You are not what you are, rather, what you are is what you can be. The most interesting thing about life is that you can become more than you were before. You can become stronger, wiser, and healthier than you ever dreamed possible. You can achieve your true potential. You can completely re-form your physical structure, your intelligence, your emotional poise, your spiritual power. This is about how to biologically transmute the lead of life into the white gold of glory.
DAVID WOLFE, THE SUNFOOD DIET SUCCESS SYSTEM
Breaking the four-minute mile of diabetes by reversing diabetes completely will require continued prudent action at home, after the 21-Day+ Program. By the time your blood sugar has reached nondiabetic levels, your cholesterol, triglycerides, and C-reactive protein levels most likely will have normalized. Your weight, depending on where you started, may not yet be optimal. Returning home, you will be taking with you the gift of non-fear and an enthusiastic and deep knowing that you have the ability to succeed in the next and perhaps most crucial step in this healing process of becoming a healthy human being—stabilizing in the Culture of Life anti-diabetogenic diet and lifestyle. You recognize that life does not have to be lived in a diabetogenic wasteland, that complications can be reversed, and that you can achieve a level of health that is well beyond what you have been experiencing for yourself.
For all of us, as we move into a healthy physiology, this positive state has an ascending effect on the higher levels of our being, right up through our mind, emotions, and spirit. Healing from years of diabetes and complications means that something that has taken up such a large space in our lives is now gone. Our own life potential opens up, and we expect more of ourselves, as will others who see what a vibrant example of humanity we have become. Any attachment we had to the diabetic that we were, and the diet and lifestyle of the Culture of Death in which we lived that created it, is in the process of transformation.
After the 21-Day+ Program in a protected environment in the shade of the Tree, you return home to familiar surroundings, and the next phase of your sustained healing begins. What you are about to learn is how to live in the Culture of Life in your old world. An immediate challenge is how to establish a physiology (cellular memory) that does not continue to ask for the familiar foods of the old culture that helped create diabetes. You will begin to learn how to respond to the compliments, questions, skepticism, and enthusiasm of friends and co-workers. It is good to allow time for the mind to adapt to your new healthy diet of plant-source, nutrient-dense foods. You will naturally become more conscious of how living in the Culture of Life colors every aspect of your new life.
All of this is much easier to implement than it seems. The biggest hurdle is not the physiological but psychological. As Walter Bagehot once remarked, “The pain of a new idea is one of the greatest pains in human nature…. Your favorite notions may be wrong, your firmest beliefs ill founded.” And your favorite foods may be the root cause of your greatest pains! It’s a fact of life that people find it easier to believe a lie they’ve heard a thousand times than a fact they’ve never heard before.
DANIEL P. REID, THE TAO OF SEX, HEALTH, AND LONGEVITY
Let us state that these are not passing fad diets: the Tree of Life 21-Day+ Program, the Culture of Life anti-diabetogenic diet (an organic, plant-source-only, and 80-100 percent live-food diet).
The history of eating a diet of plant foods, of abstaining from meat eating, of fasting and drinking plant juices, and using herbs to heal goes back possibly further than recorded history itself. Hippocrates, the father of medicine (460–357 BC) said, “He who does not know food, how can he understand the diseases of man?” We have read Genesis 1:29 about a plant-source diet. The Ethics of Diet by Howard Williams outlines an entire recorded history of abstaining from flesh-eating and returning to a natural diet, citing more than fifty major Western thinkers such as Hesiod (eighth century BC), Pythagorus (570–470 BC), Plato, Ovid, Seneca, Plutarch, Thomas More, Voltaire, Rousseau, Leonardo da Vinci, Schopenhauer, and Albert Einstein. A plant-source only diet is advocated by most every major world religious tradition, as illustrated in Food for the Gods by Rynn Berry. This reality is also concisely stated in the chapter “Vegetarianism in the World’s Religions” in my book Conscious Eating and in Spiritual Nutrition, two books containing arguably the best scientifically documented case for a life-long vegan diet of live foods. We have seen evidence that a processed diet is a diabetogenic diet, and the Culture of Death way of eating and living creates far more suffering and sickness worldwide than just diabetes. It also bears repeating that the Culture of Life anti-diabetogenic cuisine, adopted globally as our true potential, would make enough food available for the people of the world to be fed seven times over at current agricultural production levels. Again, this is no fad; it is rooted deeply in our cultural, spiritual, and genetic heritage, and is truly a diet and lifestyle that significantly meet the needs of our times individually and collectively.
With one out of three children born today in the U.S. projected to develop diabetes, and the spiraling worldwide pandemic threatening the economies of nations, we need to have simple and serious solutions that are not simply palliative, but do the job effectively. As has been made abundantly clear, diet and lifestyle are the underling cause. We offer a serious and practical food and lifestyle solution to this reality. It might appear extreme, because conditions that have created diabetes are themselves ridiculously extreme. At the turn of the 1900s people ate about 15 pounds of sugar per year; now we eat up to 150 pounds per year. This is both ridiculous and extreme. It is so extreme that eating just 15 pounds per year, which is relatively normal, may itself seem radical. We must see clearly to prudence over the conventional denial thinking with such ineffective approaches as “moderation”—a term itself that gives an illusion of wisdom—in our decision to reverse diabetes. Consumption of 150 pounds of sugar per year (52 teaspoons per day) is an active Crime Against Wisdom.
If your friend had been a smoker all of his or her life and looked to you for advice, would you tell them to cut down to only two cigarettes a day, or would you tell them to quit smoking all together? It’s in this way that I’m telling you that moderation, even with the best intentions, sometimes makes it more difficult to succeed.
T. COLIN CAMPBELL, THE CHINA STUDY
Moderation? It’s mediocrity, fear, and confusion in disguise. It’s the devil’s reasonable deception. It’s the wobbling compromise that makes no one happy. Moderation is for the bland, the apologetic, for the fence sitters of the world afraid to take a stand to live or die. Moderation is lukewarm tea, the devil’s own brew!
