Blood: The River of Health
Blood is the ultimate vehicle for our life force, but we all take it for granted.
Your blood travels from your head to your toe in less than 10 seconds.
Approximately 2.4 million red blood cells are created in our body every second.
These cells live for 120 days and travel 300 miles in their lifetime.
What we eat has a dramatic effect on our cells and the state of our health. We live in a world where burger is the king and dairy is the queen, and it’s no wonder that so many people today are tired, overweight and looking for a magic bullet.
You wouldn’t feed your pets the wrong food, or put the wrong fuel in your car – but we continually put the wrong food into our bodies. Your body requires 40 different nutrients a day and your cells can die prematurely from deficiency or toxicity. Vitamins B6, B9, and B12 are required for the production of hemoglobin – a protein which carries oxygen throughout your body, and carbon dioxide out. Minerals iron and copper are needed daily to generate the necessary chemicals in your hemoglobin. Your blood cells originate from the stem cells in your bone marrow; Vitamin A helps this process. Eating the right foods may just be that magic bullet.
With today’s five new food groups – Frozen, Fast, Fried, Junk and Processed – we’ve shifted our diets away from what our bodies truly need because of marketing, convenience, and taste. Making healthy foods today is actually easier than we think, and often times cheaper. Putting a salad together, steaming vegetables, and putting a piece of chicken in the oven does not require extreme culinary skills nor a lot of time. So what do we need?
Eating three to five pieces of fruit and five to seven servings of vegetables a day provides your body with nutrients like fibre, water, vitamins, minerals, electrolytes – all necessary for optimal body chemistry. Not to mention, they help keep our bodies at an alkaline state.
Find Your Potential of Health pH represents potential hydrogen. From a holistic perspective, we can say that it stands for potential of health. It is the value given to indicate the alkalinity or acidity of a substance, with complete acid at the low end of the scale – neutral at 7.0 – and pure alkaline at 14. Your body functions best when the pH of most of its fluids are in a range of 6.5 to 7.0.
Our diets play a major role in the amount of acid produced in our body; if one has too much acid, we begin depleting our minerals – sodium, calcium, magnesium and potassium – in order to buffer out the excess. If we don’t have an abundance of these alkaline minerals found in fruits and vegetables we open ourselves to a host of issues. Calcium loss results in bone density loss, and magnesium loss results in nervous dysfunction, muscle cramping and irregular heartbeat. Sustained exhaustion of this nature can lead to the diseases we see so prevalent in North America today. All meats, fish, wheat, alcohol, colas, sweeteners and condiments are acid forming in the body.
Life is about balance
We can certainly enjoy treats here and there. It is our overall diet and lifestyle that has the largest effect. It’s what we do 80 percent of the time that matters, and your diet should be 80 percent alkaline. However, most people are only at five percent. Lemons are a naturally acidic food – however, the body does not need to buffer the natural acids. The naturally occurring citric acid is a “weak” acid; once it’s done providing energy to metabolism, the remaining nutrients are alkaline. Along with almost all fruits and vegetables – a diet containing beans, flax, eggs, nuts, quinoa, garlic, and cold pressed oils will help our body remain in its ideal alkaline state.
All of those red blood cells you make each day want to live in a healthy environment. Taking responsibility of your own health can provide you with long lasting energy and vitality, and reduce your risk of the health issues that are plaguing our society today and costing our health care system billions of dollars a year. Keep nutrition simple; eat foods that grow toward the sunshine, are not found at a pickup window, and don’t have to pass a chemistry lab on the way to your mouth.
Jane Durst-Pulkys
Nutritionist and Educator Jane Durst Pulkys is a global success. Everyday she makes dreams come true, consulting with clients from regions of the world and from all walks of life. She has been practicing for over thirty years, works for fortune 500 companies and is a regular guest on TV and radio. A teacher of Psychology of Disease, Jane empowers, inspires and motivates people to take control of their health, transform their confidence and change their lives. http://creativehealth.ca