Archive for August, 2011

So, “cleansing reactions” can happen two months or six months or even six years later. They can even happen—on a much milder scale—when your engine is very clean because you’ve completely transitioned to a high-raw diet and eat 5% or less processed food and animal proteins.

Personal example. I drank 4 oz. of wheat grass juice (very potent and medicinal, and 4 oz. is a LOT) every day, for two months recently. (Until my 4-wheeling accident where I wasn’t able to drive for 10 days.) I noticed my skin breaking out during the second week of that period, a very common detox reaction.

A couple of weeks later, one day I had 4 oz. in the morning and then 4 oz. again at night, and I got a brain fog and slight headache. (I never get headaches!) That’s my body trying to process so much elimination that occurs through many channels, when it gets some power fuel to work with.

EVERYONE needs to detox. You breathe polluted air, you experience stress—both of which have physical byproducts in the body—and nobody’s diet is “perfect.” My brain fog was mild and lasted about an hour. (The skin breakout lasted a few days.)

The longer you’ve been eating the S.A.D., and the worse your diet, and the weaker your inherited constitution, the more likely you are to have ROUGH detoxing.

If a “cleansing reaction” lasts longer than 2 weeks, generally you may be looking at a food sensitivity. These issues are now epidemic because of so many ways we degenerate the gut. I think the top of the list is probably genetically modified grains causing so many people to be celiac or have lesser gluten intolerances. (Monsanto is now breeding pesticides into SEEDS and using the legal system to bully farmers out of stockpiling non-genetically-modified, or “heirloom,” seeds.)

Mark my words: this epidemic is going to continue to explode until MOST people have major gut issues. Many people who think they’re fine NOW will be diagnosed later.

The way out is to stop attacking our own pancreas, thyroid, digestive tract, kidneys, liver, heart, and blood pathways with chemicals and fake foods. The way out is to return to eating what people ate since the dawn of time, before these diseases began just three generations ago. Grow our own food, support local organic co-ops.

But far too much animal protein and too little plant fiber has surely contributed to much of the Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Crohn’s Disease, Leaky Gut, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue, Epstein Barr and other fatigue and degenerative gut issues affecting so many of us.

You know little kids with Crohn’s? Me too. We’re passing down our degenerated DNA to our babies.

Aahh, I’ve gone sideways. What do you do if you’re not losing weight, if you’re constipated, even though you’re drinking green smoothies?

The answers? Rest. Drink a lot more water. Slow your program down for a brief period of time. Add some fresh ginger to your smoothies. Before you get out of bed in the morning, deeply massage your transverse colon (preferably with a tennis ball, but your hands will work), starting lower right in your pelvis, straight up to the level of your navel, across to a couple inches inside the left hipbone, and down.

And grin and bear it, knowing your body is doing good, necessary work, you ARE burning fat, and the discomfort or plateau in weight loss is temporary.

First and foremost, stay the course and remember, this too shall pass. It is an immutable law that when you replace high-calorie foods with low-calorie, high-nutrition foods (green smoothies!), weight loss will follow if you are overweight.

If you’re still not losing weight, get a FULL BLOOD PANEL workup at a hormone clinic specializing in bio-identical hormones (rather than synthetic). Even if your doctor told you that your T3 was in the “normal” range. You may need a broader-spectrum blood test. You can even start the most natural way, taking a couple of kelp tablets a day (nourishing the thyroid with iodine). The bioidenticals are cheaper and work better anyway, and they cover T1, T2, T3, and T4, broader spectrum hormones, from a natural (dessicated animal glandular) source rather than giving you a synthetic drug with its inevitable side effects. If your thyroid isn’t working, with its complex interplay of hormones, you can’t metabolize food effectively and lose weight.

(Actually look at TOMORROW’S blog for part 1, we messed that up while I’ve been out of town…..)

I got this email from my friend Matthew:

He had just read this quote: “When I eat chocolate cake, 20 minutes later I’m under my desk wanting to die, When I eat broccoli, in 20 minutes I feel good. But given the choice I always eat the cake.”

