Vitamins for Wellness

Jason Paris :

Sprouted seeds or sprouts – not to be confused with the Brussel variety – are small plants, the next stage up from a seed. Sprouted seeds are young plants chock full of healthy minerals, vitamins, enzymes, proteins and fibre (practically all you need), and as they sprout their vitamin content increases. Because you eat them whilst they are growing, nearly all the nutrients remain intact! Your nutritious seed sprouts contain more vitamins and nutrients than nearly any other food and they make an important contribution to the recommended 5 portions of fruit and veg per day – 2 handfuls equal 1 portion.

How to Grow Sprouts

Growing sprouts is so cheap and easy – remember growing cress at school? It’s nearly as easy. You can buy a 3 level germinator or a single container, available from any good health food shop, add in a pack of seeds and your away.

To grow your sprouts……in cold water soak your seeds overnight drain the seeds and spread them evenly in your germinator, making sure they are not clumped together, place them in a well lit spot but not in full sunlight twice a day pour fresh cold water over the seeds and after 5-7 days – depending on seed variety – they’ll be ready to eat they can then be stored in a container in your fridge for 5-7 days. If you’re using the 3 level germinator, the water will drain to the bottom to be thrown away. With the single germinator you have to tip the jar to let the water drain away

What To Grow

There are loads of things you can grow, some easier than others. Some of the most popular include:
mung bean seeds (chinese bean sprouts)

alfalfa seeds

lentil seeds

radish seeds

clover seeds

buckwheat

chickpeas

One to definitely avoid are kidney beans, as they are toxic when raw.

How To Enjoy The Benefits

Eat your sprouted seeds raw and you’ll get all the benefits of this energy packed nutritious food. Or add them to your sandwiches, use as a side dish with a main course, sprinkle on top of soup, use them in a salad. Whilst it doesn’t do any harm, cooking or heating your sprouts is not recommended as this will strip them of the nutrients for which you have lovingly grown them.

Jeff Behar :


About the Alkaline Diet

Eating alkaline foods or starting an alkaline diet refer to consuming those foods and drink which have an alkaline effect on the body. This effect is based upon the ash residue that remains after our foods are consumed.  Some foods leave an acid ash, whereas others leave an alkaline ash. Conveniently for us, our bodies have been designed to categorize which foods leave which kind of ash into the body.

The Alkaline diet (also known as the alkaline acid diet and the acid alkaline diet) is a controversial dietary protocol based on the consumption of mainly fresh fruit, vegetables, roots and tubers, nuts, and legumes and avoiding grains, dairy, meat and excess salt, in order to balance the acidity and alkalinity (the “pH balance”) of one’s body.

In recent years it has been a popular topic among authors of diet and nutrition.

How the Alkaline Diet Works

The alkaline diet offers a simple, basic understanding of what causes the body to become ‘out of balance’. Through what has become the typical Western diet largely based around meat, dairy, sugars, alcohol, saturated fats and caffeine, millions of us have created a hostile, acidic environment within our bodies.

The pH level of our internal fluids affects every living cell in our bodies and the effect that over-acidification can have upon the health of our bodies is immense, with a chronically over acidic pH creating an extremely negative environment which affects all cellular functions from the beatings of the heart to the neural workings of the brain.

When our pH level is unbalanced, almost any area of our bodies can be negatively affected creating results such as cancer, heart disease, obesity, weight problems, allergies, fatigue and premature aging as well as problems with our nervous system, cardiovascular system and muscles.

Goals

The nature of body varies but most of us should aim to eat 75-80% alkaline foods and a maximum of 20-25% acid forming foods.

