Optimum Health for Body, Mind, and Soul

Just about everyone has heard the old saying ‘you are what you eat’, but what does this really mean? Until I started playing around with my diet, I didn’t truly understand the profound effects, both good and bad, that our diet has on our health, and in particular, our level of aches and pains. Just for clarity sake, I define ‘diet’ as ‘the food that you eat’ and not as some temporary way of eating to accomplish a particular goal, like losing weight. Your diet is what you eat every day. We all know what it means to ‘go on a diet’, but not many people understand the real effects of their normal diet on their health and well-being.

Your diet, or more specifically, the nutritional value of the food that you eat at each and every meal, literally determines the quality your body. The shape and fitness of your body, and how you feel physically, are the result of the quality of the food that you eat. Period. If you want to be a world-class athlete but focus only on your physical fitness, you are missing out on the best edge you can give yourself- proper nutrition.

Every seven years or so your body has rebuilt itself entirely. Each cell in your body, including the cells that make up your bones and your brain, are replaced on a schedule that runs anywhere from daily to every several years. This is great news for people who want to recreate themselves into something new and better because it is actually possible to have a brand new body, one that operates better, looks better, and feels better simply by learning about and applying some basic nutritional rules.

I always tell my clients that changing your life (or your diet) is less about discipline and more about education. It is very hard to force yourself to do something that feels like a sacrifice unless you can justify it on a logical level. So, before you embark on a new, permanent diet (because there is no reason for a temporary change…the results will also only be temporary) be sure to educate yourself as much as you possibly can about nutrition. My absolute favorite book on nutrition is the Optimum Nutrition Bible by Patrick Holford. If you haven’t educated yourself recently, pick this one up.

Just to warn you, there are as many opinions out there about proper diet as there are people interested in talking about diet, so use your common sense and intuition, keep an open mind, and read as many sources as possible while investigating how to bring your body into an optimum state with nutrition.

One of the first things I would recommend to anyone who is interested in improving their health is to research the acid/alkaline balance in the human body and how food affects this balance. Our body is supposed to be slightly alkaline with a pH of between 7.35 and 7.45. pH is a scale with 7 being neutral, anything below being on the acid side and anything above being alkaline. Every type of food that we eat either has an acidifying affect on our body or an alkalizing affect. As we eat more foods of an acid nature (meat, dairy, alcohol, grains such as wheat, corn, etc) our body becomes more acid. An acidic body is in a state of crisis, and is much more prone to degenerative diseases and parasitic invasions, such as worms, bacteria, and viruses.

The state of the dietary habits of Americans, in particular, is predominantly focused on foods that are acidifying, hence our collective state of declining health. Foods that are alkalizing are most vegetables and most fruits. Here is a great list of acid/alkaline foods. http://www.rense.com/1.mpicons/acidalka.htm

I found that as I changed my diet slowly through the years to one that is predominantly raw/vegan that my level of pain slowly faded away. I had suffered for years from an undiagnosed chronic neck pain. I now rarely have neck pain, and only when I am under a lot of stress. If you suffer from chronic pain, don’t expect a miracle cure unless you are willing to change your diet. I can guarantee you that if you have chronic pain, your diet is sub-optimal. Most Americans are malnourished, especially those who are over weight or obese. This sounds counter-intuitive, “How can I be malnourished? I obviously haven’t been missing any meals!” Well, just think about it. Ok, well, don’t think about it, because maybe you don’t know that there is almost no nutritional value in hamburgers, french fries, pizza, bagels, potato chips, boxed cereal, canned vegetables, etc. So, so yourself a favor and educate yourself about nutrition.

When your doctor cannot find the reason for your pain symptoms, you must look at your diet. If your doctor says that they cannot help you, what this really means is, “You aren’t sick enough yet. Go home and continue to eat the poor quality food that you have been eating, and when you come down with something that I can make some real money off of like cancer, heart disease, stroke, or diabetes, give me another call.”

Overcoming chronic pain requires you to take responsibility for your life and your body. Changing your diet is step one. After that, you can put into place some new practices that will help clear out the remaining stress-based pain. See my eBook Free From Chronic Pain for a program that will help anyone overcome chronic pain quickly and easily without the use of physical exercise. Anyone can do it. I also have eBooks specifically for buttock pain, low back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, tendonitis pain, hip pain, bursitis pain, and sciatica pain.

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November 12th, 2009 | Tags: back pain, buttock pain, chronic pain, hip pain, low back pain, raw foods diet, sciatica pain, tendonitis pain | Category: Diet and Nutrition | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL