2003-2-13 05:03:00
Many diets are put forward as the optimum or the best possible God-given program.
What do you suppose is the best possible overall diet for maximum health benefits?
We've had several answers on this, but the answers seem to be directed at what diet is best for an individual at the moment. For instance, having some meat in my diet is a wise choice at present, but I will readily admit I am not on the optimum diet for maximum health of my body. Everything in life is a trade off. For one as busy as myself, the wise eating of regularly available foods is much more convenient. Also, I find that a regular diet makes me feel grounded for what I want to accomplish at the moment.
Nevertheless, there are better diets for health than the one I am on.
Let me present to you what I consider to be the best diet for health ever presented. It was originated by Professor Arnold Ehret and called "The Mucousless Diet Healing System."
You can read a short biograpical sketch on him, and buy his book at:
http://www.rawfood.com/ehret.html
Or go to Amazon.com (ISBN: 0879040041)
His diet consists entirely of living uncooked foods with emphasis on fruit.
After reading his book a number of years ago, I decided to try it out and started out on fruit only. This took tremendous discipline for one like myself who grew up on meat and potatoes. After a couple months I began to develop canker sores and concluded that I was getting too many acids and added sprouts and vegetables with emphasis on those growing above the ground. For salad dressing I used apple cider vinegar. Along with the diet I ran every day for about twenty minutes.
I ate nothing until noon at which time I ate a large salad that tasted as good as a steak. Then I finished off the day with fruit. I was on this diet for about a year and had the best vitality of my life. Unfortunately, my first wife complained daily about me not eating her food and for the sake of the marriage I went back on a regular diet. In many ways I wish I would have held my ground for it took almost a year for the diet to get comfortable and now if I go on it again I will have to start all over with the discipline.
From this experience I have concluded the optimum diet does consist in eating living uncooked foods, sprouts with a handful of raw nuts thrown it. This diet is not for anyone. If you have a history of enjoying meat as I did, it will require a major decision followed by discipline. If you think you can do it, it will pay off. Actually giving up bread was the most difficult part of the diet for me.
The worst part of this diet is when you go out to eat with friends. There is often little or nothing on the menu that you can order--a good dinner salad if you are lucky.
What is the best water to drink?
Some spring waters are very good, but others are questionable. Overall, distilled or reverse osmosis is the best for it is the purest water. Many believe that water with high mineral content is goods for you, but long time use can cause arthritis and other problems. The minerals in water are merely ground up rocks and the body has to work hard to eliminate over 90% of them from the body.
Definitely avoid tap water with high amounts of chlorine which is not good.
How can fasting be used to improve health?
The body puts tremendous energy into digesting food. When you fast, this energy is freed up and the body puts it to use in eliminating poisons from the body.
This is the reason you get a headache or feel faint or weak during the first day of a fast. The body is taking that extra energy and using its power to dump unwanted poisons into the bloodstream. After two or three days the elimination process becomes more regulated and the headaches disappear.
If you want to know how full of poison you are, fast for three days with no solid food. Drink only water or organic juice. Then look at your tongue in the mirror. The more coated it is the more poisons there are in your body. When you can fast for three days and have only a small amount of coating on your tongue this is a sign that your body is clean and in good shape internally.
The fasts I recommend are 3, 7 or 10 days. If you have not fasted before, start with a three day one. Fasting on water alone is very effective.
Another great fast is to drink only purified water with added fresh squeezed lemon, with honey and cayenne pepper added to taste.
Maple syrup is a good substitute for honey, but you have to make sure you get it from a good source. Some maple syrups have formaldehyde added as a preservative and with this added it can wind up doing you more harm than good. Springtree is supposed to be a popular brand with no additives and grade B has more minerals than grade A.
Apple and grape also are good juices to fast with.
Many fasting enthusiast recommend enemas during the fast. I've always had an aversion to enemas myself and have worked out a natural plan just as good. Fast for the first day on only water or lemon juice and then during the second day, drink a good quantity of grape, cherry or prune juice. Actually cherry juice is the most potent. If you do this you will naturally eliminate everything possible that left in you. Your bowels should be pretty clean for the rest of the fast.
