.

The lack of sunshine, the shorter days, and the cold are factors that do add up and make living in these Northern climates a little less enticing and make living a high-raw diet and lifestyle more difficult.

What’s the solution?

Being active and exercising is one.

I think more realistically, having the option to travel to a “tropical paradise” from where you base out of is probably the best of both worlds.

That way you get to soak in the sunshine, get your fill of island life, and then go back home.

I know traveling can be difficult and expensive, so that’s why I recommend figuring out how to do it on the cheap.

For example, my entire trip to Maui was incredibly affordable, even though I live on the east coast; I was able to fly all the way to Maui in business class for $66!

How did I do that?

Well, I used the system that I describe in my course, “How To Travel The World For Free”.

If you’re interested in this program, make sure to check out the NEW version of the course “How to Travel the World for Free.” Check it out here:

http://www.fredericpatenaude.com/travel/

This new version contains over 2 hours of new material, including brand-new programs on “How to Get to Hawaii” and “A Trip to Italy,” showing you exactly how to plan a nearly free trip to those destinations using the system.

High blood pressure has always been something we’ve been warned against and told that if your blood pressure is too high, it invites a host of other problems like heart disease and strokes, among others.

Would it surprise you to find out that high blood pressure isn’t in and of itself a condition that need to be feared or avoided, but simply a result or symptom of an otherwise unhealthy body?

Check out this video today by Dr. John McDougall as he shares with you a few enlightening thoughts on blood pressure and the importance of keeping your arteries clean.

You’ll learn:

• Why high blood pressure isn’t really the disease many people have been told.
• How and why the heart raises the pressure of your blood.
• Why it doesn’t make any sense to take medications or supplements to lower your blood pressure without addressing the underlying cause of the high blood pressure first.
• How you can easily mange your blood pressure with lifestyle factors that you control all on your own.

I think Dr. McDougall brings up some important distinctions when it comes to not only how we treat high blood pressure, but also how we interpret it. This distinction is important not just to the understanding of disease, but how we then treat it.

It’s also clear that there is not one specific cause of high blood pressure, like sodium or salt intake for example. The determining factor of how healthy your arteries are ultimately determines how stable your blood pressure is, and your heart and artery health are affected by a larger number of factors.

What have been your experiences with blood pressure and artery health? Let us know in the comments below!

I’ve had a lot of personal experience in the raw food movement. Much of my adult life I’ve been actively seeking information and learning from others on the topic of nutrition and raw foods.

Over those years, I’ve heard many things said about what is the healthiest way to eat: like how your body supposedly reacts to certain foods and what is the healthiest type of water to drink, among many other things.

But one thing that always caught my attention was digestion people experienced on a raw food diet, and how a raw food diet may impact it.

Raw Foodists and Digestion

Any health-orientated person has taken a greater interest in their digestion, or how your body utilizes and absorbs nutrients from the food you eat, once they started to get in tune with how largely it impacts how you feel.

We all know the feeling of a sour stomach, and when your stomach isn’t happy, it’s hard to think about anything else.

Raw foodists, Natural Hygienists, and many Indian and Eastern health philosophies all put an emphasis on the importance of digestion.

Some stress the importance of eating certain foods together at the same time, or specifically not eating specific foods together at one time.

Food-combining has been written about for decades now, and is something I personally used to follow relatively rigidly for several years.

Specifically, the Natural Hygiene approach to food combining, like not eating melons with other foods, acid foods with sweet foods, and so on.

The Digestion Industry

Digestion has become so important to the general public now that it’s become a bit of a food-marketing gimmick.

Everything from probiotic-boosted green powders to endless brews of kombucha and lacto-fermented yogurts line the shelves of most grocery stores and supermarkets today, all touting a specific amount and strain of probiotic bacteria.

They’re sold with promises of improving the balances of bacteria in your intestinal tract, in-turn allowing you better digestion, sharper mental performance, clearer skin, etc. etc.

I think to a large degree, many of the benefits of these specific strains of bacteria and the packaged foods that are “boosted” with them are overall exaggerated to market them.

Naturally fermented foods like raw kombuchas, kimchi, and sauerkraut are much more likely to have truly beneficial bacteria in them vs. powder-boosted items too.

You can make these foods in your own home from your own garden!

It’s also questionable as to how many of the once-living probiotics actually survive from the time of packaging to you eating it, after transit and shelf-time.

I’m not saying that they may not offer some benefit to your digestion, but I feel that truly healthy gut flora starts with an otherwise healthy gut via eating and living healthfully, not a reliance on supplemental bacteria from packaged foods.

Some raw foodist will go as far as buying digestive enzymes in powdered form to supplement the enzymes everyone’s body naturally produces.

This could be a topic for a whole other article, but for now I’ll just say that the body produces all the digestive enzymes you need perfectly fine by itself, given you take care of it.

