Health or Disease Lecture of March 2012 Notes
Q: How do I purchase fruits and veggies from a CSA?
A: You have to join the CSA. A CSA is a grassroots alternative to agribusiness via a local farmer. There are many CSA's in the WNY area.
A. Native Offerings at www.NativeOfferings.com. You can purchase a summer share or a winter share. Within each season, you can purchase a full vegetable share, a small vegetable share, or an individual vegetable share. A fruit share is a separate price no matter what size vegetable share you pick. You will probably be placed on a waiting list as this is the one that everyone wishes to join, so sign up now! I am familiar with this one b/c this is the one I belong to. As an alternative, you can go the Bidwell Farmers Market on Saturdays in the Summer/Fall as Native Offerings sells there. They invite you to work their farm which is located in Otto, 9 miles northwest of Ellicottville.
B. Porter Farms - located in Elba, NY (between Buffalo & Rochester). Website is www.porterfarms.org which seems to be offline right now.
C. You can also look at these sites: http://www.ecovian.com/s/buffalo/csa or http://www.buffalospree.com/Buffalo-Spree/March-2011/A-guide-to-WNY-CSAs/
Q: In Iridology, what do you see when you look into someone's eyes
A: I look for abnormalities: hills vs valleys; dark areas or very bright areas; transverse lines; markings, shades, shadows, etc
Q: When you eat, is 85% of the nutrients lost due to digestion?
A: The act or process of eating requires energy. That is, chewing requires energy to digest the food. Once swallowed, it resides in the upper stomach for 20 - 30 min and up to 2 - 3 hours in total, getting processed and churned while the hydrochloric acid and the pepsin work their way into the food at a molecular level. Takes times…and energy. Then the food which was never chewed completely and is now leaving the stomach partially liquified and partially in chunks enters the small intestines where it has to be further broken down and digested prior to being metabolized and absorbed through the walls of the intestines. 30+ feet of small intestines. Wow! Energy required there too.
Then, it enters the bowels where still more absorption is taking place which requires…yup, energy! By the time all is said and done, lots of energy has been expended digesting, metabolizing, and absorbing the foods. Meanwhile, you got up from the kitchen table (if you even decided to sit down in the first place or maybe you're watching TV, so your attention and hence your energy gets focused not on the digestive system, but on that which is outside of you). So, very shortly after eating, you're walking around. The blood that is supposed to be in the gut to help digestion, is now in the limbs b/c the sympathetic nervous system has just taken over to support your limbs in movement. So, digestion stops. Absorption slows to almost a stop. Your body doesn't receive the nutrients. You screwed up.
By some estimates, 85% of the nutrients in the food is not absorbed for bodily usage. It is estimated that the majority of the nutrients goes to the process of digesting and absorbing, with some %age going out the door (into the toilet) and only 15% going to cell repair/regeneration.
Have you ever wondered why in Europe, Italy in particular, they have 5 course meals that last 3 hours? Meals are a social event for friends and family, but the longevity of the meal helps the eater to relax and while doing so, digest and absorb the foods.
Q: Why does a healthy person need to juice as opposed to making a smoothie or eating healthily?
A: To get the same number of nutrients today that our great, great grand parents got, we'd have to eat the same amount they ate. Back then, they did not have offices in high rise buildings in which they sat all day. They were farmers, mill workers, laborers, and very busy ones. They ate anywhere between 5,000 - 12,000 calories per day and did not gain weight. In today's society, if you eat over 1,200 calories you start worrying (which secretes cortisol from the adrenals and puts weight on whether you like it or not. So, go ahead, you wanna put weight on? just worry), and start putting on weight b/c your food selection is not the smartest/birghtest. So, even though we eat way less calories, we eat a combination of healthy foods mixed in with enough unhealthy foods that see us adding pounds with only 1200 calories consumed. Amazing and incredibly ignorant.
If you juice organic fruits and vegetables, you are assured of getting a tremendous amount of nutrients into the body that feed the cells. The yield is greater than eating. On a personal note, I love the taste of the juices I make. I crave them.
When you juice, you will be able to consume more nutrients than if you ate the equivalent amount of food. In other words, if you prepared 20 lbs of food per day for consumption that you are going to eat, it would be impossible b/c you can't eat that much food, weight-wise, day after day. But, you can take that same amount of food, 20 lbs, and juice it (thereby making it less bulky and less weighty) in order to get the maximal amount of nutrients from that 20 lbs. Succinctly put, to get the amount of nutrients in your foods from eating that you would receive upon juicing would be impossible b/c you couldn't consume 20 lbs of food in a single day. As a healthy person, you would juice when you are feeling under the weather, that could be a headache or the flu.
I juice on an almost daily basis to bolster and maintain my immune system, to cleanse my tissues and cells and to feel as optimally healthy as I can. I have a fairly large amount of environmental toxins in my cells b/c I grew up on the finest lawn in our neighborhood. What does that mean? It means that my dad used fertilizers to grow a great looking lawn. And I would lay on that grass all summer long, for hours each day, every single year of my life until I was 19 years old.
Q: How important are supplements if juicing?
A: That depends. On you. That would require an individual consultation. I take supplements and sometimes I don't. It depends.