DAN MILLMAN, THE WAY OF THE PEACEFUL WARRIOR
Earlier in the book we learned about Caldwell B. Esselstyn, MD, at the Cleveland Clinic, as highlighted by T. Colin Campbell, PhD, in The China Study. Dr. Esselstyn’s work proved that cardiovascular disease is a benign disease, and that reversing it completely is only possible when “everything in moderation” is left behind and a prudent diet of plant-source-only foods is applied. Diabetes, too, is a benign disease, and is therefore reversible when applying a Culture of Life cuisine and lifestyle. For many of us who are new to eating plant-source foods, this diet can seem unusual until we get used to it. As we move toward an organic, live-food diet, we also move from: low-nutrient to high-nutrient-dense foods; from the suffering of disease symptoms to their dissolution; dead food to vibrant, living food; maximum to minimum health care costs; below-average to above-average life span; millions dying of starvation to almost none; a translative diet of eating for comfort alone to a transformative diet of eating as a means and support for personal growth. Research and cultural data worldwide show that moving to a plant-source diet means the prevention and elimination of overweight, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, hypertension, depression, and constipation, to name a few. It is a shift from an egocentric way of eating for oneself to a world-centric way of being as an Act of Love for all as well as oneself.
When it comes to prevention of disease, and particularly reversal of diabetes, the conventional understanding of moderation with its attractive appearance of intelligent balance, is anything but prudence and wisdom. I want to work with people who are determined to reverse completely their diabetic physiology and lifestyle back to a nondiabetic, Culture of Life existence of abundance. It has been said that a strong enough “why” can achieve any “how.”
Once you recognize that as a benign disease, diabetes with all of its complications need not exist, a sense of determination will permeate your being, driving you toward a realization of a healthy physiology and lifestyle that is beyond what you may have ever imagined. This journey is an inner revolution, a mindset shift, from deprivation to abundance. You will pass through three main internal realizations as you shift into a Culture of Life anti-diabetogenic world cuisine:
At first, you may perceive the changes in your life as deprivation, because the diabetogenic foods and lifestyle choices available are ubiquitous. Modern living will be a constant reminder to you that you have left the conventional paradigm of the Culture of Death. Your friends and family may also be an outward sign that you are in another mode of existence, and either applaud you, counsel you, or condemn you for it. The historical Buddha once said, “While a million people believe a lie, it is still a lie.” The Roman stoic Lucius Seneca wrote in his essay, On the Happy Life:
For it is dangerous to attach oneself to the crowd in front, and so long as each one of us is more willing to trust another than to judge for himself, we never show any judgment in the matter of living, but always a blind trust, and a mistake that has been passed on from hand to hand finally involves us and works our destruction. It is the example of other people that is our undoing; let us merely separate ourselves from the crowd, and we shall be made whole.
Seneca was describing the importance of recognizing the power of the shadow of the Culture of Death, how we get entrapped in it and how to disentangle from it. Your life depends on understanding this. When you succeed, you naturally will be able to inspire others to also succeed in their healing. Although some friends may become distant, many new friends will come who see your light and want to be around it.
Revolution doesn’t have to do with smashing something; it has to do with bringing something forth. If you spend all your time thinking about that which you are attacking, then you are negatively bound to it. You have to find the zeal in yourself and bring that out. That is what is given to you—one life to live. Marx teaches us to blame society for our frailties; Freud teaches us to blame our parents; astrology teaches us to blame the universe. The only place to look for blame is within: you didn’t have the guts to bring up your full moon and live the life that was your potential.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL, PATHWAYS TO BLISS
Living in the Culture of Life requires a revolution involving an internal and external geographical reorientation. We have existed in a poor food environment for so many years and our choices in it have been making us sick and squashing our potential. We must claim excellent health for ourselves, regardless of the environment, the actions of others, or our past history.
Externally, we are looking at shifting out of conventional restaurants, and out of the center of the grocery store with its processed, adulterated foods, and into the farmer’s markets, the co-ops, and the produce section of the grocery store. As pointed out in Chapter 2, buying cheap, calorie-rich, nutrient-poor processed foods in the center of the grocery store can add to the diabetogenic process. As you recall, Drewnowski found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips, but only 250 calories of carrots; that his dollar bought 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice.1 According to the USDA Economic Research Service, between 1982 and 1997, the cost increases for these (diabetogenic) foods were as follows: dairy products 47 percent; fats and oils 47 percent; meat, poultry, and fish 49 percent; sugar and sweets 52 percent. The cost increase for your Culture of Life anti-diabetogenic foods went up a staggering 93 percent, making eating a healthy diet the most costly thing at the register—but not in terms of your health. This economic reality of high-priced fresh foods is going to encourage you to frequent farmer’s markets, co-ops, and locally grown foods where the costs are much lower for higher-quality foods because the prices are not controlled by agribusiness, which tends to push the high-calorie junk foods.
Buying local food straight from the farmer puts you in closer touch with the origin of the food, cuts a significant portion of the time and money spent transporting and “selling” the food, saves you money, and places more dollars in the pocket of those who produce your food. Eating in the Culture of Life is about more than feeling good because of the food itself, but involves the impact of your dietary choices on the economic, agricultural, ecological, political, social, and cultural realities of your community, your nation, even the world.
This external shift creates a change internally, as we are reorienting ourselves to who we really are, and not what we have been told we are. The following quotes come from an agenda of economics, not conscious health concerns. Junk food, empty calories, low nutrient density, high-sugar content, and low-fiber foods can never be considered healthy by the wildest stretch of the imagination. It is time we stop listening to the economic propaganda of the Culture of Death:
It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that all foods can fit into a healthful eating style.
ADA POSITION STATEMENT
All foods and beverages can fit into a healthy diet.
NATIONAL SOFT DRINK ASSOCIATION
Policies that declare foods “good” or “bad” are counterproductive.
