Well, I’m getting older. Seems inevitable. My focus here is to talk about my concerns and what I’m doing to help my overall health outlook. New articles, links and thoughts will be posted here. Any tips you may have please send them to me. I will look them over and possibly add them here. Otherwise, take control of your body. It’s the only one you have.

smoothie

Making the perfect smoothie is pretty darn easy. When you have the tools. In my case it’s a nutribullet 900. Just about everything I’ve thrown at it (except rocks) has been reduced to an almost liquid consistency. Let’s start with a basic one:

spinach, parsley, kale or cabbage – frozen cranberries (whole – not dried or sugared), frozen dark cherries,  half a lemon with no rind (or very little) a tsp of wild raspberry powder, a tsp of camu camu. Topped off with no sugar added coconut almond milk, a few cubes of ice and maybe some water. Blend, add monk fruit if desired to sweeten a tad. Ratio of veggies to fruit should be around 3:1 or so.

You can vary the above in any way you want,. This is just a starting point. Much better than juicing as you get all the fiber as well. The nutrition packed in the above is priceless. Juicing can be good as well but I prefer blending in my bullet. Give the above a try sometime. Mikey likes it…(smile)

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FASTING

The Fasting Mimicking Diet was created by Dr. Valter Longo. This diet can mimic a 3 day water fast while still eating small amounts of food that trick the body into thinking it’s not taking in any nutrients. Cool, huh? While the benefits of a water fast include a shorter duration compared to the 5 days of a FMD, most people find it hard to finish the water fast. I am in the beginning stages of doing the water fast and it’s interesting to say the least. My first fast started with the 16/8 style. Where you don’t eat for 16 hours and limit food intake to 8 hours. My second was a 24 hour water fast. The third was a 36 hour water fast. Here I began to see some changes. I was starting to use ketones for fuel at the 36 hour mark. At 24 hours I was hungry and tired and angry a bit. Hangry is the official term I believe. But when I woke the next morning at 36 hours there was a peaceful clarity I have personally never experienced before. No hunger, just calm, relaxed and clear headed. Total clarity. I broke the fast and now knew I would be able to make a three day or 72 hour water fast.

The FMD has many benefits for just about everyone, including cancer patients and diabetics. Although you should always check with your doctor as fasting with diabetes can be quite dangerous. The cool thing is it may increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy and radiation if you fast before and after chemo etc.

The cancer cell doesn’t have this protective shield that our normal cells do when food is removed for periods of time. So, the chemo doesn’t effect your cells since they are in a protected mode. The cancer has lost this ability and can’t stop the chemo from killing it. So many other metabolism changes are taking place as well.

This excerpt below is from the Prolon website which offers a ready to eat 5 day FMD. Head over there if you want to know more…

THE EFFECTS OF THE FASTING MIMICKING DIET

Better preservation of cognitive functions. Adopting a low-calorie diet not only contributes to cellular regeneration but also helps to reinforce neural regeneration and enhance learning abilities.
Reduction of abdominal fat with a significant increase in muscle mass in relation to body weight.
Decrease of risk factors for cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Studies assert that it would be able to repair pancreatic cells responsible for producing insulin.
Significant improvement in blood pressure and cholesterol values ​​in subjects having the following alterations.
The strategic deprivation of certain nutrients, not only prevents the risk of developing pathologies such as cancer, but it has also produced a decrease in the IGF1 hormone by stimulating the regeneration of tissues. The hormone IGF1 is necessary for growth during development. However, when we get older it is a cause of diseases in the process of cellular aging.

A rejuvenation of the immune system, a kind of “reset” whereby about a third will be destroyed, and will be rebuilt during the re-feeding, or when a normal diet is resumed.

Basically you can reboot your immune system! There are clinical trials taking place to evaluate the chemotherapy results of fasting which are very promising as well.

For the moment, fasting for 72 hours or a 5 day FMD by itself gives similar results to just doing chemotherapy by itself. But together, they appear to be completely synergistic.

And to be sure, in IMHO the FMD is much better than the John Macdougal diet or Forks Over Knives.  Those diets may work for others but they didn’t work for me. The FMD diet is simple, only done 3 times over the course of 3 months and the rest of the year you just eat healthy. Yep, that stills means staying away from massive amounts of Rocky Road Ice Cream, not that I ever did that (wink!)