Helping the Digestive system

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Even if we are not sick and look healthy, we may not be getting enough adequate nutrition. We can improve our state of health by simply knowing what nutrition we need. Nutrition is, after all, what food is all about - the amount we need, its function, and the basic materials we need for our body in order for it to continue on with its daily activities. By knowing how to take care of our body through nutrition, we can better maintain its high performance levels.

Eating raw foods helps our bodies with nutrition in so many ways, but the digestive system is one of the body processes that benefits the most. The extra fiber and moisture in raw fruits and vegetables helps keep the digestive system functioning regularly and actually keeps the system cleaner. Cooked foods - especially meats - are much harder for our bodies to digest. Eating healthy, living, raw foods can help to prevent certain cancers, most notably cancers of the colon and intestines.

Eating large meals, high in fats and proteins, often makes us feel sluggish afterwards - because the body is working so hard to digest these foods, it sends a large part of the body's oxygen to the digestive system. Eating lighter meals, full of raw food that is easy to digest helps us maintain our energy through out the day. It is believed that about three hours between meals is an appropriate interval for maintaining energy and facilitating digestion.

Detoxifying your Body - A Neccessary Step

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The process of detoxifying our bodies results in the purging of harmful environmental and chemical poisons. The buildup of these toxins can overwhelm the body’s capacity to detoxify and may lead to such problems as hormonal imbalances, nutritional deficiencies, inefficient metabolism, and digestive and respiratory disorders. Switching to a raw food diet will help to clean and detoxify your body, which many find can result in improved energy levels, mental capacity, skin tone and clarity, digestion, metabolism, and breathing while decreasing joint pain, body aches and headaches, constipation, anxiety, irritability, and aiding in weight loss.

Though the end results of detoxification are very beneficial, the actual process of detoxifying can be difficult. Headaches, nausea, and diarrhea can result as toxins exit your body. It’s important to keep in mind that, even though you’re doing a good thing for your body by detoxifying it, you may even develop a cold or flu-like symptoms as your body works to purge the germs and poisons from the cells. Skin breakouts, anxiety, irritability and lethargy can also occur.

The healthier a person is when beginning the detoxification program, the less severe these symptoms will be. If the body has a great deal to purge, the process will be harder on the body. If the process is a huge change from the previous lifestyle, these side effects might be more pronounced.

Don’t interrupt the detoxification process by taking any type of drug to relieve these symptoms. They are a natural side effect of the process. Try instead to get some rest and focus on the end result. Try treating yourself extra special during this time. Sit down and enjoy a good book, meditate, or even write in your journal about your detoxification experiences. Remember that what you're going through is a natural occurrence, and concentrate on how wonderful and healthy you'll feel when the process is complete.

How To Start a Raw Food Diet

Getting started on a raw food diet is not all that difficult but does require some attention to your body and to the foods you will be buying and preparing. For some people there really isn’t much preparation involved, while for others there is more. Preparation will basically be a matter of taste and choice.

There are some things you should know about before you switch to a raw food diet. First and foremost, you should talk to your doctor or nutritional advisor for guidance. Switching to a raw food diet will cause your body will go through changes initially and some of those changes could impact your overall health.

A raw diet consists of 75% or more raw foods. But to switch over from a cooked diet to an uncooked diet from one day to the next can actually shock your body, especially your digestive system. For years you have consumed cooked foods and your body has become accustomed to processing those types of foods. As a general rule of thumb for beginners, you should start out gradually, maybe eating only one raw meal a day, and then slowly work your way toward eating raw at each meal.

One very important thing to note is that a raw food diet has a detoxifying effect on the body. Eating raw foods will actually cleanse the body of toxins and your digestion will improve. However, there are some possible side effects as your body adapts to this new raw food diet. You could experience headaches and nausea, as well as a mild depression.  Have no fear as these are only symptoms of your body making adjustments. If these symptoms persist over a long period of time you should decrease the amount of raw food you are consuming and talk to your doctor or nutritionist.