GROCERY MANUFACTURERS OF AMERICA
Despite the myths we have been told and sold, we are not by genetic constitution Mars-Bar eaters, Super-Big-Gulp drinkers, or Big-Mac snackers, nor do we suffer from a deficiency of these junk foods. None of us is suffering from a deficiency of Red Dye #40, Blue Lake #5, disodium inosinate, MSG, aspartame, or any of the other excitotoxins that have been deliberately placed in our foods to seduce and addict us for profit. For millions of years we have been physiologically, biochemically, and genetically designed to eat a diet of organic living plant foods. The overwhelming medical, sociological, and historical data corroborate this. Food is a fundamental way that we interface with our home the living planet, with our cultural ancestry (which existed without diabetes), and is a most important and subtle way we acknowledge an association or dissociation with who we truly are.
Living in the Culture of Life is an invitation to go on a journey to find ourselves and our God-given right to vibrant health. Commiting to a plant-source-only diet because we are determined to remove the causes of diabetes and ill health is an Act of Love and Consciousness. In this liberating and transformative process, we naturally move beyond the false identity that has been given us by advertising, including the so-called health education we have received in our schools that has been primarily financed by the dairy and meat industries so we will buy their products. Please know that this “education” we take as the truth is directly contrary to our 3.2 million years of history of the human diet (until 10,000 years ago), the message of the Bible of Genesis 1:29, and the biggest nutritional study ever done called the China Study involving 6,500 people and more than 8,000 statistically significant associations between various dietary factors and disease. All these sources, which are not motivated by profit, say the same thing: A plant-source-only diet is the healthiest and most natural diet for human beings. A plant-source diet helps us reconnect with our fundamental nature and helps heal the ecology of the planet. Because it does not create a hoarding of resources, it frees up the resources to feed everyone on the planet seven times over. In order to do this, we need the means, motivation, and support necessary to reclaim our most basic right of health and well-being.
To heal we need to move back through the Seven Stages of Disease and push the reset button on our physiology. This process may take longer than three weeks, as the precious (and not-so-precious) burdens may have taken many years to develop, especially obesity. For many of us, diabetes means a hand-in-hand compromise of our health at multiple levels over many years. We are well aware of the complications and associated conditions: cardiovascular disease (the cause of 80 percent of deaths in people with diabetes),2 Syndrome X, hypertension, obesity, impotence, nephropathy (kidney disease), retinopathy (eye disease), neuropathy (nerve disease), infections, liver damage, gallstones, stroke, chronic pain, depression, and candida. For the majority of these health challenges, the underlying cause, and reversing mechanism, is found in diet and lifestyle. Fortunately, healing with prudent action takes a small fraction of the time it took to develop our health challenges. Depending on the condition, we course back through time about 80–120 days for each day that we Juice Feast.
Juice Feasting is a special application of nutritional healing, especially for those who are obese, that is based on the science behind many millennia of water fasting and more than 100 years of juice fasting. As the name implies, you are drinking a lot of juice—1 to 1.5 gallons of fresh, green, low-glycemic, organic, living juice each day. This amount of juice maintains a high metabolism, feeds the body the calories required for the day, and thus enables one to Juice Feast for 30–92 days, depending on the extent of one’s health challenges. We also include superfoods and supplements during Juice Feasting as well as exercise (including weight training). These additions give a significant advantage in terms of remineralizing, rebuilding, and generally renourishing the body after so many years of diabetogenicity. The superfood concentrates help shift the body to a rebuilding, alkalizing physiology.
The diabetogenic diet and lifestyle you knew in the past has created a mental and cellular memory that has covered up who you really are. With the 21-Day+ Program you have pushed the reset button and Juice Feasting keeps pushing it until you stabilize at an optimal weight and healthy physiology. It is an excellent way to reset your cellular memory, because during the Feast you are drinking the foods that you will be eating afterwards to maintain health and remain diabetes-free for the rest of your life. By drinking 12–15 pounds of juiced organic produce each day, you significantly rebuild the body with the best food possible. As you move into eating a low-glycemic diet of living foods, your whole being will ask for more of this healing and nourishing food because you recognize it at every level as good. Juice Feasting is exciting in that it provides excellent training at the cellular and mental levels in what to eat—and how good you can feel when you eat and for hours afterwards The best part is, this training occurs while you are in the cleansing process.
As we learned from the Seven Stages of Disease, our two main underlying causes of diabetes are toxemia and inflammation. In the four aims of Juice Feasting, toxemia and inflammation are addressed by cleansing, rebuilding, rehydrating, and alkalizing. Juice Feasting also reverses another significant and common problem from our calorie-rich, nutrient-poor Western diet: nutrient deficiencies.
Cleansing means weight reduction, but there are many components of weight, not just the fat around our mid-section. We have heavy-metal toxicity; uneliminated waste matter in our blood, lymph, cells, intestinal tract, and colon; toxic buildup in our organs, such as arterial plaque in our heart, calcifications in our kidneys, and stones in our liver and gallbladder; and many of us have edema, or excess water weight from the body trying to hold toxins in solution to protect the tissues. While this is not explicitly a weight loss program, Juice Feasting will accelerate your coming back in a natural way to a normal weight and eliminate one of the major co-factors in diabetes, obesity.
In order to remove all of these components of weight, we are employing several keys: physiological rest and compensation through the drinking of fresh juices; and support of the organs of elimination with personal hygiene, supplements, and exercise.
