Natural Healing with Healthy Lifestyle Habits: FRUITS AND VEGETABLES

Heal your body taking steps to improve your diet. Fresh, preferably raw and organic fruits and vegetables could help you achieve the level of health you desire. In fact, eating a wide variety of colorful fresh fruits and vegetables helps displace calories from less healthy food items and could even help reverse or prevent serious health conditions.

Research indicates that consuming a large portion of your calories from fresh fruits and vegetables helps reduce the risk of many diseases and adverse health conditions including many cancers. Get in the habit of eating at least five fruit and vegetable servings up to eight or ten a day. This may not be as hard as it sounds if you get some of those servings by juicing the fruits and vegetables. Be sure to drink the juice immediately after juicing before degradation begins to develop. To keep calories down, combine low calorie foods with higher calorie foods.

Add seasoning to fruits and vegetables with healing spices, healing herbs and healthy condiments. Eat fruits and vegetables raw when possible to speed healing potential. Raw fruits and vegetables are rich in enzymes. Enzymes can speed the rate of chemical reactions, which increases healing potential. Freshly sprouted seeds like alfalfa, broccoli and radish are especially enzyme-rich. Sprout your own seeds for tasty additions to sandwiches, salads and more. The practice of consuming sprouts enhances healing potential within the body immensely. Many people on a traditional American diet think, “Sprouts! Yuck!”, but what we eat is a habit. Once your taste buds get used to eating in a healthy way, you change your preferences and think, “Processed food with additives and chemicals! Yuck!” Change your eating habits and benefit from it by feeling better.

Not only can you feel better by eating in a healthier way, you will look better and enjoy the experience making and eating delicious recipes. Make the experience simple at first if that is easier for you by grabbing a fresh or dried fruit or vegetable on the run. You do not have to suffer restricting yourself from desserts either. Make yummy desert recipes with dried fruits and other healthy ingredients. Dry fresh produce using a food dehydrator; then use a good quality blender. If you blend often, I suggest a Vita-Mix or Blendtec Blender. These are two of the best blenders available and give years of blending pleasure.

Think about what bad eating habits do to your body. Eat lots of colorful fruits and vegetables. Eating a variety of colors is a good rule to follow because this helps to ensure you get a variety of healthy pigments, antioxidants and other nutrients. Consuming a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, especially raw, in the form of sprouts and particularly organic produce could help you heal from existing health conditions and prevent diseases from developing in the first place. Get in the habit of eating in a healthy way. You will be happy you did.

To learn more on healthy habits and things to avoid, look for other articles in this series.
Natural Healing with Healthy Lifestyle Habits: FLUIDS
Natural Healing with Healthy Lifestyle Habits: GRAINS, NUTS AND SEEDS
Natural Healing with Healthy Lifestyle Habits: EXERCISE
Natural Healing with Healthy Lifestyle Habits: FOODS TO AVOID
Natural Healing with Healthy Lifestyle Habits: AVOID THESE

Natural Healing with Healthy Lifestyle Habits: FLUIDS

Develop healthy lifestyle habits with these general instructions on how to start healing from diseases and health conditions. In order to help prevent disease or adverse health conditions, it is a good idea to take the best care of yourself possible. Following this guideline can help prevent health conditions as well. What are some healthy lifestyle habits? General areas to work on include fluid intake, a diet rich in foods that heal including things to avoid, body care and exercise.

Unfortunately, too many of us decide to take better care of ourselves only after our state of health becomes compromised. That is better than not at all. The hardest part is just getting started. Most people do best by beginning with small steps. However, some people dive in full force headfirst. You know yourself best. If you have started a new health regiment, and quit repeatedly by over doing it in the beginning, start slowly this time, one-step at a time.

Fluid intake is very important to keep cells functioning properly. It is critical for healing. Insufficient fluid intake is like trying to wash dishes without any water! Fluids help keep cell organelles actively functioning doing their jobs efficiently and effectively.

• Drink plenty of and only pure fluids. The amount of fluids needed depends on how fast the body is expending fluids. Spread the quantity out throughout the day. Certain conditions affect fluid expenditure. The higher the temperature, the drier the air, the greater the amount of exercise intensity, exertion and duration, the more rapidly the body uses fluids within the body. Increase fluid intake as these conditions increase.
  
  
• Filtered water is good. I recommend reverse osmosis or carbon filters. An inexpensive way to improve water quality is to boil water and store it in the refrigerator in a glass container.
  
  
• For added nutrients, fast absorption and an abundance of enzymes for quick healing, drink freshly juiced fruits and vegetables using a quality juicer. Wheatgrass juice helps supply the body with needed oxygen due to oxygen-rich chlorophyll. When you supply cells with an abundance of oxygen, optimal health is more likely.
  
  
• Herbal tea supplies minerals that can contribute to healing. Brew tea in the sun by placing herbs in a glass jar and sitting the jar in the sun. This keeps the temperature low enough to preserve enzymes. When you boil water and add tea, you extract more tea constituents, but you destroy the enzymes. The temperature enzymes are destroyed varies per food item. The easiest thing to do is keep temperatures at 105° or lower to preserve enzymes. Enzymes are very powerful. Enzymes speed the rate of chemical reactions. In fact, some enzymes can cause a chemical reaction that would normally take one year to take place without enzymes to take just over 3 seconds with enzymes! That is powerful healing potential.

In conclusion, start healing naturally by increasing your fluid intake with plenty of pure water, enzyme-rich freshly juiced fresh fruits and vegetables, wheatgrass juice and herbal teas. Proper fluid intake can make a tremendous difference in how you feel and do so quickly. Start now.