Radiant on Raw Blog: Raw and Living Foods, Holistic Health, Latest News and Reviews

5 Easy Steps to Staying Super Hydrated

You have most likely heard that our bodies are not capable of lasting more than two to three days without water, though that you would be capable of going weeks without food. Water is required for very basic physiologic functions such as regulating blood pressure and body temperature, hydration and digestion (the body requires about 1.5 milliliters of water to absorb every calorie ingested).

Not Drinking Enough Water Can Be Dangerous

Did you know that 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated? In 37% of Americans, the thirst mechanism is so weak that it is often mistaken for hunger. Even mild dehydration will slow down one's metabolism as much as 3% (a huge contributor to weight gain). Lack of water is the #1 trigger of daytime fatigue. A mere 2% drop in body water is capable triggering fuzzy short-term memory trouble with basic math, and difficulty focusing on the computer screen or on a printed page.

According to a survey, nearly three quarters of Americans are aware of the recommendation of drinking eight 300ml servings a day, though only 34% actually drink this amount of water each day. Most humans consume only about 6 servings of water a day and nearly 10% declared that they do not drink water at all.

Chronic dehydration has been implicated in Attention Deficit Disorder, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Alzheimer' Disease. If you consider the brain as an electrical energy producer like a battery, which is 80% water, it does not require a leap in consciousness to understand how a lack of simple, elemental water would compromise its most basic function. Much like a car battery that dries up and dies.

I don't know about you, but this information makes me run  for my water bottle!

The Living Link Missing From Our Diets

Here's a great article I found on benefits of probiotics in our diets and wanted to share with you.

For millions of years, our ancestors hunted for meat and gathered fruits, nuts and other plant foods. They followed the food supply, so there was no kitchen sink to wash it in.

Instead, they brushed the dirt off the foods they gathered. Or rinsed it in a nearby stream.

Today, factory farms add thousands of tons of pesticides and herbicides to our food. Even if we wash our fruits and vegetables thoroughly, we run the risk of slowly poisoning ourselves.

This modern dilemma means that our ancestors received a benefit from their food that we don’t. I think of that benefit as “living foods” — the good bacteria that inhabit our guts.

Living foods aid digestion. They hold dangerous bacteria in check. And recent research has revealed an amazing variety of other benefits. Here are just a few of the health benefits connected to these living foods:

Menu Planning for Raw Food Beginners Made Easy

If you have been on a diet before, you must be quite familiar with the concept of menu planning. It is a great tool that helps you keep on track, allows you to make sure you are getting all the nutrients that you need and enough calories to get you through the day, and also makes sure you get a good variety into your raw food diet.

Having a menu can help you make sure that you are always prepared and will never find yourself in a situation where you open your refrigerator and see empty shelves; it helps you see at a glance if all your nutritional needs are being met; it makes the whole process of eating raw foods easy and straightforward.

But first, let's cover the basics on a truly healthy raw and living foods diet:

Natural Ways to Overcome Depression

Conventional medicine tells us that depression is caused by an imbalance of a neurotransmitter in the brain called serotonin. Most pharmaceutical advertisements claims that drugs that flood the brain with serotonin are the answer to depression. However, some studies found that dramatically increasing serotonin levels in the brain failed to relieve depression.

So why do doctors persist in prescribing medications with side effects ranging from mood swings to suicidal or homicidal behaviors when those drugs may not even work?

Many of the symptoms of depression can be directly linked to vitamin and mineral deficiencies in the standard American diet. Depression, mood swings and fatigue often have a common cause: poor nutrition.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Raising Healthy Kids

Mark your calendars! Starting Monday, June 22nd you are invited to join in on a one of a kind discussion about raising healthy children with raw foods!

The Raw Mom Summit is an online event starting on June 22nd and ending on June 30th. For 9 days and 9 nights the wisdom, experience and understanding of over 30 passionate health pioneers and some of the world's leading experts in alternative health, are bringing their voices together in the name of building healthy families and empowered leaders of the next generation.