What Food is Allowed

To begin to alkaline diet it is important to start consuming alkaline foods and drinks while eliminating acidifying foods and drinks from your diet. As a rough guide you should try to remember:

* Vegetables (spinach, asparagus, broccoli, carrots, celery, cucumber, lettuce, courgette, cabbage, greens, swede, squash (summer, butternut, yellow etc)

* Salads

* Essential Fats (such as Udo’s Choice, Flax/Linseed, Evening Primrose, Olive Oil, Avocado Oil etc)

* Fruits (ONLY – Lemons, Lime, Grapefruit, Watermelon, Tomato, Avocado)

* Soy, Grasses and Sprouts

What Food is Not Allowed

Sugar, dairy, meat (apart from fish occasionally or when transitioning), caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, wheat, yeast, fruit (apart from those mentioned above), bad fats (saturated, trans-fatty acids, hydrogenated) and salt.

The most effective way to reverse the trend of over-acidification is to ‘cleanse’ the body of toxins and rapidly create an alkaline environment in which the body can heal itself. Cleansing is a natural, holistic method of healing in which the body detoxifies itself and regenerates healthy vibrant cells, effectively becoming more alkalized.

Known Benefits

USDA Study has shown Alkaline foods prevent muscle and bone loss. Alkaline diet is similar to a practice in the traditional Chinese medicinal diet, in which patients with minor illness is made to eat vegetables or fruits and forgo nuts and meat, a practice called “quench the fire”.

Additional Suggested Health Benefits

According to some alternative medicine practitioners, the shift to an acid-producing diet is the cause of a number of chronic diseases. Some practitioners recommend the alkaline diet if a person has the following symptoms and other illnesses have been ruled out.

* Lack of energy

* Excessive mucous production

* Nasal congestion

* Frequent colds and flu

* Anxiety, nervousness, irritability

* Ovarian cysts, polycystic ovaries, benign breast cysts

* Headache

Potential Risks of the Alkaline Diet

An alkaline diet is a diet that emphasizes, to a varying degree, fresh fruit, vegetables, roots and tubers, nuts, and legumes. Because Alkaline Diets promote the exclusion of many foods, thos can be harmful to the body.

The alkaline diet should not be used by people with acute or chronic kidney failure unless under a doctor’s supervision. People with pre-existing heart disease and those on medications that affect potassium levels in the body should check with their doctor first.

What the Experts Say About the Alkaline Diet

Advocates of alkaline diets claim that they help you lose weight, increase your energy, and even reduce your risk of heart disease and cancer. Although conventional doctors do believe that increasing consumption of fruit and vegetables and reducing one’s intake of meat, salt, and refined grains is beneficial to health, most conventional doctors do not believe that an acid-producing diet is the foundation of chronic illness. In conventional medicine, there is evidence, however, that alkaline diets may help prevent the formation of calcium kidney stones, osteoporosis, and age-related muscle wasting.

The common belief among most medical practitioners, however, is that the blood alkalinity (pH) is not significantly affected by diet, except for pathological cases (e.g., of ketoacodos produced by diabetes).

Bottom Line

Studies of alkaline diets are limited to animal and test tube trials. There’s no scientific evidence at this time that alkaline diets are beneficial to humans.

Bob Smith :


You probably have heard about “pH Balance” before, but are still wondering what it really means. The term “pH” is a medical term that describes the balance of your system and it refers to the condition of metabolic changes. pH Balance, simply put, is the balance of acid and alkaline in all fluids and cells in the body. The scale of pH runs from 0 to 14. Zero is totally acidic and 14 totally alkaline. The middle of the scale at 7 is neutral. The pH level indicates the body’s acid/alkaline balance.

People wonder why the pH balance of the body is so important to maintain. This is because if body’s pH Balance is not in equilibrium, it will create an environment where diseases can attack easily. Therefore, it is critical to maintain pH Balance of the body. Now one might ask: “How to maintain the pH Balance of one’s body”?

