Are you digging your grave with your fork?
Kind of shocking isn’t it? A friend of mine gave me a CD with that same title written by Dr. Susan Silberstein. . I had never heard of her, but apparently she has been researching how what you eat affects whether or not you get cancer, heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc… since the mid-70’s.
Her husband died of cancer when he was 30 years old and she has spent her life helping people with cancer and to help them beat cancer so that others won’t have to go through what she did, by becoming a widow at a young age with 2 young children.
Some of the statistics she mentioned were staggering. It was a 20 minute CD which I downloaded onto my I-pod and I listened to it 4 times. Here are a few of the statistics she mentioned:
23 million Americans have cancer
40 million Americans have high cholesterol
41 million Americans have heart disease
50 million Americans have high blood pressure
18 million Americans have diabetes
64% if the American population is overweight or obese
She also mentioned that according to the World Health Organization 75% of American deaths each year are related to diet!
I almost couldn’t believe those numbers, but as time goes on, and if people don’t take their health seriously, its only going to get worse.
She recommends that eating a diet LOADED with fruits and vegetables, it can change your health dramatically. We all know that eating fruits and veggies are good, we learn that when we are kids. And she said that the recommendation of the American Cancer Society of eating 5 servings of fruits and veggies per day is outdated. She recommends 10-13 servings a day! 10-13 servings a day, how is that possible I thought? I thought I was being good by bringing an apple and a banana to work!
One way to get a bunch of servings in she recommends is by juicing. Adding a bunch of fruits and veggies into the juicer, and you get all the benefits plus a lot of servings in one fell swoop. I have a juicer, but its super old and was super huge and a pain to clean, so I only did it a few times. But hearing about all the benefits of a VARIETY of fruits and veggies, I’m starting to rethink that.
Making soups with a lot of different veggies can help, as well as bulking up sandwiches with spinach, maybe avocado, shredded carrots, onions etc. adding veggies to stir fry’s and of course salads with many different varieties is a great start.
Another thing she mentioned is that your body contains free radicals which damage DNA cells to the tune of 10,000 hits a day. She said the only way to neutralize free radicals are from the anti-oxidants from fresh vegetables and fruit.
So, questions for you are, what do you think of that? How many servings of fruits and veggies are you eating every day? Do you think that the health benefits are as profound as she says?? I’m interested to hear your thoughts on that.
She ended her lecture by quoting Hippocrates, known as the founder of medicine:
“Natural forces within us are the true healers – let your food be your medicine and let your medicine be your food.”
I love reading/listening to different takes on health and wellness. There are so many different thoughts out there about what people should do it can be overwhelming at times.
If you get a chance, visit I-tunes and go to Podcasts and search, “health” or “nutrition” or “weight loss” and you can download tons of information most of which is free.