Learn from top experts…

• What to do about fertility, ovulation and conscious conception?
• How to prepare for a healthy pregnancy, labor and childbirth?
• What is attachment parenting?
• Which natural remedies to use when your children are sick?
• How to feed a meat-eating partner if you are vegetarian or vegan?
• What should you feed yourself when you're overwhelmed with cravings?
• How to get kids excited and involved in their own food-prep?
• What to do when our kids rebel against our healthy diet?
• What is going on with the bees and why is it so important?
• How to shrink our carbon footprint?
• What is sustainability and permaculture?
• What superfoods are best for kids?
• Exactly what is the healthiest diet?
• What are the best ways to raise children naturally?
• What are the lesser-known common pit-falls of a raw food diet?
• Which foods help or hinder our hormones?
• What are the issues around veganism, B-12 and protein?
• What do raw children eat?
• How to get picky eaters to crave their veggies?
• Which foods help kids transition and stick to a healthier diet?
• What are the other top lifestyle factors besides diet for longevity?

Raw Mom Summit - Register Now!

With this many of the world's top health and wellness experts gathered together in a mom-friendly format, can you afford to miss out?

Dental Care for Raw Foodists Made Easy

These days it's almost impossible to find a person with perfect, cavity-free teeth. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in America, anywhere from 75% to 95% of all people are prone to periodontal diseases.

Unfortunately, in the raw food movement, there's a higher incidence of dental decay. This is typically due to high fruit consumption and incorrect dental care. And there are still, unfortunately, some people who believe that if they just eat clean diet, they do not really have to take care of their teeth, that the food will do it for them (a "rumor" started by natural hygienists a while ago). And it's a pricey mistake to make.

Taking care of our teeth is crucial. If we learn how to take care of our teeth, not only can we prevent problems, we can also heal damage that is already done. There can be healing.

First, let's look at the cause of dental decay.

Why Grow Your Own Food

"The only way today we can guarantee our foods are not pesticided, irradiated, herbicided, or GMO is to grow our own food."

- Rabbi Gabriel Cousens, MD

Gabriel Cousens, MD, the creator of Tree of Life Foundation in Arizona and the author of such wonderful books as "Conscious Eating" and "There Is Cure for Diabetes", states that learning to grow your own food is absolutely essential. With constant food recalls, salmonella contamination, and now Swine Flu, learning why we need to grow our own food is of utmost importance.

Here are just a few reasons why growing our own food is an important step towards great health and also independence:

Food is grown in nutrient/ mineral deficient soils (even organic)!

It's a fact. Our soils are depleted and depleted soils do not produce healthy, nutrient-rich plants. It's also a fact that crops produced in depleted soils are more prone to the invasion of insects, viruses, fungi, etc. Much of the modern world is now aware that our industrialized methods of farming have depleted the soils and created a cycle that requires pesticides to protect the unhealthy crops grown on depleted soils.

Prior to the 1800s, farmers fertilized their crops with organic substances. But modern, economic-based agriculture has virtually replaced all of the critical organic complexes with inorganic fertilizers, which cause toxicity in water runoff and further imbalance the delicate nature of our soils.

Diabetes Awareness Day - Take Action and Change Your World!

Do you know what happens when you bring together 53 experts from the raw food world in support of The Movement to Reverse Diabetes Naturally?

YOU get a lot of cool stuff!

Get Your Bonuses Now

These 53 experts are giving away a TON  of goodies in support of Reversing Diabetes Action Day and the film "Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days."  There are 11 E-books, hours of audios, hundreds of recipes, an entire magazine, valuable coupons and more!

This film is a must see for diabetics AND non-diabetics. If  you haven't yet seen this film NOW is the time!  
Just click  on this link to learn more about the film and all of these goodies:

Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days

If you have picked up a copy already then get another copy of the film for a friend, neighbor or your  local library so that you can get all of these bonuses for yourself!   :)

This film is SO powerful in opening up people, both diabetics and non-diabetics, to the importance of raw and living foods and we need to get it out to more people!

Help us spread the word!

Check it out right away and make sure to support The Movement to Reverse Diabetes Naturally.  It is doing some important and powerful work!


Related Posts:
Diabetes Total Cost: $218 Billion!
The Raw Food & Diabetes

Paul Nison's Advice on Eating Healthy and Going Raw

Two days ago I had a pleasure of attending Paul Nison’s lecture in New York City hosted by www.beamgreen.com for Earth Day Celebration.

Paul has been traveling and promoting the raw food lifestyle for over 15 years. New York native, he now resides in Florida with his family.

