Long before we become ill, our bodies send strong signals that something is wrong,” states Dr. Joey Shulman, a chiropractor and nutritionist. Before you feel the first chest pain of heart disease, find yourself challenged by cancer, become forgetful, or need a hip replacement, the 100 trillion cells in your body and mind cry out daily for help and intervention.
The potential, in terms of enhancing and restoring human health and well-being, is nothing short of spectacular. We human beings have a great deal more power to control our own destinies than we ever imagined. You can witness an astounding revitalizing and rejuvenating transformation in yourself.
The old approach was to deal with and tackle one ailment at a time – unfortunately, after the fact. Like a stack of dominoes or a house of cards, one by one, each system topples. “Aging is not a single ‘quick fix’ linear progression, but a group of interrelated biological processes,” states MD Carolyn DeMarco. However, for the first time in the experience of our human species, medical science, backed by accumulating evidence, suggests that illness, disease, and dementia are not an inevitable part of life, nor necessarily a consequence of growing older. How long does your car last? The answer obviously depends on how well you take care of it.
Be grateful you are alive. Learning, growing and transforming today accomplishes half the job. To better handle tomorrow’s challenges is our full-time job. We must transform and become wiser and healthier every single day for a lifetime. This is the ultimate example of the power of emotional self-perpetuation.
Most of the time, our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual balance is maintained automatically, but there are many days when we must rebalance ourselves. Balance is wellness, and to be unbalanced is to be unwell. In nature, all living systems and energy fields maintain themselves through a continuous give and take, expansion and contraction. Foods, moods, and lifestyle choices do just that. They expand or contract our energy and emotions; they acidify or alkalize us. The pendulum swing of our cellular metabolism between those opposites is what keeps us more or less stable. If the pendulum stays too long on one side, our physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual balance is disrupted and we feel unwell. Stay balanced. It is as simple as that.
Pursuit of human excellence, in just one of our energy centres, whether mental, physical, emotional or spiritual, is not sufficient. Excellence in one of these energy regulators is not a fix or an antidote for poor performance in any other area. All of our energy centres must work “synergistically.” The total benefits gained by applying positive change and transformation in all four centres are exponentially greater than the benefits of any one alone.
You must take advantage of the learning potential from everyday challenges. No matter what dilemmas or quandaries we face – health crises, relationship issues, financial stress, social challenges, emotional turmoil, anger, rage, cynicism, disappointment, natural catastrophes, and global challenges of our time – we can always pursue and find a noble idea. We can implement this noble idea, and we, as the blessed human species, can prevail with love, optimism, hope, motivation, patience, and endless effort.
Amazingly, we can work with, and overcome, these necessary life challenges for a civilization-wide, worthwhile and achievable goal – the remarkable pursuit of human excellence. George Bernard Shaw stated it nicely when he said, “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” We can see a glimmer of light in darkness and a ray of hope in hopelessness.
Keep mind-body balanced
Mounting evidence clearly indicates that our moods can be the first indicators that we are out of balance. Psychosomatic illness, a long-accepted category of modern medicine and psychology, is one in which bodily dysfunction is caused by mental or emotional conditions like stress, anxiety, depression, insomnia, loneliness and staleness, with no meaningful direction in our life.
But the reverse is equally true. Our body’s condition affects our mental or emotional states with similar intensity. For example, hunger can cause moodiness, an energy crisis, and aggression; a lack of sleep causes poor memory; and a lack of EPA omega-3 essential fats causes depression. Blushing, laughing, and crying are all physical reactions caused by mental or emotional states.
A recent study at the Mayo Clinic proved that type II (adult onset) diabetics were 66 percent more apt to develop all types of dementia, and had more than twice the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Diabetics were 300 percent more apt to develop dementia and Alzheimer’s in a recent large-scale study at the University of California at Davis. However, the early stages of dementia in diabetics are preventable or reversible if diabetics follow the regimen recommended in this book. The main message is compromising your physical health over long periods of time is outright dangerous for your body and can be detrimental to optimal brain function for a lifetime.
Mountains of stunning evidence have piled up in the last few years documenting the mind-body connection as real, eminent, and powerful. Neuroscientists have mapped pathways linking mental states to physical ones and vice versa. Our modern-day “survival of the wisest” challenge is to learn how to navigate them wisely, at will. Dr. Kenneth Pelletier, clinical professor of medicine at the University of Arizona and the University of Maryland medical schools, states, “We want to know why so many people still aren’t using mind-body medicine, when research has shown it to be strikingly effective for an enormous number of conditions.”
Eat in tune with your genetic code
Genetically we have evolved, but so have the ever-available processed, synthetic, refined foods. Can they fuel our magnificent 100 trillion cells? Today, genetics and lifestyle are colliding. To have your radiant vitality and brainpower operating at optimum, it is critical to fuel yourself with a diet true to your ancient genetic origin and makeup. You can reset your genetic code, lose weight permanently, achieve peak performance, and enhance mental sharpness.