Matthew asks: “Why do people choose the chocolate cake?

“Have I ever talked to you about how Tony Robbins talked about training himself to push his plate away when he was full? He grew up in a home with the ‘doctrine of the clean plate’ (or something like that) and had to retrain himself. The psychology of how to train yourself about what is okay and what is not okay is fascinating to me. (I have taught my kids to waste food anytime they want for example, and that was SO WRONG in the tribe I grew up in.)

“I wonder if you wrote some blogs about how to train yourself and condition yourself to have feelings and opinions about healthy eating that are more useful. How about Affirmations for Health by YOU?”

I told Matthew that I was raised with the same rule: you must finish everything on your plate. I’m developing a meditation to go to the very root of why we sabotage ourselves nutritionally, and correct those subconscious beliefs. (I wrote about this in a blog series months ago called, “I love my body. It serves me well!”)

What are your beliefs about yourself and food, that cause you to make poor choices over and over? What are the words you say in your head? Could you write them on a 3×5 card and think about whether they are useful or harmful?

What if you could write NEW beliefs and statements that you could replace those with, which are more useful? It would work only if you repeated those beliefs over and over.

Do you “make” your kids finish their dinner? At my house, you don’t have to finish anything—except your green smoothie, fruits/vegs, or salad. You can skip the rest of the dinner.

Parents, or anyone with opinions, what do you think? I know it’s no longer popular at all to ‘make’ kids do ANYTHING. But I ‘make’ myself eat 60-80% raw greens/vegs/fruit before I consider eating anything else—so it isn’t as if I’m requiring anything of my kids I’m not doing myself. I have done this for so long that I don’t even think about it. It’s not deprivation or neurotic; it’s just habitual.

I have some rules for eating. All of them are based on common sense. All were developed by learning that I don’t feel good if I ever break them. I’ve never written them down until now; they’ve just been in my head. Here are my 13 rules:

1. Don’t eat after 7 p.m. except on a very rare occasion.

2. Always drink a pint of water as soon as I wake up.

3. Never eat sugar on an empty stomach—always with lots of raw food and some good plant protein (like almonds, greens, or beans).

4. If I eat any concentrated sugar (besides fruit), it’s only once in a day.

5. Never eat processed meat.

6. After working out, drink only water for a while.

7. Every meal or snack is 60% or more raw plant food (often 80-100%).

8. Don’t drink soda.

9. Don’t buy anything from fast-food restaurants.

10. Don’t eat anything with MSG in it.

11. Don’t add salt to food.

12. If a meal is below 80% raw plant food, take digestive enzymes.

13. If I eat too heavily for a weekend or more, I take a few days to detox. I might eat all raw food, two quarts of green smoothie instead of one, wheat grass juice, extra water—or even a couple of days of nothing but Meal Replacement.

My children have gone back to school. If I said I was sorry about that, I’d be lying.

I love my kids, but summer is hard for working moms. And August is crazy around here because I’m about to leave on my 4th trip of the month, all 4 of my kids have had birthdays in the past 3 weeks, and two of my kids have changed from public to charter school, or charter to public school, this year. Immunization waivers from the health dept. are a pain in the butt.

And my oldest daughter turned 16 yesterday and is not only transferring to the charter school I co-founded (Newseek says it’s the #1 school in Utah)—she’s also moving back home after living with her dad for a while. (Tears welling up just writing that. I’ve no words to express my happiness about both of these events.)

I went to the elementary school where Tennyson is transferring into 6th grade. I waited in line to talk to the teacher. A bag of M&M’s was on each desk, with the child’s name hand-lettered on it.

This was the convo:

Me: I’ve heard great things about you! My son is excited to bust out of 6 straight years wearing a school uniform. I just have one concern. I’m kind of a, um, you know, health food nut. I know, I’m weird. But I’m not a huge fan of candy as an academic or behavioral reward. I read in your handout that you do that?

Teacher: Oh, haha, yeah, um, I really should do less of that.

