12 Steps to Whole Foods
Starting Your Morning Off Right states that absolutely nothing stands in the place of pure water. In fact, sugar or caffeine in a beverage has its own agenda that competes with water’s agenda. To put it very simply, sugar and caffeine not only confuse the body’s signals that it needs water, but they defeat water’s purpose. Dr. B. spent over 30 years of his life trying to get the attention of the National Institutes of Health, the FDA, and medical journals to take note of his documentation of this free, life-saving cure for common ailments. He addressed a phenomenon every bit as common as constipation in our culture: dehydration! (And dehydration is related to our chronic constipation problem, too.) His teachings have often been repeated with the slogan, “You’re not sick, you’re thirsty.” But we are still dehydrated and unaware of the many symptoms and problems that occur from not being hydrated. Dr. B.’s first experience as a young doctor reminds me of Dr. Colin Campbell’s paradigm shift studying cancer in children in the Philippines—and, for that matter, many great discoveries, like Ben Franklin, the kite, and electricity. That is, his great discoveries were accidental and totally contrary to what he expected to find based on conventional knowledge. The doctor. was called to tend to a young man curled up in the fetal position, in acute pain from a peptic ulcer. The young man was lucky his ulcer didn’t perforate, as he had eaten an entire bottle of antacid with no relief. Having no medication, the doctor gave him two glasses of water, and the boy began to recover. Twenty minutes later another glass of water was given, and the boy was up walking around the room, pain free. In Iran, Dr. B. was wrongfully incarcerated after medical school during the Iranian Revolution and was about to be executed when they discovered he was a doctor and could help in the prison. During his stay of execution, he found an “ideal stress laboratory” in which to test his water hypotheses. He presented a paper to his executioners, and they dropped the 32 false charges so he could continue his research. His discoveries about water were published as an editorial in Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology and in The New York Times. The Anticancer Research journal published the essence of his first book on pain relief and water—all in the 1980s. The vast majority of his efforts to get the attention of the medical profession and policy makers were completely unsuccessful. But I believe the public is now much more aware of the importance of drinking water primarily thanks to him. You can read his theories in his books Water Cures and Drugs Kill and Your Body’s Many Cries for Water. 1 Dr. B. studied over 3,000 peptic ulcer patients and found that all of them responded favorably to being hydrated. His research showed that chronic pain involved in a number of “disorders” can often be treated easily and without drugs or expensive diagnostics, with water. Those include dyspeptic pain (for instance, heartburn, gastritis, duodenitis), rheumatoid arthritis, anginal pain, low back pain, leg pain, migraines, hangovers, colitis, and constipation. The plain, simple, common sense advice to drink 1 ounce of water daily for every 2 lbs. of body weight reminds me of another story. In the Bible, Naaman was a captain in the Syrian army, and he was very ill with leprosy. He went to Elisha the prophet, the introduction having been made by the kings of Syria and Israel. Imagine his surprise when Elisha, rather than receiving him, sent a messenger out to tell Naaman to simply wash in the River Jordan seven times. Naaman was indignant. 276 12 Steps to Whole Foods © Copyright Robyn Openshaw
Starting Your Morning Off Right In 2 Kings 5:13, Naaman’s servants say to him, “If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? How much rather then, when he sayeth to thee, wash, and be clean?” Naaman follows the simple advice and is healed. The simplest answers are sometimes hardest to believe. Sometimes—especially in this day and age where we’ve come to expect whiz-bang, high-tech miracles—simple answers are the last ones we consider instead of the first. Doctors don’t often start with the most simple answers, like chronic dehydration. They go right to pharmaceuticals. So we have to try those simple answers ourselves. Are you drinking 8-10 glasses daily? How can you find a way to fit this habit into your schedule? For me, a very important part of achieving that involves drinking about 16 oz. immediately upon waking up. I drink another 16 oz. after my workout in the morning. The rest I fit into my day, avoiding drinking water right before or after meals (you should abstain 2 hrs. before/after meals to avoid diluting gastric juices). When I was a first-time breastfeeding mother, a friend told me, “Never walk past a sink without drinking