If you suspect that your pH Balance is out of order, it is important to consider a change in your lifestyle and nutrition. Optimizing your health with a pH balanced diet is the natural way to obtain healthy living for a long time. All foods have an effect on the body’s acid/alkaline level. To maintain health, the diet should consist of 60% alkaline forming foods and 40% acid forming foods. However, to restore health, nutritionists suggest that 80% of one’s dietary intake should be alkaline and 20% acidic.

Alkaline forming foods include most fruits, green vegetables, peas, beans, lentils, spices herbs and seasonings, seeds and nuts, almonds, apples, avocados, bananas, beans, brazil nuts, broccoli, cantaloupe and carrots and acid forming foods include meat, fish, poultry, eggs, grains, legumes, white flour, refined sugars, dairy products, peanut butter and chocolates.

Our health lies in our hands. Since most illnesses find their roots in an imbalanced body pH, it is obvious that most cures also lie in maintaining the body pH Balance. Maintaining a pH Balance of 7.4 is the answer to all our physical problems. Alkaline supplements help to eliminate acid wastes from the body and restore overall health.

To know more about pH Balance and pH Balance diet, please visit the site pHion Balancing Programs

Ronald W. Firquain :


Raw food diet is the best way to give your body the nourishment it needs. And is one of the easiest way to remove fat from diet. Also very helpful for body building as it gives you innumerable strength so that you can lift up the weights easily. The easiest way to cook foods is by juicing fruits and vegetables, blending foods ingredients, soaking nuts and dry fruit, dehydrating organic and natural food, and sprouting grains, seeds, and beans.

A raw diet is no longer an underground trend. A raw diet is a type of dietary plan of which the literally involves the consuming of uncooked, unprocessed fruits, vegetables, sprouts, seaweed, nuts and juices. Cooking and processing removes the much needed vitamins, enzymes and nutrients that our bodies need in order to have a healthy life. The underlying theory is that raw food contain a higher source of nutrients and that cooking food reduces the nutrient values found within the food.

Although proponents of the raw food dieting strongly feel that this diet will help your immune system work against the development of illnesses, they also agree that the raw food dieting is not for everybody. Children have very different needs to adults, so the raw food dieting is different for them, just as a cooked food diet is. A fruitarian raw food diet is not a fad, a fantasy or an extreme ideal. The CEO of Raw Life Line, a raw diet is essential to his overall well being. The basic premise of a raw food diet is obvious: Foods are never cooked.

One very obvious improvement resulting from a raw diet is in the digestive system. The Raw Food Dieting is one of first things that come to mind when someone hears or sees the word diet. The raw food diet is one that is well known among several who are interested in changing their lifestyle towards eating different types of enzymes. A raw diet is beneficial to your health for numerous reasons because raw food is easier to digest than cooked or processed foods and raw food is almost entirely usable by the body.

Most historians, however, will agree on the fact that the raw food diet is hardly a new trend. The raw food dieting is primarily based on unprocessed, uncooked plants preferably organic whole foods like fruits and vegetables, sprouts, seeds, nuts, grains, beans and seaweed. The fundamental premise of the raw diet is to eat 75 percent uncooked food, as the cooking process destroys enzymes that help us with our digestion. If the raw food dieting is the healthiest and most perfect diet.

The raw food dieting is one that is comprised of fresh, uncooked, unprocessed and often organic foodstuffs. And is healthful and colorful. And is sweeping not only the nation but also around the world including countries such as Germany, Italy and even England. First of all, This diet is not something new to the world of humans. Therefore, the diet is basically the food that one consumes to fuel the body throughout the day and night. Why do you say the diet is the greatest secret in the world today.

A raw food diet is also recommended to purify the body of toxins. The raw food diet is based on the principal that cooking food destroys much of its nutritional value and that eating fresh off the vine being the best fruits and vegetables is the healthiest way to eat. The idea behind a raw food diet is getting back to the basics of eating humans are the only creatures on earth who cook their food before eating it, and in the past, humans have lived entirely off of raw food. The wonderful thing about eating a Raw food diet is that it can be so simple and still be varied.