Me: I just wanted to volunteer to pay for alternative rewards, you know, that stuff you can buy a pack at a time—pencils, little toys, notepads, stuff like that? If you buy it, for the whole class, I’ll pay for it, instead of the candy.

Another Mom: Oriental Trading Company is good.

Me: I know candy is the easy thing to do. [I hand her my business card and tell her I’m teaching a class here in Orem Sept. 6 and I hope she can come, bring her husband and kids.]

Teacher: Oh, Green Smoothie Girl! I know you! I do green smoothies.

Another Mom: Oh! You’re Green Smoothie Girl! I just got your newsletter this morning—I want some of those raw bars! Are they really good? [A conversation ensues between the teacher and the waiting moms about how this mom has been surreptitiously slipping the greens into the kids’ breakfast smoothie and how excited she is about it.]

[I know with that raw-bar comment, this whole blog just got suspiciously self-indulgent, especially when I put the link behind the words! They are yummy and so nutritious. But I am not making this conversation up.]

Teacher: It’s hard to find stuff that appeals to 6th graders. Stickers just aren’t gonna cut it. How about pretzels, should I give those to your son instead?

Me: Um, that’s not really better. White flour and salt, you know? When my kids were little, I used to take alternative “healthy” treats to the teachers for when candy was being handed out. But Tennyson probably won’t like that. If you don’t find something whiz-bang enough at Oriental Trader that 6th graders will like, I might just set up a reward system where I pay him $1 for every treat he turns down. Or maybe I will give you some alternative treats for him, if he’s okay with it.

[end of conversation]

Any moms who have better ideas, let me know. My kids have been educated at a charter school I helped open, since my 18-year old was in 3rd grade. So I haven’t had to deal with this, much, for a very long time.

My purpose talking to the teacher is to (a) identify myself as a watchful parent who cares about not only my child’s health and nutrition, but the whole class’s, (b) be positive and offer to help, and (c) let the teacher know that I generally support her even if there’s one area where I’m a fan of the classroom policy.

I’m sure the moms reading this blog would like feedback and ideas, so join the conversation!

Last week Tennyson had a close encounter with a curb he tried to jump on his bike. I had his broken tooth repaired later that day. Everything scabbed over and his giant fat lip was subsiding, when he got stung by two wasps at a baseball game.

Here’s a photo of him 18 hours later. My oldest son called him “Asian Alien Girl Face.” His friends were in my bedroom late last night poking and prodding Tennyson’s enormous dome. My oldest daughter Emma can’t stop saying, “Awwwww!” and hugging him.

The next morning was his first day of school. I didn’t have the heart to make him go. It’s a new school, with kids he doesn’t know. He had a new outfit picked out, ready to walk in the first day, all cool, parking his new ride (an electric scooter).

Talking to other people who’ve had similar reactions to wasp stings, it’s going to take a week to subside. I can’t let him stay out of school for a week.

He looks just like Will Smith in Hitch. I told him about Gwyneth Paltrow in the movie Shallow Hal, too. She wears a fat suit and has the eye-opening experience most beautiful women never experience: learning how people treat the obese.

I said, “See, Ten, you could have a once-in-a-lifetime experience like that. You get to meet people and find out how they treat you that’s DIFFERENT than when you’re your good-looking REAL self. You could do a school project on what it’s like. A week later, your face will be back to normal and all the girls will be like, ‘Alien Boy is HOT, who knew?!”

He was unimpressed with my idea.

So instead I went to have a t-shirt made with last year’s school picture on it. That way he could wear it to his new school on his first day and show people, “This is what I REALLY look like!”

(I spent all afternoon on it. As you can see by the photo, he was still unimpressed.)

Hopefully this way, though, he won’t be traumatized for life and tell a shrink when he’s 43 and still lives in my basement that everything went wrong the day his head swelled up like a watermelon and his mom made him go to school anyway.

(After 18 hours, when it had only gotten worse instead of better, I finally bought some Benadryl. It did nothing except make him sleepy.)