The Raw Curse

There is something that at one time felt like a phenomenon, but now just makes more logical sense as a natural progression of human adaption.

“The raw curse” is something I’ve written about in my books, “The Raw Food Controversies” and “The Raw Secrets”.

One thing I noticed amongst fellow raw-food-enthusiasts was that there seemed like a predictable decline in digestive abilities the longer they followed a strict raw food diet.

The longer they followed a raw food diet, the less ability they had to digest any other foods than raw foods.

The longer they followed that path, the types of raw foods they ate started being limited, too.

In many circles, you see people eating mostly mono-meals of one type of sweet fruit and tender, leafy greens, for most of their food intake. These are among the easiest foods for the digestive system to digest, as they are mostly composed of simple sugars.

This is a good and a bad thing.

There are valuable nutrients in fruits and tender leafy vegetables that can be easily absorbed by just eating them as they naturally come to you, from the garden or your nearest produce aisle.

But when you eat these foods and absolutely nothing else, you body quits producing the proper digestive enzymes and gastric juices to digest other foods, like dense proteins or starches.

Humans can eat and absorb nutrients from proteins and starch-dense foods just fine, but your body needs to “get used” to digesting them first.

Tuning Up Your Body’s Digestive Fire

I’ve come to the conclusion that many of the so-called digestive imbalances and woes that many people face amongst the vegetarian, vegan and raw food scenes may not always be caused by a complex imbalance of specific digestive bacteria, and more to do with the individual’s inability to digest foods that other people can digest, without any supplements.

The raw foodist who gets knocked out by eating a bowl of rice for the first time in nine months isn’t necessarily a sign that rice is bad for them. It could just be their body wasn’t used to digesting the rice.

You can observe this by the same person eating rice (and many other things!) in the years before and digesting them at least relatively well enough to still function and not be doubled over in pain.

Whether they are incredibly happy to admit it or not, there are many people who previously swore by a 100% raw food diet and now eat cooked foods of many different kinds. The same foods that people swore at one time would wreak havoc on the system are now being eaten and digested perfectly well.

Did their body magically gain the ability to digest the previously “poison!” cooked food from all of that meditation?

While the meditation probably doesn’t hurt anything, it’s mostly just a matter of the body producing the same digestive acids again, in the proper balance, once the new foods are reintroduced into the stomach. The body re-learns how to digest them again.

Like riding a bike!

Keeping Your Stomach Strong

Even basic activities like regular walking and movement/exercise of any kind improves the muscles in your stomach, leading to stronger, more efficient digestion and absorption of the food you eat.

You digestion is much more multi-faceted than some may lead you to believe, so when diagnosing your own circumstances, I encourage you to consider all points of view.

What have been your experiences with digestion, supplements promising to improve your digestion, or anything else you care to share? Let us know in the comments section below.

Many people’s aim for eating a healthier diet isn’t just to feel and perform better NOW, but also with a mind towards the distant future.

How far? Many people say that living to a hundred years isn’t that hard to manage, given you take care of yourself.

Check out this video clip today by John Robbins as he shares some of his basic principles to eating and living in a way that keeps you healthy for your whole life and you’ll learn:

• Why it’s so important to have not only a healthy body, but a healthy emotional body and mindset if you’d like to live longer than the norm.
• How everyday choices that you make greatly impact the rest of your life.
• How to easily integrate better choices into your mind so you automatically make better decisions without having to think them through every time.
• The differences between individual cultures that live into their 100’s, and why those differences are important yet not the determining factor in their total health.
• Why eating a plant-based diet ultimately offers the body more nutrition for fewer calories.

John brings up some great points, and I think it’s particularly good to recognize that each culture that tends to live well past world standards of life expectancy don’t all eat one specific way.

While they all eat a plant-based diet, they all have little differences in the types of foods, amounts of animal products, and cooking methods they use.

What are your thoughts on living into your 100’s? What have you learned in your years so far?

Coffee is one of those beverages that has always received mixed reviews.

At one time, it was everybody’s favorite breakfast item to criticize, saying that it was too stimulating and hard on your adrenals, so you should swap it for a green juice or tea.

More recent years people have come up and argued the contrary and said that it’s actually full of antioxidants and all sorts of other nutritional components that actually make any small side effects from the caffeine negligible.

Some people will go as far to say that dark roast black coffee is very good for you, and will cite a number of studies arguing that dark coffee is good for the following conditions:

• - Type 2 diabetes
• – Parkinson’s disease
• 
– Alzheimer’s disease
• 
– Prostate cancer
• – Liver cancer
• 
– Kidney cancer
• 
– Etc.

Now in a moment I will give you what I believe is a more balanced view on coffee.

But first, let me be clear that I absolutely LOVE coffee. I totally understand the love affair that the world has with coffee, and other caffeinated beverages, like tea.

