Eat Well- 5 Principles to Eat By

Many of us know that balance is the key to living a better quality and quantity of life. But like a gymnast on a balance beam, maintaining that focus on balance, also known as ‘homeostasis’, takes a great deal of trial and error… especially in what we eat.

Well­ness Chi­ro­prac­tor and founder of the Well­ness Prac­tice, Dr. James Chest­nut, in his book, Nat­ural Hygiene, shares that all chem­i­cally induced health stres­sors can be divided into two dynamic states he calls ‘Defi­cien­cies’ and ‘Toxicities’.

The first state, defi­ciency, is best under­stood as an organ­ism that does NOT HAVE ENOUGH of a par­tic­u­lar sub­stance. And that defi­ciency will keep us from being able to achieve home­o­sta­tic cell func­tion. The sec­ond state, tox­i­c­ity, (so much more talked about in our pop­u­lar media) describes how if we get too much of any­thing, espe­cially those things which our body has a dif­fi­cult time rec­og­niz­ing, it will drive our cells away from homeostasis.

Both states, are states that if we live in for too long, will induce the devel­op­ment of chronic degen­er­a­tive autoim­mune types of dis­ease states. The ones that are most com­monly seen in our soci­ety today are things like: dia­betes, heart dis­ease, MS, and cog­ni­tive degen­er­a­tive con­di­tions like Parkinson’s & Alzheimer’s and cancer.

Like a sharp and a flat in music, the true note, ‘home­osta­sis,’ is some­where in the mid­dle, and it often takes a lot of prac­tice before we can sup­port this state in what we eat.

Read on to learn about the 5 most impor­tant prin­ci­ples you can incor­po­rate into your day to teach your­self, your chil­dren and those you love how to build a bet­ter rela­tion­ship with your eat­ing bal­ance this sum­mer and for years to come.

Prin­ci­ple #1) Make Your Eat­ing Choices a Lifestyle

One of the things we enjoy most in trav­el­ling to other parts of the world is how much the FOOD is actu­ally part of the lifestyle. For exam­ple, when we think of Japan, Italy, Jamaica or India, what com­monly comes to mind are images of their cui­sine. What we often love most about many parts of the world is not only their cli­mate and geog­ra­phy, but their food and the healthy rela­tion­ships they have to what grows nat­ural where they live. As a Cana­dian, I under­stand the pop­u­lar­ity of drink­ing morn­ing cof­fee at Tim’s, hav­ing a bagel, donut or muf­fin or enjoy­ing a week­end BBQ, but in my mind, these are more socially sup­ported strate­gies than they are strate­gies of eat­ing that will sup­port your long term health & well­ness. Bet­ter home­osta­sis is found, when we learn to shop for home grown local and fresh pro­duce (blue­ber­ries, let­tuce, straw­ber­ries, broc­coli, apples, aspara­gus and peaches just to name a few…). We need to spend more time eat­ing what our geog­ra­phy grows, rather than what our soci­ety sells in pack­aged boxes from the mid­dle lanes of the gro­cery store.

Prin­ci­ple #2) If your body can’t Digest or Absorb it well, it doesn’t mat­ter how healthy it is

Your innate abil­ity to digest (break down), absorb and ulti­mately metab­o­lize all the food­stuffs you con­sume are directly related to the health of your spine & nerve sys­tem. The chain of events respon­si­ble for this diges­tive process starts off in your sali­vary glands and mouth and moves through the esoph­a­gus, stom­ach, small intes­tine and large intes­tine before leav­ing your body out of your colon. If you think of this sys­tem as a blender, you’ll be wiser to not “burn out” the motor by eat­ing too many things that cre­ate “strain” for your sys­tems and ulti­mately your nerve sys­tem too. Mak­ing sure you are liv­ing with opti­mal spinal health and tak­ing proper daily steps to min­i­mize nerve inter­fer­ence will also go a long way to keep­ing your diges­tive blender work­ing the best it can for years to come.

Prin­ci­ple #3) Build Nutri­ent Rich Habits

Below are a host of strate­gies that I would like to sug­gest you make into a habit that will drive the cells of your body towards suf­fi­ciency with great ease. Make sure the major­ity of your food is not only raw or fresh, but colour­ful too! Most peo­ple have a dis­con­nect between the things they put into their body and how their body looks and feels, and how their brain works. Our bod­ies were designed through evo­lu­tion to func­tion and repair them­selves by eat­ing foods that grew nat­u­rally on earth, which include whole, raw, nat­ural state and min­i­mally cooked foods. It is very dif­fi­cult for our bod­ies to break down unnat­ural, syn­thetic foods like sugar, white flour, fruc­tose, oils and super-heated foods, caus­ing tox­i­c­ity and inflam­ma­tion in the body.

Prin­ci­ple #4) Refrain from Nutri­ent Poor Habits

Vir­tu­ally every Chronic Dis­ease is linked to inflam­ma­tion; asthma, depres­sion, men­tal ill­ness, dia­betes, can­cer, hyper­ten­tion and obe­sity. Inflam­ma­tion is not the prob­lem though. Inflam­ma­tion is a nat­ural response by the immune sys­tem in our bod­ies to fight off toxic foods that we are ingest­ing. There­fore, it is dan­ger­ous to be tak­ing anti-inflammatory drugs to sup­press this vital response. The real prob­lem is what is caus­ing the inflam­ma­tion, not the inflam­ma­tion itself. We have bac­te­ria nat­u­rally liv­ing in our bod­ies that help in the diges­tion of food. How­ever, when we eat syn­thetic, over-processed, unnat­ural foods, we are feed­ing the bad bac­te­ria in our gut. This causes abnor­mal bac­te­r­ial over­growth, which causes the tox­i­c­ity and inflam­ma­tion in your body. Refrain from eat­ing these nutri­ent poor foods. Choose more food in its whole, raw, or min­i­mally cooked, nat­ural state (God’s food). Stay away from refined sugar, processed flour, veg­etable oils and super-heated foods, to help reduce inflam­ma­tion, pre­vent dis­ease and live a health­ier, longer life!

Prin­ci­ple #5) Mind­ful eat­ing, Lots of water

Water makes up about 60 per­cent of your body weight, and it is your body’s prin­ci­pal chem­i­cal com­po­nent. Every sys­tem in your body depends on water. For exam­ple, water:

1. cush­ions and lubri­cates joints in the body

2. nour­ishes and pro­tects the brain and spinal cord

3. main­tains the body’s temperature

4. car­ries nutri­ents to your cells

5. flushes tox­ins out of vital organs

6. helps remove waste through per­spi­ra­tion, bowel move­ments and urination

Reg­u­lar top-ups are needed to bal­ance the loss of water from the body. If we did not replace the water lost, the body would not be able to sur­vive. Dehy­dra­tion symp­toms include headaches, tired­ness, loss of con­cen­tra­tion, and in extreme cases, con­sti­pa­tion and long-term dehy­dra­tion, can cause kid­ney stones.

The Insti­tute of Med­i­cine deter­mined that an ade­quate intake (AI) for men is roughly 3 litres (about 13 cups), and for women roughly 2.2 litres (about 9 cups) of water a day. You’ll know you are drink­ing enough water, when your urine is clear and transparent.

To learn more and join our prac­tice com­mu­nity as we ful­fill our mis­sion and vision for the GTA to become the most well­ness ori­ented city in the GTA, please join us for our next Liv­ing Well Work­shop, Wednes­day, July 31st, 2013 @ 6:30pm.

Call 905−850−0909 or email info@vaughanchiropractic.com to reserve your spot.