Physiological rest: Juice Feasting is a nutrient-dense, living, low-glycemic diet of liquids and superfood concentrates; it is not an extended juice fast. This is nutrition that is bioavailable with a very low amount of energy expenditure to assimilate. Russian research suggests that we use about one-third of our available energy to digest our foods; that is why people tend to fall asleep when they overeat. We require a lot of energy to digest cooked, processed, dehydrated foods, and even more so when these foods are overly constipating, as is the case with most processed, low-fiber foods. Before your body can access the nutrition from your food through the wall of the small intestine, it must be in a liquid state. In a general sense, the more food one eats, the more work must be performed by the organs making up these systems. Juice Feasting provides physiological rest for the digestive, glandular, circulatory, respiratory, and nervous systems by providing ample nutrition on all accounts, but in a form that is easy to digest. The metaphor here is your job at work. The boss tells you to go home for 30–92 days, and your paycheck is about to be doubled. After sitting around the house for a little while, you decide that it is time to do some cleaning, remodeling, and repainting after some neglect of your domicile. You are going to go through old photos, journals, and childhood memorabilia as well, and reorganize or discard some. This is Juice Feasting: time and space to clean and rebuild, with more money (nutrient-dense, bioavailable nutrition from 12–15 pounds of juiced produce each day, plus superfood concentrates) and energy. In other words, Juice Feasting is a superfood liquid diet that energizes and builds while you are continuing your normal home and work responsibilities.
Physiological compensation: “Energy saved in one department may be expended in another.” As Juice Feasting coach John Rose has said in many public talks over the years:
When we give our bodies a “solid food vacation” by only drinking freshly made juices, the energy that would have been used to convert the solid food into liquid is then redirected or re-channeled to the elimination cycle. Even though no solid food is going in, there will be massive amounts of uneliminated waste matter coming out through the bowel. Once our colon, which is our major channel of elimination, begins to free itself from its toxic load, then every cell in our bodies will start dumping out its accumulated waste matter into our system to be eliminated.
Supporting the organs of elimination: This waste matter coming forth from all over your body must be shown the exit door in a timely manner. Otherwise you get a buildup of toxins leading to cleansing reactions and healing crises, which appear as headaches, muscle or joint pain, skin eruptions, emotional imbalance, fever, and so on. Practices are designed into Juice Feasting to move toxins out quickly through support of the organs of elimination (lymph, blood, skin, liver, kidney, and bowel), thus reducing or eliminating the discomfort that can be associated with cleansing and healing.
Personal hygiene: Enemas and colonics are often helpful. Most of the toxins you release are going to come through your bowel. You are well advised to use an enema each morning for the first 14–21 days of a Juice Feast, as this is the time that the majority of the significant cleansing occurs. Enema kits are available at most drug stores; we suggest you purchase one that is multi-use, not the single-use variety that does not hold enough liquid, is inefficient, and wasteful in its throw-away design. Colonics may be of benefit as well, as a colonic employs a deeper cleansing action with more water. Please consult your health professional or Tree of Life counselor about the appropriateness of this excellent method for moving out old matter, particularly if you are overweight and have been constipated for many years. Generally we do not recommend more than three colonics in a week over a long period of time, as they weaken the downward energy (apana).
Skin brushing: The skin is one of the five main elimination channels of the body, throwing off up to one pound of toxic material each day in the form of perspiration and dead skin. The skin has been called the third kidney because of its ability to rid the body of toxic waste material. Skin brushing moves lymphatic fluid under the skin, and involves using a natural-bristle brush with a long handle. The whole body (except the face) should be brushed before your morning shower. It takes two to three minutes to do this. At first, you will see something powdery coming off your skin as you brush. According to Dr. Bernard Jensen, “these are crystals of uric acid and other dried waste products that came out with the perspiration.” Jensen continues:
Always brush the skin when it is dry, and never expose the brush to water. Although the bristles may seem a bit stiff at first, this is because the brush is new and your skin is not yet used to the brushing. If you find the brush is too stiff, you may, just once, hold the bristles in hot water for no longer than one minute and no deeper than one-half inch. This will soften the bristles a little. However, it will not be long before you desire a stiffer brush! Your skin will love you for brushing it regularly, and you will love the way your skin feels and looks, too.3
The brushing motion is circular and from the feet and hands toward the heart. The skin needs to be brushed with enough pressure to create a comfortable pink color to the skin.
Hot/cool treatment: This is easy, and goes back for thousands of years. If you have ever been to a Japanese spa or to a sauna, you will experience the use of hot and cold to invigorate and help the body to cleanse. What you are achieving with the transition from hot to cold is a movement of lymphatic fluid and blood to the surface of the skin with heat, then toward the center of the body with cold, back again to the surface with heat, and so on. The way to do this at home is in the shower. Stand in the hot water for 5–8 minutes until you are nice and warm, and have rinsed off. Then begin to crank the water back toward cool for about one minute, then to hot for one minute, and so forth about seven times, ending on cool water. This will invigorate you first thing in the morning, and do wonders for helping the lymphatic fluid in your body to move, thus improving the elimination of old wastes from your system.
Supplements/cleanses: Juice Feasting employs zeolite, or Natural Cellular Defense (discussed in Chapter 4) for the removal of environmental toxins. A moderate kidney-liver-gallbladder cleanse is accomplished with 2–4 cups daily of Royal Break-Stone Tea, or for a more time-intensive and comprehensive addition, the Tree of Life has available a liver-gallbladder-parasite-fluke cleanse. See the Juice Feasting timeline below.
Exercise: We know the benefits of exercise for diabetics. During your Juice Feast, if movement is difficult, begin with just practicing a light yoga routine. This means simple stretches just to loosen up and move your body. Then shift into strolling outside, and begin walking longer distances, up to 30 minutes. This will do nicely for the first 30–45 days of a Juice Feast. When the body is in a state of cleansing, it is best to conserve most of your energy to build the vital force in order to stimulate cellular detox, but moderate exercise that moves the lymph and blood, and that leaves the body stimulated but not exhausted, is excellent. Don’t overtax your body with activity. After 45–60 days, if you are continuing to Juice Feast, your coach may advise you to begin weight training, as your body is now in a state of rebuilding as much or more than a state of cleansing. The possibility of weight training is new to the world of cleansing technologies, and is made possible by Juice Feasting—drinking sufficient quantities of green vegetable juice to provide the body with the nutrient-dense building blocks necessary to build lean body mass. Everyone is unique, so you may have a need to increase the amount of juices or nutrient-dense superfoods to provide the calories and macronutrients required for this kind of building program. At this stage you will be sensitive enough to know how to make the adjustments.
