Most of us know the feeling…..when our emotions are too much to handle and we want to deny or bury them with food.  Or if we just don’t know what we are feeling and food is the comfort we have always turned to.  I am an emotional eater.  After turning to a mostly living food lifestyle, I still tend to indulge in the sugar treat, but it only makes me feel crappy.  Alas, even the emotional eating part of my life has changed. When you feel your strongest cravings for food, chances are you are at your weakest point emotionally.  [...]

I’m writing this the morning of my father’s passing.  I wanted to use this as a part of my own process of grief.  And I will post it immediately. Most of you know my father has not been well.  He suffered a heart attack over seven years ago, and most of the doctors he saw told him he was a high risk and would not do any surgery.  He also did not want to do anything invasive.  He walked around for the past seven years with 30% of his heart working.  During the last years he worked through some issues [...]

Laughter is good for the soul. And now it seems, is good for the heart too!  Laughter, outward chuckles, inward joy.  Laughing at a joke or a funny movie…anything that gives you pleasure.  There’s even laugh yoga and laughter workshops. Laughter helps relieve stress, enhances your mood, dissolves fear, lessons anxiety, contributes to team work, makes us attractive to others and more pleasant to be around.  And laughter can have physical side effects too.  Laughter will strengthen your immune system, reduce food cravings, increase your threshold for pain, release endorphins, lessen pain, decrease stress hormones, and lead to the general relaxation [...]

What exactly is this simple, healthy food?  You make yogurt by adding two bacterial cultures, Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus, to pasteurized milk to trun it into a thicker, fermented form.  All forms of yogurt contain these cultures at the start, and many supplement with additional probiotics that are associated with specific health benefits.  The healing benefits of yogurt have been known for centuries.  The active live cultures used for the making of yogurt and kefir are the good bacteria needed for your body to function at its highest level, can help you live longer and may fortify your immune system.  [...]

The juicing craze! After all of the hype and strict regimens of the raw and juiced diet fads, the whole idea may leave a bad taste in your mouth. But you do not have to learn how to cover up the taste of juiced beets or start watching infomercials with Jack LaLanne revving up his “Juice Tiger.” There is an easy, and yes, tasty way to drink your vitamins and boost your intake of the good stuff. For starters, you may be wondering why juiced foods are so fantastic to begin with. Simply put, it’s because they are living, unprocessed [...]

Celiac disease is an autoimmune disease.  The lining of the small intestine is damaged from eating gluten and other proteins found in rye, barley, wheat and oats.  Some gastrointestinal symptoms are abdominal pain, bloating, gas and indigestion, constipation, diarrhea, lactose intolerance, nausea, vomiting, and weight loss.  There are also nonintestinal symptoms like: anemia, bone and joint pain, easy bruising, depression, fatigue, hair loss, skin disorders, seizures and malnutrition.  Symptoms can vary significantly from person to person.  Unfortunately a lot of these symptoms can mean a host of other disorders too. Celiac disease is also known as gluten sensitive enteropathy.  Gluten [...]

A new documentary was released recently called Raw For 30-Days.  It followed five Americans suffering from Adult Onset Type II Diabetes.  These participants underwent a radical 30-day diet and lifestyle change.  They were hoping to reverse their diabetes or reduce their insulin dependency.  All subjects were eating a standard American junk food diet and were insulin dependent and diabetic when they started this process.  They were taken to the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Arizona to undergo a 30-day health regimen.  They ate 100% raw organic living foods that would reverse their Diabetes naturally.  They had to give up [...]

Scientist are starting to evaluate the most powerful of the healing factors of celery, a compound known as 3-n-butylphthalide or 3nB.  3nB is a compound unique to celery, responsible for the flavor and odor of celery.  Have you ever been cutting up celery and the smell made you want to eat it before you put it in your recipe?  Well now you should munch on it a little bit more in addition to adding it to your soups, stir fry, or juicing it.  Hippocrates, the father of medicine, claims celery calms the nerves.  It is also good for the kidneys [...]

The American Dietetic Association recommends 25 grams of fiber daily for women and 38 grams for men.  Most of us are only getting 15 grams of fiber a day.  The World Health Organization extimates cardiovascular disease causes approximately 17.5 million deaths per year world-wide.  A vegetarian or living food lifestyle will greatly lower your incidence of heart disease than it will for meat eaters.  Saturated animal fats raise cholesterol levels and clog arteries.  Eating a well balanced vegetarian diet will give your body the heart-healthy nutrients it needs.  Foods like fruit, veggies, and whole grains are easy and fun to prepare [...]

I certainly believe if you start a habit early on in childhood, it will stick with you and make it even harder to stop.  As a child, we only drank soda on special occasions.  Today, I drink no carbonated beverage.  I never gave my own daughter soda and to this day, she does not drink it.  She does drink a lot of water and in her second year of college, probably drinks too much ice tea.  When she began drinking from a sippy cup I had to start watering down her juice when her teeth started to stain from her consumption of apple [...]