What follows is my cliff notes from his lecture. The topic was the Daylight Diet, a new insight on how to be healthy, to stay fit and energized. Paul’s book with the same title is due this July.

• The biggest contributors to obesity and poor health are overeating and eating last at night (9 pm through 5 am are the best hours for good quality sleep).
• No daylight animal in nature eats after dark.
• Get up with the sun. This is important because you are in better position to go to bed early and not stay up late overeating.
• Eat your first meal during the 3rd hour of daylight.
• Stop watching TV late at night, especially stimulating shows. TV is loaded with commercials of food and they motivate you to overeat. What is more important – your health or a TV program? Pay attention to the word “program”.
• Do your best not to eat after the sunset. However, it gets dark late during summer months, so it would benefit you the most not to eat after 6 – 7 pm.
• Two meals per day are ideal, but you can eat three if you have a demanding schedule. Eating more than that is unnecessary. Snaking is considered a meal.
• Drink plenty of filtered, ionized water for optimal hydration.
• The three things Paul recommends to everyone: probiotics, digestive enzymes, and B12/Vitamin D supplementation (both are abundant in blue green algae).
• Don’t take supplements just because you think something is missing – do a blood test and then see what needs to be added.
• Eat lots of salads – find dressing recipes that appeal to you and use them to avoid boredom.
• Take time to relax in the evening – listen to classical music, go for a walk, drink herbal tea.
• If you are really hungry in the evening, have a glass of green juice.
• Sleep with windows open.
• To make sure you are having a well balanced diet, 75% of what you eat should be greens.
• The worst thing to put into your body? Raw Chocolate! Yes, you heard right – raw or not, chocolate is still a stimulant that overburdens the adrenal glands.

Paul will be back in New York at the Raw Food & Yoga Expo on May 29th through May 31st and then in August promoting his new book.

Earth Day Celebration

Today is the Earth Day, a perfect opportunity to be reminded that this planet is our home and we need to take proper care of it.

So here's my 10 easy ways to be more green:

1. Turn OFF the lights when you leave the room, simple.

2. If you work in an office, do turn off your computer at the end of the day and on the weekend - if you are not there, there is really no reason for your equipment to be working (plus you'll save on electric bill, your boss will appreciate it).

3. Don't charge your cellphone overnight - these days most cellphones only take a couple of hours to charge so don't keep your phone connected to an outlet all day (and you'll save the battery life).

4. Replace light bulbs with long-lasting fluorescent bulbs in areas like hallways, storage rooms, and garage (many people say they are sensitive to fluorescent lights and get headaches so don't install them in rooms where you spend a lot of time, just a precaution).

5. If you are still getting it, cancel the phone book delivery. I mean, seriously, when was the last time you looked anything up in a phone book? Google it!

6. Sign up for getting your bills electronically to eliminate paper statements. Most banks and credit card companies already provide such services. Also, embrace online banking to cut back on paper and postage.

Quick Fact: Approximately one billion trees-worth of paper are trashed each year in the U.S., and hard copy bills alone generate almost 700,000 tons of waste and almost two million tons of carbon dioxide. Both you and the planet will be happier without the excess garbage.

7. Fight junk mail with all your might: cancel magazines you never read, catalogs you never look at, credit card promos you don't really need. Here's a wonderful website that gives you all the information on how to do that - Stop Junk Mail

8. Recycle. I can't believe how many still don't do it. Shame.

9. If you are going to buy groceries, bring re-usable bags with you to use instead of plastic: most big chain supermarkets now sell them and some (like Super Stop & Shop here in NY) even pay you back for every bag you use.

Quick Fact: Amount of plastic bags used in the US annually - between 500 billion to a trillion (according to Environmental Protection Agency). Amount of oil it takes to manufacture 100 million bags - 430,000 gallons!

10. Finally, my personal favorite and the easiest tip of the day - while you are brushing your teeth, turn off the water! If you do what the dentists recommend and brush for 2 minutes, well, you just used 18 gallons of water. It adds up to 547 gallons per month, just from leaving the water on while brushing your teeth! Think about it, people!

And if you are curious how much water you consume on a daily basis, here's a fun calculator - Water Consumption Calculator.

Check out EarthDay.gov for more helpful tips on how to reduce your environmental print.

Happy Earth Day!