Dear GreenSmoothieGirl: “My kids are constipated and the doctor prescribed Miralax. What do I do?”

My answer on video here!

The ridiculous diatribe I read by an M.D., against all things non-medical, acts as if those who don’t subscribe to “modern medicine” are all quacks because they are conspiracy theorists. (Caught in his net include those utilizing means other than chemo to treat cancer, those wanting to avoid amalgam fillings, those wanting to avoid mercury in vaccines, etc.) The man resorts to the classic non sequitir logical fallacy.

It’s not a conspiracy theory. The problem isn’t that docs individually are denying people good information that could save their lives, rubbing their hands together greedily while cackling, “I’m going to let this person die of heavy-metal toxicity destroying multiple organs! That way I earn more money this month!”

It’s more complicated than that. (Doctors individually are good people, trying to help people.) It’s a systemic problem: a macro-level issue rather than a micro issue.

It’s the fact that doctors are not trained in anything related to prevention, including nutrition. They are taught a copious amount of detail, and they can perform only procedures that fall within the big book of insurance codes.

That codified system is very exclusionary: drugs, surgeries, and technologies are allowed IN. Homeopathy, natural treatments, nutritional therapies (anything not sold by a drug or tech company) are very purposefully left OUT.

Too many Americans naively think, “If it could heal me, my doctor would know about it.”

Medical doctors are well meaning people who want to serve and help the public. I’m sure many docs are frustrated that people don’t actually get well, using their hard-won education and skills. My friend Rich just finished his PhD in pharmacology and tells me, glumly, of his new career: “Now I get to go push drugs on children and the unsuspecting public.”

They just have no training in much beyond anatomy, surgical interventions, and pharmacology. (Those subjects all by themselves comprise a tremendous amount of information.)

Major industries fund medical schools. Tuition alone doesn’t even come close to supporting a medical education. Big Pharma underpins not only the schools themselves, but also research programs, and curriculum development. I don’t know if the drug companies are still holding contests for docs to win stuff if they prescribe the most drugs, but I knew an OB/GYN 15 years ago who won a cruise for his wife and himself because he prescribed the most Prozac of anyone in his drug rep’s sales district.

The “half life” of a medical education is only a few years—the practice is constantly changing. So who do docs rely on for continuing education? Again, mostly, it’s drug reps. And medical journals. Which are full of drug-trial research—again, funded by Big Pharma.

Why would medical schools, then, spend a great amount of effort and money to teach people about the power of FOOD on cancer risk and cancer cures?

In the 1930′s and 1940′s, medicine was being directed very specifically towards allopathy: attack of the symptoms of disease. There was a concerted effort away from midwifery, homeopathy, whole-systems approaches, dietary treatments, and homeopathy.

After oil was discovered in the mid-1800′s, everything began to change. I collect antique lamps, and whale-oil lamps are expensive and rare. When kerosene came on the scene, people were thrilled, because whale oil’s light was very dim, and of course you had to kill a whale to get it, which isn’t particularly easy.

Along with new energy sources, oil lent itself to the use of drugs made from the byproducts of refining. Most medical drugs, by 1980, were made from petroleum! Petroleum is not food. It cannot be digested, assimilated, or eliminated by the body. Chemicals (drugs) are trapped in our tissues and organs, and they cause a wide array of long-term problems.

One way of practicing ‘medicine’ is profitable. The other ways are not. You can call me a conspiracy theorist, but it’s really simple. And where are we now, since this shift starting in the 1930′s?

We are, as a culture, still a long way from health.

If there are answers at the Issels Clinic or at True North, in the Budwig Diet, from Dr. Burzynski in Texas or Dr. Nicholos Gonzales, the Incurables Program, the Block Center for Integrative Care, the Living Foods Institute in Atlanta (thank you, readers, for these leads), or any of the places I mentioned on Day 2 of this blog series, I’d like to find out.

Tomorrow, I finish this blog series with an open letter to Oncology practitioners.