Our body replaces its tissues and cells every one to seven years. This wide range of time depends on physiology, and varies with the sources we read.
Muscles get replaced every 6 months to 3 years. The pancreas replaces every 5–12 months. The liver replaces every 3 months. Our bones replace every 8 months to 4 years. Red blood cells replace every 90–120 days. The intestinal lining replaces every 5–30 days.
This is excellent news, and underlies the quote by Wolfe at the opening of this chapter, that you are not what you are, rather, what you are is what you can be. You have the opportunity to completely re-form your physical structure to its highest genetic potential. A healthy body helps support your optimal emotional balance, highest intelligence, and increased spiritual awareness. A Juice Feast of 92 days allows ample time for rebuilding to occur, using green vegetable juices made in a Vitamix with a nut mylk bag or in a press-style juicer such as a Green Star.
Green vegetable juices: On a Juice Feast we drink the juice from 2 pounds of leafy greens each day, which means that we hold greens in high regard, and as a necessity in any healing program. It took me (David Rainoshek) three years of eating a plant-based diet before I could look at a bowl of greens, or look at a glass of green vegetable juice and find my immediate response, “that’s a muscle-building food,” instead of seeing it as Oscar the Grouch in a can. Leafy greens are approximately 30 percent protein (amino acids, the building blocks of protein). I have had MDs argue this point with me, disagreeing that greens are so high in protein, until they see the data. We have all been socialized and taught to see greens—and vegetables in general—as sides to the “main course.” If your main course is not plant foods, then you are on the main course to all manner of Western dis-eases.
What makes greens such an amazing food that we juice 2 pounds a day on a Juice Feast? According to David Wolfe in Eating for Beauty:
Green leaves are the best source of alkaline minerals, contain the best fiber, have many calming, anti-stress properties, and are the best source of chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is a blood-builder and one of nature’s greatest healers. Green, leafy foods are the most abundant foods on earth. In July 1940, a comprehensive study, reported by Dr. Benjamin Gurskin, director of experimental pathology at Temple University, in the American Journal of Surgery, focused on 1,200 patients treated with chlorophyll. On the power of chlorophyll, Gurskin wrote: ‘It is interesting to note there is not a single case recorded in which improvement or cure has not taken place.’ In 1950, Dr. Howard Westcott found that just 100 milligrams of chlorophyll in the diet neutralized bad breath, body odor, menstrual odors, and foul-smelling urine and stools.
Nutrient density: Greens and superfood algaes are our most nutrient-dense foods. Nutrient density has several meanings. First, nutrient density is defined as a ratio of nutrient content (in grams) to the total energy content (in kilocalories or joules). Nutrient-dense food is opposite to energy-dense food (also called “empty calorie” food). According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005, nutrient-dense foods are those foods that provide the highest amounts of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and phytonutrients per calorie.4 For example, superfood algaes and vegetables are considered most nutrient-dense. Products containing added sugars, saturated fats, and alcohol are considered nutrient-poor. Therefore, when you eat nutrient-poor foods, you eat more food to get an equivalent amount of nutrition. Second, nutrient density is defined as a ratio of food energy from carbohydrate, protein, or fat to the total food energy. To calculate nutrient density (in percent), divide the number of calories or joules from one particular nutrient by the total number of calories or joules in the given food, and then multiply this by 100. Third, nutrient density is understood as the ratio of the nutrient composition of a given food to the nutrient requirements of the human body. Therefore, the most nutrient-dense food is the food that delivers the most nearly complete nutritional package.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman, bestselling author of Eat to Live, has created an excellent chart on the nutrient density calculations of various foods. It is reproduced here.
Figure 1: Nutrient Density Chart (Source: Dr. Joel Fuhrman)
The first six nutrient-dense foods listed are all juiceables that one can use during Juice Feasting to rebuild every tissue in the body. How does this healing and rebuilding occur in terms of our health challenges? Consider Hering’s Law of Cure. Constantine Hering was considered the “father of American homeopathy,” and his Law of Cure states:
We heal from the top down;
We heal from the inside out;
We heal in the reverse order in which we took on our health challenges.
Therefore, we first see the accelerated healing effects of a Juice Feast in a person’s face. Also, we can find in any cleansing program that things come to the surface of the skin, or our breath stinks, or our bowel movements are temporarily putrid. All of this is healing from the inside out. Finally, we heal in the reverse order that we took on our health challenges, meaning that a cut will heal in a few days, but the diabetic complications a person has developed and suffered with for decades will take a few weeks or months—still not bad considering how long many health challenges have taken to manifest.
The human adult body is approximately two-thirds water—50 percent of our body weight. In utero, the fetus body is 90 percent water, and an infant’s body is 75–80 percent water. If we don’t hydrate appropriately with H2O, our water content may drop as low as 50 percent with age. Water is one of the main components of other compounds: Fat is 20 percent water, blood is 80 percent water, bone 25 percent, kidneys 80 percent, liver 70 percent, muscles 75 percent, skin 70 percent, and the brain 85 percent. This is very important when you realize that 85 percent of the brain is water, and when the brain starts to dehydrate, the neurons dehydrate and shrink. This is a significant contributor to senility.
Water acts as a universal solvent and anti-oxidant, and that is partly how it produces life on the planet. Water’s ability to act as a solvent is what makes nutrition work for all living substances. Plants absorb nutrients when they are watered, just like water dissolves nutrients so they can enter our bloodstream. This is basic information, but it becomes clearer, as research has shown, that water acts as a medium that transfers and relays the tiny frequencies of information of DNA from one cell to another. If our water is polluted, meaning that what is entering our body is polluted with a set of negative frequencies, such as pesticides and herbicides, the water can’t effectively relay accurate intracellular and extracellular information. If we are consuming water that is contaminated, it not only brings in poisons but it blocks adequate frequency information extracellularly and intracellularly to and from the DNA.