But for me coffee has always been a love/hate relationship.

I love caffeine and its immediate effects on my body. However, I also know that I’m very caffeine sensitive and I know the short and long-term effects of caffeine’s effects on my body.

If I consume coffee one or two days in a row, I will inevitably get headaches as a result. I will also get depressed and lack energy a day or two after I stop coffee.

If I keep drinking coffee and make it a habit (I have done that at times in the past), I personally experience the following symptoms:

• - Irritability
• 
– Clouded thinking in the morning until I have coffee again
• – Regular migraine headaches
• – Back pain
• 
– Bouts of irregular feelings of depression

I know that I am more sensitive to caffeine than most people. Therefore, I treat coffee with respect. I don’t underestimate its effects as a drug and I stay away for the most part.

But as I said, I love coffee and the feeling of caffeine in general. So once in a while, I can’t resist having a cup of tea or coffee and go ahead and have one.

When I do, I like the immediate effects. But I know there will be some consequences.

I have found that if I don’t consume caffeine more than a couple of times a month (say 2-3) then I can manage with it.

There are times, for example when traveling, when using a little bit of a boost is not a bad idea.

After all, certain circumstances in life are unnatural to begin with, like traveling across multiple time zones in minutes or hours.

But what’s important is that I treat coffee for what it is:

Not a beverage like fruit juice or green juice, or even an innocent breakfast beverage: a drug!

Just a little bit of research into the effects coffee has on the human body quickly brings to mind the effects of any other type of stimulating drug.

Many books have been written on the subject of caffeine and coffee specifically not being good for the human body. They list a number of side effects and conditions:

• - Energy swings or periods of fatigue during the day
• - Mood swings or periods of depression
•  -Headaches
• - Gastrointestinal distress, cramping, and diarrhea
• - Constipation and/or dependence on caffeine for bowel movement
• - Tension or stiffness in the neck, shoulders, hands, legs or stomach
• - Premenstrual syndrome, menstrual irregularity, cramps, sore breasts
• - Insomnia
• - Anxiety
• - Irritability, including inappropriate fits of anger
• - Irregular or rapid heartbeat
• - Light-headness/dizziness
• - Waking up feeling tired
• - Generalized pain (back, stomach, muscles)
• - High blood pressure
• - Ulcers
• - Anemia
• - Shortness of breath
• - Difficulty in concentration
• - Ringing in ears
- Coldness in extremities

Of course, not every coffee drinker will immediately, or possibly even ever experience all of these symptoms. Some of these more intense side effects would only occur at a sustained level of consumption. Which in the western world isn’t that far from the norm.

For some people however, they notice very acute symptoms after drinking coffee or caffeine.

Some other people are sensitive to the high levels of caffeine in coffee, but can drink green tea every day.

Others seem to process caffeine better and do well with a certain amount of coffee per day, like a cup of espresso or a cup or two of dark coffee.

Everybody seems to have a little bit different tolerance level for coffee and/or caffeine, ranging from can’t-have-a-drop to multiple cups of coffee or tea everyday with seemingly little to no negative effect.

I believe this is mostly due to different people’s individual makeup and ability to process caffeine via the liver.

Caffeine being a drug has its side effects as well as potential benefits.
But nobody likes to talk about the side effects. It’s just not popular to question America’s most popular drug!

I feel some people can have at least a certain amount of caffeine in their life, whether it be from tea, coffee, or a bit of chocolate. Yet at the same time, for certain people, it’s likely that their healthy amount is next to no caffeine.

But I want to hear from you. Do you consume any form of caffeine? Do you consider yourself sensitive to caffeine? Have you quit coffee or caffeine?

Let us know in the comments below!

Every year, more than 600,000 people in the United States die from heart disease. That’s 1 out of every 4 deaths in the US every year.

Some people may be surprised to learn that more people die from sick hearts each year than drug and alcohol abuse or even accidents. But when you take a look at how sick many people actually are, it’s not that shocking.

However, it may be equally surprising for some people to learn that these terrible bouts of bad health can easily be avoided, and in many cases reversed, all by attention to your lifestyle and what you eat.

Check out this video today where Dr. Michael Greger explains about diet and heart disease. You’ll learn:

• The differences between the antioxidant content of plant foods and animal foods and how this impacts your health.
• Why so many people are resistant to using diet and lifestyle as a means of effectively treating disease.
• How people’s minds about a certain food or idea can change dramatically, as in the case of the humble, yet previously forsaken Tomato.
• Why a plant-based diet for overall health as well as the treatment of disease is so effective vs. drugs or other diet therapies.

Check it out here:

Dr. Greger brings up some great points, including how shocking it is that so many people have died and still continue to, all because of ideas that either were accepted or unaccepted by the general population or medical community.

What are your thoughts on this? Let us know in the comments below!