The landscape of your brain and body, the actual architecture and intricate wiring, was formed by the seasonal foods available at the time. Roughly 99.9 percent of your genetic structure was formed even before the advent of agriculture 10,000 or so years ago. The miraculous engineering, hardwiring, and perfect performance of the body and mind were based on a genetic makeup that allowed our early ancestors to function as nature designed. Our ancestors grew and developed their digestion, absorption, distribution, and elimination processes based on cell-friendly foods that were compatible, body ready, and readily abundant, thousands of years before the advent of fast-food chains, junk food, and late-night corner stores.
Remarkably, most people today fuel themselves with processed, convenience foods, sweet-tasting foods, and chemically-altered foods that are attractively and colourfully packaged. This “foodstuff” we now ingest has the unprecedented, stunning ability to be only one molecule away from being plastic. New miracle-age, fast-food chains are booming with catchy advertising promises in a land where dairy is queen and burger is king.
So, while our genetic makeup (genome) and origin have changed only 0.01 percent in the last 10,000 years, our lifestyle has changed 99 percent. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors were aerobically fit. They were virtually free of the chronic “lifestyle diseases” that cause 85 percent of all illness in North America today.
An awesome biological jolt
Our shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture, and from the industrial revolution to industry, has drastically changed human nutrition with an extremely detrimental biological jolt, which in turn has promoted heart disease, cancer, stroke, depression, diabetes, and a prevailing sense of drop-dead fatigue. There is now a worrisome decrease in our consumption of lean, high-quality protein; very low-density complex carbohydrates, such as vegetables, greens, salads, spices and herbs; and moderate-density complex carbohydrates, such as fruits, berries and minimally processed grains. These cell-friendly foods contain a small amount of naturally occurring sugar for a steady energy supply and a lot of life-supportive fibre, water, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and phytonutrients.
Your body and brain are organic structures. One hundred percent of the foods you feed your cells determine their architectural structure, their optimum energy output potential, their ability to function, and your daily rejuvenation potential. Your body’s hardwired network communication systems are based on the available enzymes found in vegetables, wild greens, nuts, seeds, roots, herbs, spices, fruits, sea vegetables and grass-fed, lean animals that your ancestors gathered or hunted. Your biological ancestors instinctively learned to use naturally-protective antioxidants from freshly gathered plants, such as wild greens, to protect their oxygen-based life processes. Their bodies also learned to use naturally-protective phytonutrients from freshly gathered plants to protect and restore their cells, brains, vital energy, digestive tracts, organs, and communication networks from daily wear and tear, plus eliminate ever-lurking bacteria, viruses, parasites, yeast overgrowth, and carcinogens. Food has always been, and always will be, the best medicine.
Our species, Homo sapiens, managed to evolve to meet the challenges of hungry predators and a hostile environment. We were, and are, the most complex physiological species, and consequently we are the most vulnerable. Our modern-day eating patterns are counterproductive! In only 50 years, we have reached the point where we run our miraculous engineering on empty calories and troublesome nutrients that were never part of our genetic makeup or natural origin.
Faulty eating signals
Researchers at the University of California discovered that our drive for comfort foods is built in. Rats under chronic stress that were given the option of high-nutrition rat chow or a mixture of lard and sugar headed for the latter every time. And their choice actually did lower their stress-hormone levels. In terms of evolution, the response makes sense: If a hungry predator is chasing us, easily digested and high-caloric foods like fat and sugar give us quick fuel for a speedy escape. “In a sense,” explains Norman Pecoraro, PhD, co-author of this study, “it’s a survival appetite,” but only temporarily. “In the long run,” Dr. Pecoraro quickly adds, “opting for fat and sugar will cause you to tip your energy balance negatively. Too much caffeine only increases the jitters. Alcohol lifts and then drops spirits, and hunger and thirst are themselves stressful. Eating regular meals and snacks throughout the day of high-fibre, slowly digested, healthy, cell-friendly foods keeps your blood sugar even, which keeps your energy and mood boosted.”

Microwaving is not cell-friendly
The Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture studied the effects of various cooking methods and the reduction of nutritional value. All cooking breaks down the nutritional values of food to certain degrees. Microwaving, used in 91.3 percent of North American households, destroys 97 percent of the life-saving antioxidants, and between 74 and 87 percent of the healthful polyphenols. Microwaving is the worst depleter of nutrients. Lightly steaming food maintained the highest nutritional value and maximized flavour – followed by pressure cooking and boiling.

Adapted from The Path to Phenomenal Health by Sam Graci (John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd., 2005) Sam Graci presents Be Inspired to Achieve Phenomenal Health at the Vancouver Health Show, October 29, 11-11:50 pm, Theatre One, Canada Place.