CHAPTER 1

Whole Health

"We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them"

Albert Einstein

Health is a person's state of wholeness of mind, body and spirit. Thisstate of wholeness fluctuates as we move through our days and our life.Health does not mean you are without symptoms. You can live in wholehealth, co-existing with your symptoms, making the best of every day.The lifestyle choices we make daily walk our body either in the directionof health and healing or towards symptoms and diseases.

Our current health care system does not work with the wholenessof health, the wholeness of individuals. Truly, it is a disease care systemwhere problems are taken care of at the end stage, when the body hasalready broken down. You are medically treated with drugs, surgery,chemotherapy, etc. to turn off the symptoms presented. This is much likecutting the wire to your cars check engine light. You have rid your car of thesymptom, the warning light, but you have not solved the problem.

True "health care" IS about promoting whole health, preventing thebreakdown of healthy bodies and truly healing when symptoms appear.It is not about merely covering up and extinguishing symptoms of illhealth and disease. Symptoms are your warning light. Taking your healthinto your own hands, exercising self-responsibility for your health meansfiguring out the cause(s) of your symptoms and removing these causesfrom your life.

When we remove the cause of disease, the body can begin its naturalhealing process. Then we can cleanse the causes of symptoms and workto nourish and rebuild the body back to whole health.

Healing, returning the body to whole health, takes time. If creatingthe symptoms of disease has taken a long time to appear, have patienceand your body will heal. Quick fixes, silver bullets to health and healing,do not exist. Health and healing are a long-term commitment for you. Awise healer once told me to expect one month of healing for every yearit took to create disease.

Patience heals. Have faith in your innate, natural capacity to heal.

"Many things which cannot be overcome when they are together,yield themselves up when taken little by little."

Plutarch

You are a Micro of the Macro

The human body is a microcosm of the macrocosm. The macrocosmbeing Earth!

Think about how your body is comparable to the Earth as awhole:

• The blood running through your arteries and veins is like Earth'swaters running through the rivers and streams.

• The extracellular fluid - the fluid surrounding and bathing yourcells - is like the swamp land of our earth's rivers and streams.Swamp land is an exchange area between the rivers, streams,and the dry land beyond the swamp. Extracellular fluid is theexchange area between cells.

• Your tissues are like the soil of the Earth.

"Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand init. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."

Chief Seattle

A modern translation:

"What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves."

Isabel Clarke

Your body is truly a microcosm of the Earth, the macrocosm. Whenyou care for the Earth, you care for yourself and all life on this planet.When you keep the Earth's waterways, soil and air clean; you keep yourcells, tissues, and organs clean.

What befalls the Earth befalls humans!

Let's take care of ourselves, the living beings around us, and ourhome - the Earth - in a holistic, whole health manner.

The following Chapters have been written, with simplicity and lightheartedfun, to help guide you in making whole health choices to preventdisease, heal symptoms, and live a vibrant, whole health life.

The bottom line: Do the best you can every day to eat whole foodand live a whole health lifestyle. Be kind to yourself in every momentknowing you are being your best self for this moment. Each day is amoment for new beginnings, new possibilities with no guilt and noregrets.

Please read on to open your awareness, your true self, to whole foodeating and whole health living. Every little step you make to change yourlifestyle will have paybacks in your body's health and healing whetheryou are two or 82 years old.

CHAPTER 2

Principles of Whole Food Nutrition

"Let food be thy medicine, let medicine be thy food."

Hippocrates

Whole food eating means feeding our bodies the way nature intended.This means eating foods in their natural state, as close to the perfectly"whole" state in which nature provides them. This also means followingthe natural growing seasons and eating more foods that are locally grownand produced.

Whole food nutrition is eating in balance, which in turn keepsyour body's health balanced. Foods grown naturally develop with theright proportion of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats intended for thatparticular food. They contain balanced vitamins, minerals, phyto-nutrients,and enzymes. This natural balance for each food ensures thatthe body can properly utilize the nutrients. Foods that have been refinedor processed (parts of them removed or altered) or enriched/fortified(things added) upset this natural balance in food. Food that has beenaltered will upset the natural balance of your body.

The effects of moving away from whole foods and towards refined,processed and convenience foods are very...