In a recent newsletter I asked all of you what topic interests you, and many were interested in health issues, medications, GMOs in our food, natural healing and how to know what’s the right path.

As we all know, if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything. It’s so true, when you are sick, it’s fairly impossible to do much of anything. This is why I am such a big fan and advocate of the raw food life-style, regular exercise, and keeping a happy mind. It all works together, and you can’t have one area work well for you without the others. For example, if you do daily exercise, but eat processed foods or you eat healthy foods, but never exercise, or you are angry at the world all the time, and this anger creates lots of internal toxins. While this topic certainly is huge, and I could write volumes about this, I would like to write a series of newsletters in the next few weeks, concentrating on some basic and very important things I have learned.

Christina was born with a severe heart-defect and had to take lots of heart medications up until her heart surgery. She was only 5 months old when she had to have open heart surgery. Later I learned that the heart medications which saved her life and were necessary at the time, destroyed her thyroid, and now she has Hashimotos, an autoimmune disease, where the thyroid is attacked by the body’s own immune system. But for many years her Endicronologist misdiagnosed her, and told me that she had an under- active thyroid, also known as Hypothyroidism. Her doctors prescribed synthroid and levothyroxine. Both made her crazy, and she was so unmanageable that I thought it was the Down syndrome that caused it. Her teachers in school and her Pediatrician tried to railroad me and guilt-trip me into giving her Ritalin, a brain-altering medication.

Ritalin is a dangerous drug, which can cause nervousness, loss of appetite, aggression and violent behavior, visual hallucinations, sleeplessness, seizures, heart-palpitations, nausea, vomiting, major depression, the list goes on and on and on…

What the hell is wrong with these Western medical doctors??? First they misdiagnosed my child, prescribed terrible synthetic medicines and the wrong dose on top of it, which caused her to have strange symptoms of restlessness and hyperactivity, and a crazed look in her eyes at all times, plus she could never sleep in the night, her body was twitching non-stop, and then those doctors wanted to counteract that with a super dangerous drug!!!

The pressure put on me by the doctors and teachers to give Christina Ritalin became so unbearable, I went to seek advice from a Chinese doctor, who told me to immediately take her off the synthetic thyroid medication. He also warned me about the Ritalin, and told me that if I give it to her, I will not have the same child in 5-8 years, but I will have created a monster.

As soon as I took Christina off the thyroid medication and started giving her a Chinese remedy for her thyroid, the crazed look in her eyes disappeared, and she looked calm and happy with herself, the twitching stopped, and her hyperactivity drastically reduced. However, the hyperactivity had become part of her behavior at this point, so I am still working on calming her down.

I started going to a naturopathic doctor, who not only ordered the correct tests by which we found out that she indeed had Hashimoto’s, but she also gave my child a natural medicine with no side-effects, the correct dose for her thyroid, and educated me on the fact that the adrenals need to be stimulated first before you can address the thyroid.

My point with this story is, educate yourself in natural healing, natural herbs, natural medicines, seek naturopaths, Chinese doctors, and seek raw food support groups that bring in monthly guest-speakers. The body and all it’s organs and functions are interconnected, which means you have to treat it as a whole, not put a bandaid on just one spot. You have to find out what causes a certain illness and deal with the root, not the symptoms. Otherwise it’s like spraying poison on a weed. But if you don’t take it out by the root, it will keep coming back.

Let’s begin with the series I promised you:

Some people may be concerned about raising children without the “benefits” of meat, dairy products and warm cooked meals. Studies have shown that vegetarian children are more slender, healthier and live longer than their meat-eating companions. A child should not be pudgy and overfeeding leads to obesity, lethargy and an unhealthy lifestyle that ends up in many physical problems.

The habits that are learned as a child will follow them into adulthood. Children who acquire a taste for meat and junk food today will be the patients found in the hospitals and clinics tomorrow.

I agree, it is most difficult to make lifestyle changes, and if you are accustomed to the Standard American Diet, it is hard to switch to a mostly raw vegetarian lifestyle. But you have to understand that different foods fuel different potentials for success.

We live in an era where people have realized that artificial diets and chemical treatments for the skin, hair and body are not good and less effective than natural methods. The kind of foods we eat determines what level of grace and elegance our body will experience from moment to moment.

Raw plant food is beautiful, and it represents a way to live in peace and harmony with nature and the animals. It’s nutrient rich properties place a sparkle in the eye, luster in the hair, freshness in the skin and a natural fragrance in the body. Each meal is like a rainbow, a masterful painting. After all, we are what we eat, right? So with each raw meal you are becoming more pure, beautiful and healthy within. The world of raw food offers by far the largest variety of foods and thus allowing you to select which foods your body needs. Raw foods digest very quickly, normalize the body’s weight and keep the body’s appetite in check. Degenerative diseases do not occur when on a raw diet and as a matter of fact, if you already have them, they will usually reverse and disappear. Raw foods contain health-giving enzymes. The molecules of a living substance vibrate at a different level and the minerals, vitamins and enzymes are alive, while cooking takes that life away.

Cooking food changes the chemical and molecular structure. We learned that in High school chemistry right? High temperatures destroy vitamins and enzymes, rendering the food nutritionally-deficient for the human body. The body then has to work overtime to  move this dead, unnatural substance through the digestive tract, robbing the bones and other organs of their enzymes to complete the process. Consequently most of the adult- and much of the youth- population have chronic diseases and are on medications.

We need to wake up and take control before this type of food kills us.

My challenge for you this week is, find recipes for green smoothies and drink/eat them for breakfast. Which one is your favorite, please share with us.

I take grapes, an apple, a banana, orange, mango, pineapple, kale, spinach, mustard greens, sometimes I also add parsley, arugula, or endive, and some cucumber and a cup (or more) of water. Mix in a Vitamix and boom, I have the best breakfast ever.

Next time I will talk about the dangers of eating meat. So stay tuned.

Order this documentary called “Eating” for just a couple of dollars on Amazon: it’s the best documentary you’ll ever watch. It will open your eyes and make you a “believer.”