If you have hypoglycemia you may have difficulty in fasting and become ill and faint. If this is your situation, the best thing to do is to go on a modified fast. You can go on a diet of fresh fruits and vegetables for 10-20 days with just enough protein added to keep you feeling well. You'll have to experiment on what works for you as a modified fast. If you do work out a partial fasting program you'll have to figure going on it for about twice the length to achieve the same benefit as a more complete fast.
I usually fast twice a year for a week each on water or juice. If I'm feeling out of sorts or low on energy and do not know the cause, I'll go on a fast. After the fast I often feel quite rejuvenated.
Breaking the fast is as important as the fast itself. The first day after a fast you should eat only fruit and salad vegetables. Then the day after you can eat pretty normally, buy do not overeat. It is dangerous to stuff yourself after a fast. My friend Wayne fasted for twelve days once on water and broke it with a hamburger and milkshake. That could have made a lesser man deathly ill but it didn't seem to bother him. I gave him quite a lecture on it.
A good book on fasting in addition to Arnold Ehret was written by Paul Braag. This and some other of his interesting books are at:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/102-8375973-1104057
If you are going to eat fruit, vegetables and meat how should you go about consuming them. Should you eat them together or in some type of order or sequence?
Overall, it is good to eat fruit and light foods early in the day and the heavier foods near the evening, but the big mistake people make is the order of eating within a single meal.
It is a big mistake to eat fruit desserts after a heavy meal for instance.
As food enters your stomach it settles in layers. Meat may take eight or more hours to digest whereas fruit may take less than an hour. If fruit goes on top of a layer of meat then it stays there and putrefies. This wrong order of eating and consequent putrefaction is the cause of much of the gas and heartburn people have.
If you eat fruit it should be eaten on an empty stomach. If you eat a salad with your meal eat it first. Do not eat it after consuming meat and other heavy foods. Do not mix ham or other meats with your salad. By eating only vegetables and fruit first this gives your digestive system the opportunity to immediately begin to digest them and then later give full attention to the heavier foods to come.
Another universally accepted health activity is exercise. What are your ideas in using exercise to increase the quality of health? There is a great health drawback to exercise that is often overlooked. Can you tell us what it is?
What are your ideas in using exercise to increase the quality of health? There is a great health drawback to exercise that is often overlooked. Can you tell us what it is?
We must have a low interest in exercise here. For perhaps the first time, no one responded to a question I have given the group.
There are a lot of books on this subject so I will quickly give you a few of my thoughts on this and move on.
For general health it is much better to concentrate on aerobic exercise, or exercises that cause you to breathe heavy and take in lots of oxygen. You can keep in reasonable shape with about 20 minutes of running a day or about 30 minutes of less strenuous exercise.
When you are in shape though aerobics your heart is strengthened and the small capillaries are opened up allowing more oxygen to get to the cells.
The biggest drawback to this heavy exercise is that you sweat a lot and in your perspiration are many valuable minerals. Therefore if you sweat a lot through exercise and excrete many minerals and do not replace them you could wind up in worse shape health-wise than if you did not exercise at all.
How often have we heard about some health guru dying of a heart attack while running at age 50 or so? This could have been prevented if the person would have replaced the minerals he sweated out.
Another important tip is this. You get as much as 50 percent more benefit from exercise if you are having fun while doing it. There's something about having fun that causes the secretion of good hormones that benefit health.
If you have kids this gives you a good excuse to play with them. If you like sports, this gives you a good excuse to play. If you have to exercise alone in a boring atmosphere do your best to make it interesting.
There are three influences that can have a positive effect on health. They are color, music/sound and humor. How do you suppose these three things can influence health?
Also, how can we best utilize the sun for health?
-- End Of Part Four --
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Part Five
Part Three
Diet & Health (Article Index)
Copyright 2003 by J.J. Dewey, All Rights Reserved