Water, acting as the solvent, has an electrical and mineral content that helps to regulate all the functions in the body. This is disrupted by dehydration and toxic wastes, which block the information transfer. This disturbance causes a distinct loss of electrical flow and breakdown of the cellular reactions. Dehydration also creates a buildup of extracellular acidity and toxemia, which greatly impairs the electrical energy differentiation between the cells. Because of this, it disorders the intra-and extracellular gradient. Toxemia and extracellular acidity leads to oxygen starvation, damages the DNA, and accelerates aging. It increases free-radical damage and the extracellular acidity blocks the flow of hydrogen into the cells.
It is important to understand what we call the symptoms of dehydration. One is dyspepsia, or stomach pain. This results because the cells in the lining of the stomach need to be hydrated and flushed between meals to get rid of acids and to develop a certain level of alkalinity When we are dehydrated, or we don’t drink before meals, we actually cause a thinning of the stomach cell membrane buffer zone and it does not adequately protect our stomachs from the acidity that is naturally secreted. Another symptom of dehydration is rheumatoid pain, or arthritic pain, which has to do with any sort of joint pain because the joints are lubricated by water. The water creates a small film of water that helps lubricate the interface of the joint. With dehydration this lubricating film of water evaporates and the joints rub right on each other. Back pain, particularly lower back pain, and sciatica are often the result of the intervertebral discs becoming dehydrated. These discs normally create a space cushion between the vertebrae by virtue of how much water they can hold. When the discs are dehydrated, 75 percent of the upper body weight that they cushion against begins to bear down on the intervertebral spaces and put pressure on the intervertebral nerves. This often causes muscle spasms. Usually a few days after we rehydrate, the pressure on the nerves begins to alleviate. Relief from sciatic pain, in fact, may happen within an hour of rehydrating. Heart pain, or angina, is another symptom. When the body is dehydrated, the blood flow to the heart is reduced. Headaches, from toxic buildup and contracted blood vessels, are another symptom, along with dry tongue and constipation. One of the main causes of death in airplanes is dehydration, which causes clots in the legs, which then can migrate to the lungs as pulmonary embolisms.
It is estimated by some scientific sources that 75 percent of Americans are chronically dehydrated. In 37 percent of Americans, the thirst mechanism is so weak from the dehydration that it is mistaken for hunger. In fact, one of the best ways to lose weight is to drink water when you are hungry. One glass of water at bedtime can shut down midnight hunger pangs for close to 100 percent of dieters. This both treats the dehydration and gets to the cause of excess appetite, or mistaking the thirst mechanism for hunger. The disruption of the metabolic system in the body is so significant when we become dehydrated that even with mild dehydration, the metabolism will slow down as much as 3 percent. Dehydration is probably the number one trigger of fatigue in the daytime. A 2-percent drop in body water can so significantly dehydrate the neurons and the passage of neurotransmitters in brain function that we can become fuzzy-headed, develop short-term memory difficulties, have trouble with basic math, and lose focus on the computer screen. This is with only a 2-percent drop. A glass of water can significantly reverse some of the process of dehydration. A study at the University of Washington showed that drinking five glasses of water a day decreases the risk of colon cancer by 35 percent, the risk of breast cancer by 79 percent, and the risk of bladder cancer by 50 percent. This is a significant statement about the importance of water. Dehydration is something that may happen with age, so one of the main anti-aging treatments is drinking adequate water—about a half gallon (64 ounces) per day for a 150-pound person. On a Juice Feast, we drink 1-plus gallons of juice filtered through plants, which is one of our most precious and hydrating water sources.
We are constantly generating acidic waste products of metabolism that must be neutralized or excreted in some way if life is to be possible. Humans, therefore, need a constant supply of alkaline food to neutralize this ongoing acid generation. Our very life and health depend on the body’s physiological power to maintain the stability of blood pH at approximately 7.46, through a process called homeostasis. At this slightly alkaline pH the chemical processes of the body function most efficiently and all waste products are rapidly eliminated.
The normal pH for all the tissues and fluids in the body, except the stomach, is alkaline. For example, the digestive secretions from the liver and liver bile range between 7.1 and 8.5. Bile from the gallbladder ranges from 5.0 to 7.7. If any of these pH systems are not at the optimal pH range, the digestive and metabolic enzymes in those areas and organs will function sub-optimally and we will suffer from decreased health. With the exception of the blood, all of these systems have a wide range of pH, in part so they can shift pH to maintain a balance of the blood pH. In the author’s thirty-five years of experience, the healthiest blood pH is between the narrow range of 7.42 and 7.50. It is in this range that the cells operate most efficiently, especially for the brain cells. Being too alkaline can throw off body and brain function as much as being too acidic can. We focus on acidity because most people are too acidic in their blood, but we need to be mindful of both directions. The optimal urine pH for the first urine of the morning (which is the most accurate) is 6.4 to 6.8. However, if too much acidic food is eaten and the body, blood, and urine become acidic instead of alkaline, then the spleen, liver, heart, and kidneys, which are the blood-purifying organs, become overworked and ultimately weakened and susceptible to disease. Then the waste poisons can no longer be properly eliminated, and instead collect in the joints, causing arthritis and/or gout. Or they seek elimination through the skin, causing eczema, acne, sores, and boils. The condition of acidity thus may be a contributing factor to many different diseases, including piles, cancer, kidney and liver trouble, gallstones and gall bladder infections, impotency, high blood pressure and heart disease, strokes, asthma, and allergies. If the morning urine is consistently above 7.2, it is highly suggestive that the blood is too alkaline. Typical symptoms of excess alkalinity are muscle spasms, cramps, hyper-reactivity, spaciness, a sense of ungroundedness, and mental imbalance.