a glassful.” This was very helpful advice. I’ve been made fun of for the weird, even obnoxious fact that I bounce out of bed in the morning like the Energizer Bunny while others need an hour to clear the fog. I wonder if that’s because I drink lots of water, including a sole salt solution, every morning and, therefore, I'm not low on hydroelectric energy like Dr. B. speaks of? Dr. B. and other experts say you should drink half your weight in ounces (that’s 8 glasses of water for a 128 lb. person). Of course, the most important fact is that most people are chronically dehydrated and need to drink more. Clear or very light-colored urine shows good hydration—and the darker your urine, the more dehydrated you are (and first thing in the morning, most of us are dehydrated). Small children, the elderly, and athletes are at highest risk for dehydration, because we lose 10-15 C of fluids daily through elimination, sweat, and breathing. The biggest factor increasing that amount is exercise—but altitude and temperature are other variables to consider. You can, in fact, drink too much water and achieve water intoxication. This usually happens only to athletes, since your kidneys can’t process water during exercise, so competitive athletes must balance sodium and water intake. Thirteen percent of distance runners (whose weight was measured before and after running and whose water consumption was measured) drank too much water, causing abnormally or dangerously low blood sodium levels. So athletes may wish to use a small amount of sole in water before and after practice and competing. Get in the habit of taking your favorite reusable water bottle with you everywhere you go. Find spaces in your routine where you learn to always drink a glass or two. For instance, drink your 16 oz. water bottle all the way home from work in the car, before you prepare dinner. Why Should I Use Salt, and What Kind? If I go to a restaurant and eat something with a lot of sodium, I can barely make a fist when I wake up the next day. My fingers are like pudgy sausages. My body hates salt. Or so I thought! You probably know that sodium chloride (table salt) consumption is linked to heart disease. Your body can’t handle more than a minute amount, and when it gets too much, edema results. Swelling of heart tissues is especially dangerous—and my pudgy fingers are just the first thing I notice if I eat food with refined (table) salt. © Copyright Robyn Openshaw 12 Steps to Whole Foods 277
- Page 247 and 248: Preserving Raw Foods with Natural P
- Page 249 and 250: Preserving Raw Foods with Natural P
- Page 251 and 252: Preserving Raw Foods with Natural P
- Page 253 and 254: Preserving Raw Foods with Natural P
- Page 255 and 256: Preserving Raw Foods with Natural P
- Page 257 and 258: Preserving Raw Foods with Natural P
- Page 259 and 260: Preserving Raw Foods with Natural P
- Page 261 and 262: Preserving Raw Foods with Natural P
- Page 263 and 264: Preserving Raw Foods with Natural P
- Page 265 and 266: Preserving Raw Foods with Natural P
- Page 267 and 268: CHAPTER 9 Replacing White Flour wit
- Page 269 and 270: Replacing White Flour with Whole Gr
- Page 271 and 272: Replacing White Flour with Whole Gr
- Page 273 and 274: Replacing White Flour with Whole Gr
- Page 275 and 276: Replacing White Flour with Whole Gr
- Page 277 and 278: Replacing White Flour with Whole Gr
- Page 279 and 280: Replacing White Flour with Whole Gr
- Page 281 and 282: Replacing White Flour with Whole Gr
- Page 283 and 284: Replacing White Flour with Whole Gr
- Page 285 and 286: Replacing White Flour with Whole Gr
- Page 287 and 288: Replacing White Flour with Whole Gr
- Page 289 and 290: Replacing White Flour with Whole Gr
- Page 291 and 292: Replacing White Flour with Whole Gr
- Page 293 and 294: Replacing White Flour with Whole Gr
- Page 295 and 296: Replacing White Flour with Whole Gr
- Page 297: CHAPTER 10 Starting Your Morning Of
- Page 301 and 302: Starting Your Morning Off Right Tho
- Page 303 and 304: Starting Your Morning Off Right fer
- Page 305 and 306: Starting Your Morning Off Right ©
- Page 307 and 308: Starting Your Morning Off Right Hot
- Page 309 and 310: Starting Your Morning Off Right Hig
- Page 311 and 312: Starting Your Morning Off Right Spr
- Page 313 and 314: Starting Your Morning Off Right Hig
- Page 315 and 316: Starting Your Morning Off Right Thr
- Page 317 and 318: Starting Your Morning Off Right ©
- Page 319 and 320: Starting Your Morning Off Right Chi
- Page 321 and 322: CHAPTER 11 Creating Delicious Whole
- Page 323 and 324: Creating Delicious Whole-Food Treat
- Page 325 and 326: Creating Delicious Whole-Food Treat
- Page 327 and 328: Creating Delicious Whole-Food Treat
- Page 329 and 330: Creating Delicious Whole-Food Treat
- Page 331 and 332: Creating Delicious Whole-Food Treat
- Page 333 and 334: Creating Delicious Whole-Food Treat
