The Beautiful Life

I hear from many people that they simply cannot follow all of my tips. Here’s the thing – I write these blogs and health tips so that you become more aware of the food, perhaps medications that you don’t need, and chemicals all around you.  Just as none of us are perfect, none of us can be 100% healthy.  But the point of these blogs and health tips are to provide you with information and tools so that you can make wiser choices and determine what works best for you and your family.  In my effort to get to a poison free world for myself, I will make an attempt each and every day to point out the little things that we can do to make big changes in our health, our positive attitudes, our faith, and the world we live in.  It is just as much a journey for me as it is for you.I want these tips to encourage you and build you up! Don’t be overwhelmed by them, but rather use them as tools to guide you towards making healthy choices!

So, in closing, let me make it clear, I don’t believe that any of us can adhere 100% to any of these health tips.  I do, however, believe that if you make it a point to perhaps attempt even just 20 or 30% of the tips, you might just see a significant change in your world.  Remember, we are not meant to have chronic pain, headaches, migraines, and depression.  Let’s take a lesson from the people in the Blue Zone.  The average age that they live to is 100.  And, by the way, they are a healthy 100.  A lot of the health tips that I write about come from the Blue Zone part of the world, so, make the time walk, eat clean, stay positive and faithful, and, perhaps, achieve a poison free world one day.

 

Fountain of Youth

One of my favorite pastimes, and how I spend all of my free time, is researching health.  Some of the most interesting books I have read relate to longevity and exactly how some people in certain parts of the world become centenarians.  Therefore, it is my humble opinion that the road leading to the fountain of youth is quite simple and basic.

• Wake up every day of your life with a strong sense of purpose.
• Find your purpose – make sure you are doing what you have been called to do.
• Have faith, people who have faith generally speaking, live longer than people who do not.
• Have a strong sense of family and friendships – a connectedness to family and friends has been known to increase longevity.  For instance, gather with family and friends often to make sure that you are connected.  Be around people who are like minded.
• Change your lifestyle – walk everywhere you can, stop taking the elevator, stop parking as close as possible, change the channel on your television without using the remote control, whenever possible, stand on one foot.  It has been proven that people with lower body strength and balance live longer.
• Hard work!  Never retire.  People all around the world who are centenarians are still working.  Yes, and that means 90 or 100 years old.  Want to live long?  Simply do not stop working.
• Although in order to live longer, you must work, you must also find a way to create a balance between work and stress.  Here’s a tip:  Beginning today make sure that you are 15 minutes early to every appointment.  Believe it or not, this does alleviate some stress from your daily routine.
• Keep your mind active.  Learn a new language, learn to play a musical instrument, and keep doing new and creative things with your mind.  This is like strength training for the brain.
• Eat a diet containing mostly plant based foods.  It has been proven time and time again by longevity experts that most of the centenarians around the world consume very little meat, if at all, and eat mostly fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and dry beans.

So, here’s the scoop… Have a sense of purpose, work hard, avoid stress, be kind, smile, have faith, take a day off or a vacation, and as far as eating goes, eat breakfast like a king, eat your lunch like a prince, and eat dinner like a pauper!

My Attempts To Help Avoid Breast Cancer

As we continue to grow, we receive quite a few questions via email.  Some of our members have recently asked me to blog about breast cancer.  First and foremost, this is a very serious issue to me since my mother is a breast cancer survivor.  A few of my aunts and cousins have also had breast cancer.

According to the National Institutes of Health, one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer.  “About 39,840 women in the U.S. were expected to die in 2010 from breast cancer, though death rates have been decreasing since 1990.  These decreases are thought to be the result of treatment advances, earlier detection through screening, and increased awareness.”

Since I have spent the majority of my life keeping up with studies and research regarding cancer and/or reading as many health books as I can get my hands on, I will focus mostly on nutrition in this blog.  A lot of those studies seem to point out that 40% of cancer can be prevented by diet.  What does this mean to me?  In the most basic and simplest way, here is my own personal opinion about what I am doing in my own life in my efforts to avoid cancer.

• Due to the fact that my mother had breast cancer, I make it a point to avoid alcohol.
• Red wine seems to have a positive impact, although I do not drink it much.
• What is so extraordinary about the red wine?  Flavonoids – as discovered by a Hungarian scientist in 1938.
• Great news!  Although red wine is very high in flavonoids, we can find them in most fruits and vegetables.
• Highest content in flavonoids… all berries, especially black raspberries.
• Green tea contains flavonoids.
• The pulp of the orange contains large amounts of flavonoids.
• Make sure to eat the skins of fruits where most of the flavonoids are.
• I consume large amounts if dandelion greens.
• I, personally, avoid all processed foods.
• Limit consumption of meat as much as possible.
• I, personally, love to exercise.  If you do not, I recommend walking with friends since it’s enjoyable and does the trick.