The Culture of Death diet and lifestyle are themselves acid forming—they rob the body of alkalinizing foods and their minerals. The biggest offenders are animal foods, soft drinks, alcohol, medical drugs, and stress. To remedy the inability of the body to maintain proper acid-alkaline balance, and thus support the resolution of many diseases, it is important to increase in the diet the amount of plant-source foods that provide alkaline minerals such as organic sodium, magnesium, calcium, and potassium. This is accomplished in a very efficient manner while Juice Feasting, given the 12–15 pounds of produce we consume through alkalinizing fresh green vegetable juices each day, including one head of celery (organic sodium) and approximately 2 pounds of leafy greens.
Our timeline gives an “on-balance” view of what we are doing at each point during a Juice Feast for the further healing of a diabetic or post-diabetic physiology. Items that will create a need for adjustment of this chart are:
Figure 2: Juice Feasting timeline (Source: David Rainoshek, www.JuiceFeasting.com)
This timeline for Juice Feasting is used by coaches of this program; it is tailored for each client’s condition and needs. Juice Feasting coaches can be contacted through NutrientDenseNutrition.com and the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center. A few brief comments, however, should be made here. There are two specific cleanses within the Juice Feast. One is a kidney-liver-gallbladder cleanse using Royal Break-Stone Tea (also known as Chanca Piedra), which breaks up kidney and gallbladder stones. This is conducted during days 30–60 to give your body some time to clear out other waste matter before getting to the more sensitive liver cleansing. A parasite cleanse is done during days 60–80, as this is the point in a Feast in which there is nowhere left for the parasites to hide (because the Juice Feast is an intestinal-bowel cleanse, removing uneliminated waste matter where parasites can take up residence). Alternatively, there is the more intensive Tree of Life liver-gallbladder-fluke-parasite cleanse that can be accomplished in conjunction with Juice Feasting from days 7–49. It is important to understand that your entire physiology, diet, and lifestyle are not conducive to the maintenance of parasites by virtue of cleansing and consuming only plant-source foods. You just have to give parasites the final eviction notice with an herbal formula, and any that remain will most likely exit painlessly. This is a very important part of the cleansing and healing process.
We discussed earlier the use of enemas daily during the first three weeks of the Juice Feast, to support the elimination of waste and toxins from the body. We also discussed the introduction of weight training later in the Juice Feast, when the body is ready for muscle-building activity.
Let us briefly review a typical day of Juice Feasting. You wake up to a quart of water to assist in rehydration (the body loses 1–1.5 quarts of water during the night), and with that water you can add MSM, 15 drops of Natural Cellular Defense, and 3–5 caps of proteolytic enzyme Vitalzym. Next is an enema with warm water to release any waste matter made ready for evacuation while you rested during the night, then dry skin brushing and a warm shower. Once your warm shower is complete, you can add a hot/cool shower as described above. Take care of your oral hygiene, including the use of a tongue scraper, and exit the washroom ready for some light exercise such as yoga or walking, or a period of meditation. Then make yourself juice. If you are to be gone for the whole day without access to a juicer, make all of your juice for the day—approximately 4 quarts—in the morning. As a recovering diabetic, it is advisable to drink your juices ½ quart at a time, approximately 90 minutes apart, to maintain consistent blood sugar levels. This means that you want to have your first ½ quart of juice by 7:00–7:30 AM at the latest. Additions to your juices are green superfood powders, chlorella, kelp granules, and hemp oil.
The above Juice Feasting timeline contains numerous other aspects to the program that have been consciously designed in as a result of decades of research by live-food nutritionists. For a more detailed description of the elements of a Juice Feast, please see David Rainoshek’s 92-Day Juice Feasting website at www.JuiceFeasting.com.
In summary, juice feasting:
We are drinking low-glycemic, Phase 1 juices made fresh at home with either a press-style juicer (such as a Green Star) or a high-speed blender (Vitamix). The juice is separated from the pulp by straining with a fine mesh bag. We are not demonizing fat, protein, or carbohydrates, and we are not eliminating any of these macronutrients. The 12–15 pounds of produce juiced fresh each day will contain all the protein, fat, carbohydrates, enzymes, phytonutrients, vitamins, and minerals you require. In fact, you will actually be consuming more bioavailable nutrition than you perhaps ever have in your lifetime, due to the nutrient density of the foods you are juicing, and the superfoods, essential fatty acids, and supplements you add. Here is your baseline for a Juice Feast of 4–5 quarts per day of nutrient-dense green juices made with the following ingredients:
Take your juices with you wherever you go, and make sure you do not find yourself at work, on errands, or anywhere without a juice. This is the most sure way to make your head spin on a Juice Feast. Temptation to return to familiar Culture of Death habits is everywhere, and if hunger sets in on a Juice Feast, that sense of lack you will feel can bring you dangerously close to eating diabetogenic foods. Keep the wolf away from the door, and feed yourself consistently as an Act of Love and Consciousness all the way through.
You may have never encountered live-food nutrition before, and want to know that your left ear isn’t going to fall off from eating a plant-source-only diet. Many nutrition and diet books are written by people who do not look like the picture of health, and this could be an indication of the authenticity of their approach. The author has eaten a 100-percent plant-source-only diet of live, organic foods for more than thirty years, and David Rainoshek for the past five years. Both are living in vibrant health.
It is important that you seek out people who are doing well living in the Culture of Life, and you will find the names of such people in the acknowledgments at the beginning of this book. Just a few of the names you will want to become familiar with are: David Wolfe, Shazzie, Brian Clement, Viktoras Kulvinskas, John Rose, and the Boutenko family. Also seek out the members of the International Living Foods Summit. All of these people have published materials online and in books, many of which are listed in the Resources section in the appendixes.
In addition, seek out raw-food potlucks in your area, and go online using the resources suggested at the back of this book. At this very moment, you are drawing into your life the best things possible. You are a vortex of positive energy, and you have the opportunity to begin anew, becoming more than you ever thought possible. Become the continuation of those who are living the lifestyle that is achieving what you want so much to have as your daily life reality. The community of people living in the Culture of Life are some of the most vibrant, switched-on people you will ever have the pleasure of loving, and being loved by.