- Page 335 and 336: Creating Delicious Whole-Food Treat
- Page 337 and 338: Creating Delicious Whole-Food Treat
- Page 339 and 340: Creating Delicious Whole-Food Treat
- Page 341 and 342: Creating Delicious Whole-Food Treat
- Page 343 and 344: Creating Delicious Whole-Food Treat
- Page 345 and 346: Creating Delicious Whole-Food Treat
- Page 347 and 348: CHAPTER 12 Achieving an Alkaline In
Starting Your Morning Off Right<br />
states that absolutely nothing stands in the place of pure water. In fact, sugar or caffeine in a beverage has its<br />
own agenda that competes with water’s agenda. To put it very simply, sugar and caffeine not only confuse the<br />
body’s signals that it needs water, but they defeat water’s purpose.<br />
Dr. B. spent over 30 years of his life trying <strong>to</strong> get the attention of the National Institutes of Health, the FDA,<br />
and medical journals <strong>to</strong> take note of his documentation of this free, life-saving cure for common ailments. He<br />
addressed a phenomenon every bit as common as constipation in our culture: dehydration! (And dehydration is<br />
related <strong>to</strong> our chronic constipation problem, <strong>to</strong>o.)<br />
His teachings have often been repeated with the slogan, “You’re not sick, you’re thirsty.” But we are still<br />
dehydrated and unaware of the many symp<strong>to</strong>ms and problems that occur from not being hydrated.<br />
Dr. B.’s first experience as a young doc<strong>to</strong>r reminds me of Dr. Colin Campbell’s paradigm shift studying cancer<br />
in children in the Philippines—and, for that matter, many great discoveries, like Ben Franklin, the kite, and<br />
electricity. That is, his great discoveries were accidental and <strong>to</strong>tally contrary <strong>to</strong> what he expected <strong>to</strong> find based<br />
on conventional knowledge.<br />
The doc<strong>to</strong>r. was called <strong>to</strong> tend <strong>to</strong> a young man curled up in the fetal position, in acute pain from a peptic ulcer.<br />
The young man was lucky his ulcer didn’t perforate, as he had eaten an entire bottle of antacid with no relief.<br />
Having no medication, the doc<strong>to</strong>r gave him two glasses of water, and the boy began <strong>to</strong> recover. Twenty minutes<br />
later another glass of water was given, and the boy was up walking around the room, pain free.<br />
In Iran, Dr. B. was wrongfully incarcerated after medical school during the Iranian Revolution and was about<br />
<strong>to</strong> be executed when they discovered he was a doc<strong>to</strong>r and could help in the prison. During his stay of execution,<br />
he found an “ideal stress labora<strong>to</strong>ry” in which <strong>to</strong> test his water hypotheses. He presented a paper <strong>to</strong> his<br />
executioners, and they dropped the 32 false charges so he could continue his research. His discoveries about<br />
water were published as an edi<strong>to</strong>rial in Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology and in The New York Times. The<br />
Anticancer Research journal published the essence of his first book on pain relief and water—all in the 1980s.<br />
The vast majority of his efforts <strong>to</strong> get the attention of the medical profession and policy makers were<br />
completely unsuccessful. But I believe the public is now much more aware of the importance of drinking water<br />
primarily thanks <strong>to</strong> him. You can read his theories in his books Water Cures and Drugs Kill and Your Body’s<br />
Many Cries for Water. 1<br />
Dr. B. studied over 3,000 peptic ulcer patients and found that all of them responded favorably <strong>to</strong> being<br />
hydrated.<br />
His research showed that chronic pain involved in a number of “disorders” can often be treated easily and<br />
without drugs or expensive diagnostics, with water. Those include dyspeptic pain (for instance, heartburn,<br />
gastritis, duodenitis), rheuma<strong>to</strong>id arthritis, anginal pain, low back pain, leg pain, migraines, hangovers, colitis,<br />
and constipation.<br />
The plain, simple, common sense advice <strong>to</strong> drink 1 ounce of water daily for every 2 lbs. of body weight<br />
reminds me of another s<strong>to</strong>ry. In the Bible, Naaman was a captain in the Syrian army, and he was very ill with<br />
leprosy. He went <strong>to</strong> Elisha the prophet, the introduction having been made by the kings of Syria and Israel.<br />
Imagine his surprise when Elisha, rather than receiving him, sent a messenger out <strong>to</strong> tell Naaman <strong>to</strong> simply<br />
wash in the River Jordan seven times. Naaman was indignant.<br />
276 <strong>12</strong> <strong>Steps</strong> <strong>to</strong> <strong>Whole</strong> <strong>Foods</strong><br />
© Copyright Robyn Openshaw