In essence, and again, this is my opinion, folks, what can we do to help avoid breast cancer?  We should make an attempt to live as healthfully as possible.  This means avoiding too much alcohol – especially as we age.  Stay the heck away from any processed foods or meats.  Avoid chemicals at all cost.  Consume a diet full of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and dry beans.  Walk with your friends.  Serve others by volunteering your time.  Have faith.  Maintain a positive attitude.  And always keep a sense of purpose every day in your life.

He said, “Well, you might really be onto something!”

I’m so excited! And I just can’t hide it!… No, I will not break out into the song.  Just wanted to convey my extreme excitement.

Our general manager, Mike, called me on Saturday – which, by the way, is quite common, since we tend to work a lot on Saturdays.  What was unique about the phone call this past Saturday was that he began the conversation with, “Well, you might really be onto something!”  When I asked what he meant, he informed me that he had gone back to the doctor for his annual checkup and had just received his lab results.  He informed me that his results were outrageously good.  In fact, his cholesterol was at 144.

Now, of course, not being able to ask questions regarding health when hiring anyone, I did not have any clue what his cholesterol was previously.  He informed me in this phone call that at his last checkup, his cholesterol was 179.

At this point, I should give you a brief history.  When Mike started working for Studio V Health, he was a 33 year old male who jogged a lot, almost daily, I think due to the fact that he has a family history of severe heart disease.  In fact, on his father’s side, most of the males had heart disease issues from a young age because of genetic issues.  Mike ate healthy and jogged quite a bit – or so he thought.

Mike began working for Studio V Health as the general manager in August, 2010.  On October 17, 2010, we launched the online wellness program.  Although I cannot insist, I can strongly advise that all of the employees of Studio V Health to choose a program online from the Cooking Coach and follow it.  To my understanding, Mike chooses the Quick and Yummy and adheres to that program on a weekly basis.  When I quizzed him on what some of the other differences in his life over the past year have been, here is what he stated to me this past weekend.  He has completely given up diet drinks and soda in general.  He has also refrained from eating fast food, which he did not do a lot, but he now does almost never.  He has also informed me that he makes better choices when eating out.  In fact, here is an example in his words, “instead of eating chicken fingers, I will generally order grilled chicken now.”

In my opinion, I think one of the most important issues is that Mike now is extremely aware of ingredients and rarely consumes anything with chemicals.  He was, in fact, quite overjoyed, because his cholesterol, blood pressure, and all of his lab results were extraordinarily great in such a short time.

The reasons why I wanted to write about this – well, number one, since Mike is an employee of Studio V Health, he has allowed me to write about him (most of our members who have seen a significant change in their lab results would not appreciate me writing about them and of course, I keep all of that very private).  So, you could imagine my excitement when it was one of our very own employees.  The second reason why I am so excited about this is because, at least in this instance, it has more to do with changes in food than in exercise.  For instance, Mike as an integral part of the team, works very long hours.  In fact, such long hours, that many days, there is no time for exercise.  So, he went from jogging on a daily basis to much less exercise due to his work schedule.  Of course, I am a huge proponent of exercise.  I point this out merely to make everyone aware that at least in this instance, only a change in food resulted in lowering his cholesterol by 35 points in addition to lowering his blood pressure and everything else.

Now, of course, you can imagine the conversation I am going to have with him regarding exercise and how much more we can do by finding the time to exercise 4 to 5 times per week.  The timing of this is quite extraordinary to me since I spent all weekend researching the areas of the world considered the Blue Zone.  It turns out that the people who live in the Blue Zone live longer due to hard work, positive frame of mind, faith, walking 30 minutes per day and eating mostly plant based foods, but – and here is the most important piece of information – absolutely NO processed foods.  In fact, and yes, you guessed it, I will be blogging about the different parts of the Blue Zone around the world over the next couple of weeks.

In conclusion, congrats to Mike who is definitely more like family than an employee who I had no idea what his cholesterol was – although it was still normal.  You can bet since he has shared his story with me, I will work on getting his cholesterol to 120.  Stay tuned… I’ll let you know when it gets there.