An important part of raw food dieting is to plan your meals. This especially important in the beginning because your body will be craving certain foods as you change your dieting habits. Sugar and salts are a good example of such cravings because our body doesn’t make these on its own but needs them. Many raw fruits and vegetables have natural salts and sugars in them. The point is to monitor your bodily changes and adjust your dieting plan according to your body’s needs.

If you find it difficult to accommodate your body’s needs with the raw foods in your diet plan you might want to consider adding dietary supplements to your diet. Aloe vera gel is a good example of a dietary supplement. However, there are many more supplements available at your local health food store. It is important for you, as you create your raw diet plan, to research raw dieting options. The purpose behind a raw diet is to improve your health, not make it worse.     

Another important point about raw food diets is not to mix it with a cooked diet. This doesn’t mean you can’t eat cooked foods while on this diet. But it does mean that, during a meal, you don’t want to mix them. The reason for this is that cooked foods, when mixed with a raw diet, will neutralize many of enzymes and nutrients in the raw food, basically defeating the whole purpose of being on a raw diet. Also, mixing these two types of diets can actually make your digestive system work harder, again defeating the purpose of the raw food diet.

As you get further along in your raw food diet don’t be afraid to try eating your raw foods in different ways. Some people on raw food diets prefer eating their foods in their natural state and don’t cut or blend. On the other hand, there are some who slice, dice, chop, and even blend their raw foods. It’s all pretty much a matter of personal preference, as neither way diminishes they nutritional value of the food.  There are many raw food diet books with information and recipes to help you make the switch.  Visit RawFood4Life.info for more information.

Why Should I Eat Raw Food?

Now don’t go getting all squeamish on me. We’re not talking about eating raw meat here. The raw food diet is a largely vegan diet. There is also some room for maneuver in the raw food diet too as the people who support it say that to get the maximum health benefits from the raw food diet you only have to make sure that approximately 75-80% of what you eat needs to be raw.

People who support the raw food diet as a healthy lifestyle argue that foods in their natural state contain the optimum balance of enzymes, vitamins and minerals that we need. They argue that the enzymes contained in raw food - which are killed off by cooking -  help people to digest their food more fully and so derive more nutritional value from it. That places less stress on the body to produce its own digestive enzymes.

Raw food supporters also believe that the cooking we normally do to our food destroys their natural vitamins and minerals and that food takes longer to digest in this cooked, unnatural state. The cooked food therefore hangs around longer in the gut while the body attempts to digest it. The proteins, carbohydrates and fats which have not been fully digested also become waste products. These waste products slow down the food’s transit through the gut, causing constipation, bloating, stomach cancer etc, while the fats tend to clog up the arteries. A raw food diet, which is higher in fiber too, pushes the food more quickly through the gut and there are fewer waste by-products which are left around to cause problems to the body.

Basically, a raw food diet makes your whole digestion process a lot more efficient. It delivers more of the essential vitamins and nutrients which our bodies need and leaves behind fewer waste products which can become harmful to our bodies.

The health benefits of the raw food diet include an increase in energy as your body is maximizing the amount of nutrients it actually gets where it needs it; plus the body has to work less hard in order to process the raw food.

You should find that your skin looks more clear on the raw food diet. That is because your body is taking in fewer toxins which would cause skin eruptions. The raw food diet is a good detox!
Your digestive system will work more efficiently on the raw food diet. Food will pass through the gut more quickly and waste will be expelled regularly. That is great for avoiding health problems like IBS and stomach cancer.

You may also find that you lose weight and manage your weight more effectively on the raw food diet. It is lower in fat that most people’s eating habits. There is less fat hung around in the body to clog up arteries and pile on the pounds. That in turn reduces your risk of contracting heart disease.

All in all, then, you can see that if you eat at least 75% raw food diet foods it will be much better for your health. Visit RawFood4Life.info to find out how you can lessen your risk of serious diseases and generally look and feel better while by following the raw food diet.

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