Appendices: In Brief–Dietary Support of Prevention and Healing

Appendices: In Brief–Dietary Support of Prevention and Healing

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  Supplement critical vitamin B12, B complex, D, DHA, and possibly minerals as needed. (DHA is not the hormone DHEA.) The B vitamins are supportive of a healthy nervous system for alleviating depression and addictions.
  
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  Refined foods=dense calories, lower nutrient density, more cravings. Eat a variety of whole, unrefined plant-based foods, whether cooked or raw: the fibrous, high nutrient foods can fill and satisfy you before getting too many calories. For example, 10 walnut halves contain about 120 calories, the same as only 1tablespoon of oil.
  
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  Refined oil=less healthy cells. Even a temporary excess of fat in the blood coats and clogs cells, inhibiting nutrient transport. Although olive oil gets touted for its monounsaturated fatty acids, it meets the definition of a junk food: a low nutrient, refined product missing many of the original phytonutrients. One could eat olives or avocado instead, eliminating refined oils, while reducing even fats from whole, unrefined sources such as nuts, seeds, olives and avocados to say 20% of calories.
  
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  The immune system loves leafy greens and other colorful veggies for their phytonutrients; disorders hate them. Chew thoroughly or blend them to release nutrients. Poorly chewed chunks may rot while traversing our long digestive tract.
  
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  Instead of oily dressing, chew a moderate amount of olives, avocado, nuts or seeds along with the greens. Phytonutrients in veggies, especially leafy greens and broccoli may slow pathogenic reproduction rates, while boosting the immune system. These synergistic benefits stem in part from veggies contributing alkaline byproducts to tissues, likely helping improve many disorders beyond infectious illnesses, even cancer. After increasing green veggies, how about eating more carrots, and other root veggies such as sweet potatoes?
  
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  Almost no restaurants soak and rinse their legumes, which results in many people thinking that they cannot digest them. Yet legumes provide long-lasting hearty support. As a foundation for meals including breakfast, try reheating a serving of very readily digestible and palatable “Lentil stew”, with the recipe found in “Appendices: Recipes”. Upon that foundation of legumes, the rest of each meal could be built of the foods mentioned above, beginning with dessert: a piece of fruit.
  
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  All pros, no cons: To lose weight, eat all the bulky, fibrous, filling, nutrient-rich, calorie-sparse green veggies you want, plus moderate amounts of other foods. The fibers in unrefined plant-based foods reduce appetite. Limit calorie–dense fat intake to 20% of calories. Cut most of the fat sources from recipes except those for green veggies. Still eat a significant amount of fat with those, the better to absorb the fat–soluble vitamins from the greens. For example, chopped olives and walnuts could be eaten with green salads and colorful veggies, but less with other foods. Water-based dressings substitute for oil-based dressings. To take the edge off appetite, drink a glass of water half an hour before each meal. Do eat a robust breakfast that includes foods such as lentil stew that sustain until lunch. Take care during holidays and travel; carry a bag of low calorie foods such as celery and carrots to celebrations. Keep a food diary and draw a graph of your weight for months to maintain awareness.
  
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  Exercise, at first a little bit at a time. Emotional and spiritual practices.
  
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  For many reasons: No refined sugar. It feeds cancer. It competes with vitamin C for uptake into white blood cells, impeding their ability to fight infections. It tends to make tissues slightly less alkaline, worsening many disorders.
  
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  For many reasons: No milk products. Repeatedly, peer-reviewed scientific research has shown that milk products are very harmful for many disorders, including cancer, cardiac disorders, and not even helpful for osteoporosis. Legumes and green veggies contain calcium.
  
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  Allergies to milk products may manifest not only as congestion, rashes, respiratory and/or gastrointestinal disorders, but also as hyperactivity, irritability, chronic fatigue, anxiety, and/or depression.
  
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  Animal protein produces acidic byproducts, worsening many disorders. For this and other well-researched reasons, an excess of animal protein substantially increases risk of cancer, including breast and prostate, cardiac and many other disorders, especially osteoporosis. A deck of card’s worth (three ounces) of flesh a day may provide more than enough protein, or none may be needed if one eats a modest amount of high protein veggies such as legumes (soaked overnight, rinsed, then boiled for easy digestibility).
  
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  No caffeine. It produces acidic byproducts, worsening many disorders. Caffeine is especially hard on diabetics.
  
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  Greens and veggies may well help deactivate problematic genes, and reactivate optimal genes, optimizing gene expression as one mechanism of their beneficial effects.
  
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  Greens contain phytonutrients such as chlorophyll, the protein identical to the protein in hemoglobin in blood (with magnesium instead of iron).
  
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  If for some reason such as chemotherapy digestion is queasy, perhaps temporarily take the green powders to get some of the benefit from veggies during recovery? And concentrated ginger tea [1 bag per 1/3 cup water, say] could help improve nausea.
  
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  One could take probiotic bacteria such as acidophilus daily to replace important beneficial flora.
  
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  Limit NaCl salt to at most 1/4 teaspoon daily; beware processed foods. How about using aged, unpasteurized miso that contains sea salt instead of plain salt? Miso nourishes the digestive tract.
  
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  Zero trans fatty acids; zero hydrogenated oils.
  
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  Superheating foods by browning, toasting and roasting introduces toxins such as acrylamides and transfats that undermine health. Boiling foods that contain tough fibers makes some nutrients more accessible by breaking up the fibers, while destroying others at least in part. Therefore a variety of raw and boiled foods may prove ideally supportive. (Nutrients leach into the boiling water; drinking it afterward recovers them.)
  
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  No smoking, no alcohol.
  
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  Chew food well for the stomach has no teeth. For those who may have trouble swallowing, or have challenges chewing, a “blender” that doubles as a food processor due to its sheer power and speed, is the pricey but effective Vitamix Turboblend 4500 (2 horsepower, www.RawFood.com), powerful enough to puree the toughest foods.
  
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  As one’s diet improves, emphasizing veggies while paying special attention to the glycemic indices of refined foods if any are consumed, less supplemental insulin may be needed by diabetics. Insulin sensitivity of cells may increase, which is good. However, maintaining the same dose of insulin may result in a low blood sugar crisis, a hypoglycemic reaction. Also, blood pressure may drop as vasculature becomes more elastic, necessitating diminution of medication for high blood pressure (www.DrFuhrman.com). Therefore, it’s safer to take steps to change the diet to an optimal dietary approach under supervision of a health professional.
  
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  The benefits of dietary improvements could be a more robust healthspan, avoiding or possibly healing degenerative disorders such as cancer, diabetes (Type II), heart disease, impotence, constipation and many others that most Americans eventually suffer.
  
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  The book Breaking the Food Seduction, by Neil D. Barnard, MD, shows how to escape the trap of addiction, with a chapter focused on how hormone fluctuations set you up for bingeing.
  
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  The optimal Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman MD [www.DrFuhrman.com] and possibly The Macrobiotic Way by Kushi [www.kushiinstitute.org] could prove very useful.
  
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  Operations: A second opinion from an MD who’s not a surgeon might open doors other than those to the operating room… Although I personally minimize usage of antibiotics and pharmaceuticals in general, it might be a good idea to request an injection of antibiotics say 1 hour before surgery, hopefully to reduce the impact of infections during surgery. Antibiotics have no effect on viruses, which are just coated DNA or RNA, not cells like bacteria, so it’s still necessary to boost the immune system with greens and veggies.
  

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  First do no harm… Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food.-Hippocrates …The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.-Voltaire …Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.-Andy Rooney