What is HEALTH?

So what is health anyway? Here is my definition:

H.E.A.L.T.H = Heightened Energy And Love That Heals.
H.E.A.L = Heightened Energy And Love.

What is heightened energy? I define heightened energy as raising your body’s metabolic rate, brain power, awareness, concentration, emotion, activity and energy levels to their maximum potential. Heightened energy is using your body to its fullest capability and performing as close to 100% as possible all of the time.

What is love? Love is a positive emotion that usually equals happiness. Love is an emotional bond with oneself, another person or something else. Love causes positive emotions which causes hormone and endorphin release in the body which causes positive attitude, which reduces stress and leads to more productivity, heightened energy and better health.

What is success? Success is feeling a sense of accomplishment and worth in oneself.

There is a circle between health, happiness, love and success. They all go hand in hand as one leads to the other.

A healthy body is one that is full of positive energy and has a strong immune system with the ability to defend itself from disease and heal itself after injury.

And remember - “Helping Everyone Always Leads To Happiness”!

Combination is Key

It’s not only what we eat, but also what we eat it with that matters. Our Standard American Diet (or SAD) as many call it, is based on some of the worst food combinations.

For instance, meat and potatoes do not mix well in the human body. Potatoes are starches and are broken down in the mouth mechanically by chewing and chemically with saliva. When a starch reaches the stomach, it requires virtually no acid for digestion so the stomach lets it pass through to the small intestine where it is further broken down chemically and absorbed into the blood through the wall of the intestine.

Try this exercise – take a bite of a plain baked potato and hold it in your mouth and salivate. Within a few minutes it will dissolve into a mush – especially if you chew it. Hold a piece of meat in your mouth and minutes later you still have a solid piece of meat.

Meat is mechanically broken down in the mouth by chewing, but chemical digestion by saliva is minimal. When meat or a protein reaches the stomach, it requires an acid bath to propel the breakdown and digestion before it is ready to pass into the small intestine. The problem is that when we combine proteins and starches (meat and potatoes) in the same meal, the stomach does not have the ability to separate the mixture. Therefore, the starches get trapped in the stomach until the acid has sufficiently digested the protein. The starches react negatively with the stomach acid and ferment and explode in the stomach, thus causing acid reflux, indigestion, gas and bloating.

Another poor food combination is fruit with anything else – especially melons. Fruit is great, but should be eaten alone or left alone so your belly doesn’t moan! Fruit and melons are the simplest form of food and require very little digestion. When combined with other foods, the nutritional value of fruit is lost as the fruit ferments in the stomach. Eat melons first (watermelon, honeydew, papaya, cantaloupe), then citrus fruits (oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit), then berries (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries…), then bananas, followed by stone fruits (cherries, plums, avocados). I give you permission to eat desert first before a meal (if it contains fruit). The worst thing to eat after a meal (especially one containing protein) is fruit – particularly watermelon, cantaloupe or honeydew (which is usually the status-quo for a restaurant fruit dish).

Three things that should NEVER be consumed period - alone or with anything else is aspartame (artificial sweetener), high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and trans-fats from hydrogenated oils. I believe these three substances account for the majority of our nation’s health woes including cancer, obesity, type II diabetes, heart attack, attention deficit disorder and many more. If you want to make a profound change in your health eliminate these three things and all products containing them from your diet immediately.

Once you get a handle on proper food combination and eliminate the intake of toxic substances, you will be surprised how fast digestive and intestinal problems will vanish along with pounds of unwanted weight.

For more food combining tips and healthy advice, check out my friend Dr. Wayne "The Mango Man" Pickering's:  Defeating Bad Eating Program

The Cycle of Life

The cycle of life is a masterpiece of natural design that perpetuates life and our existence on the planet. We are basically born from “seeds” or egg and sperm as we more commonly call them. These two tiny living organisms carry all of the genetic information and spark of energy that starts human life.

A tree can be one of the most massive living things on earth, but it also starts from one little seed. Add nutrients and minerals from water and soil plus air and sunlight and that tiny seed grows into a huge tree. The tree has an inherent instinct or essence that makes it grow toward the life-giving sunlight. The roots know to absorb water and nutrients, the bark knows to be bark and the leaves know to be green to photosynthesize light, but then change colors and fall off in the fall as the tree knows to hibernate for the winter. At some point that tree will die, the elements will decompose it back into soil and its nutrients will give life to the next seed that is planted in that soil. This is all part of the cycle of life.

An apple tree starts from an apple seed. The sun, air, water and soil grow the tree which grows the apple. An apple comes in a convenient natural package complete with its own biodegradable protective “wrapper” or skin. When ingested, the apple gives its life-giving energy, vitamins, minerals, nutrients and water to the animal that eats it. The animal then discards or discharges the seeds (often with natural fertilizer) back into the soil to start the cycle of life again with a new tree that will grow more life-giving apples.

Think about this – when you pluck an apple from the tree, it doesn’t kill the tree – the tree lives on to grow more apples. When you eat an apple, you are eating living food – which promotes life. read more...

When you eat meat, you kill a cow, a chicken, a fish, etc – when an animal dies, its life ceases – as does its life cycle of reproduction, milk and egg production. Although we are not cannibals and don’t kill each other for food, humans are subject to the same cycle of life - as death is inevitable for all animals. Eating meat just speeds up the process.

When you consume meat, you are eating dead food - which promotes death. read more...

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust goes the saying. We start out from seeds, collect nutrients from food and water, oxygen from the air, and energy from the sun. The assimilation of these ingredients allows us to grow physically. We also possess the ability to grow in ways other than just physically. We absorb information through our senses and translate it into knowledge, intelligence and wisdom that is able to be stored in our brains. We grow emotionally and store love and feelings in our heart. Our soul absorbs the energy of the universe and all of our life experiences - thus making us who we are.

One day we will all die and no matter how well we preserve or entomb our physical bodies, they will eventually turn back into soil and dust and then be nutrients for the next seed.

But what about the essence and the energy of the mind, body, heart and soul? Where does it go - heaven, hell, the universe, earth or to others? Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity and the law of conservation of energy are empirical laws of physics which state that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant over time and can never be created nor destroyed. Therefore, the energy of our soul must be released back into the environment. Just like a cool breeze cuts through the heat of a summer day or a stream flows around rocks in a river, this energy or “e” is all around us. The energy and essence of life carries on everywhere every day - connecting everything to everything.

So is it possible to have life after death? Absolutely – if nothing else, one can live on through memories and the impact and influence they had on the lives of others. This is also a transfer of energy - from one person to another, to another, to another… how big will your impact be? And how much energy will you share with others and the universe?