The Tree of Life offers a once-a-month follow-up as support with someone knowledgeable in living the Culture of Life, or, if locally accessible, a Tree of Life branch member or potluck. See www.treeoflife.nu for a list of such groups globally. This support is not just nutrition focused, but addresses in a practical way one’s emotional and spiritual life as well. Included for one year is Alive with Gabriel on the Internet, for helpful questions and answers.
Clinically, three to four months into the program I like to measure the HgbA1c levels, and every three months thereafter. I know we can activate the anti-diabetogenic genes and bring most people to a normal FBS in close to twenty-one days. The real task is how to stabilize participants in the diet and lifestyle of the Culture of Life. For on-site intellectual, emotional, and spiritual support and growth, at the Tree of Life we offer several valuable retreat programs in addition to the 21-Day+ Program; these are arranged according to people’s needs.
The crucial reason for a one-year follow-up is that breaking free from the Culture of Death is difficult without support, when we live in a society that surrounds us by the shadow of the Culture of Death. My thirty-five years experience has shown that it may take people one to two years to transition emotionally, psychologically, and physiologically into the Culture of Life. Our experience and that of many others is that this most likely cannot be accomplished in one day. On a more humorous side, Neal Barnard, MD, relates in Breaking the Food Seduction that an April 2000 survey of 1,244 adults showed that when offered $1,000 to stop eating meat for a week, 25 percent of those asked would not “swap meat for cash.” It was interesting that people from Hispanic and Asian backgrounds were more willing to accept this hypothetical offer (probably because fruits and vegetables are more a part of their indigenous diet), with less than 10 percent turning it down, but Caucasians and Afro-Americans turned down the $1,000 approximately 25 percent of the time.
What is the issue here? Why does meat seem so addictive, … because indeed it is.
Meat, as we pointed out earlier, has a high insulin index. One quarter pound of meat creates the same insulin response in the body as a quarter pound of sugar. This insulin appears to be involved in the release of dopamine, which is the pleasure-stimulating neurotransmitter that is also activated by the opiates, nicotine, cocaine, alcohol, amphetamines, and dairy (as pointed out earlier, dairy has a particular casomorphin that is one-tenth the strength of pure morphine). When researchers from Edinburgh, Scotland, blocked meat’s opiate effect, it cut the appetite for ham by 10 percent, salami by 25 percent, and tuna by a whopping 50 percent.
Not only do humans become addicted to animal products, but sheep, which are herbivores, and parrots, which are frugivores, can also become habituated to a diet of flesh. During their long sea voyages, the Nordics discovered that when the lambs on board the ships were induced to eat meat and fish, they became habituated to it. Upon arriving on land the lambs no longer desired their natural diet of grass. Horses are often fed fish and can be habituated to enjoy it, even though this is an unnatural food for them. Frugivorous parrots can be taught to eat and relish animal foods, as well. In other words, these animals that were on a natural live-plant-only diet became physiologically addicted to a diet of flesh foods.
As pointed out in Breaking the Food Seduction, sugar, as well as chocolate, releases natural opiates in the brain. In this case we are talking about endorphins, which are relatives of opiates in their chemical structure. These endorphins activate the dopamine neurotransmitter system, which activates the pleasure centers of the brain. The opiate effect of sugar, according to the general research, may be triggered even by the mere taste of sugar, before the insulin-dopamine response occurs. Carbohydrate-rich foods boost another neurotransmitter, serotonin, which helps with mood and sleep.
Wheat, and particularly the gluten part of the wheat, is metabolized into at least eleven different opiates.
It is for these reasons that this year of support to break our addiction to the foods offered in the Culture of Death is so crucial.
The author, an internationally recognized spiritual teacher, psychiatrist, and family therapist who developed and teaches in the Zero Point Process Intensive, has this to say about it:
Zero Point assists clients in: clearing emotional and mental blocks, psychosomatic problems, food and other addictions; loving ourselves and overcoming the subtle resistance to healing from diabetes; dissolving co-dependent and unhealthy relationship patterns; and ultimately aligning with our sacred design so we may become the full living truth of who we are. The Zero Point Process Intensive opens the door to clarity and freedom from the mind’s preoccupation with its own addictive psycho-emotional patterns. Zero Point helps participants awaken from the dream state that we are separate from the One. It helps one to understand that the personality is a case of mistaken identity and to be able to open to all of life. Although it is not taught as a spiritual path, it is a powerful spiritual process that supports the spiritual process of all paths and religious traditions.”
The fundamental understanding that we gain in Zero Point is that the personality is a case of mistaken identity. To be free, we must transcend our personal, cultural, archetypical, and even our spiritual identities. We are not our thoughts, minds, or bodies. This awareness results in a completely new orientation in life. The process allows us to enter in the dual/non-dual synchronicity in which we have our personalities and archetypes without being them.
Once we understand that our thoughts have no power over us, we are free to dissolve them as needed. By dissolving what we are not, we come to the indescribable awareness of who we are. This internal change in one’s cosmic world perspective opens the way to enter into the flow of a God-centered life. Life’s struggles then cease. We are free to follow the flow of our destiny in a way that manifests our sacred design, our true expression in the world.
Freedom has no history, future, or present. Freedom is alone, empty, and without adjectives. What is important is to be the Truth in every moment, not to seek the Truth. Being present gives us the freedom not to be captured by the mind and its preoccupation with itself, the past, present, or future, or its relationship with the world. We are awakened from our trance and liberated from the entrapment of our stories.
The Zero Point process allows our mind to become open like the sky, which holds the sun, moon, stars, clouds, rain, snow, or just pure blue. Becoming the sky, we care not for which of these appear; we develop the room for all to pass through.
With these tools we are now empowered to embrace our destiny and our lives without fear, hesitation, or resistance. Freed from the slavery of the mind, we can live our lives in celebration, subtle non-causal joy, inner contentment, and the bliss of freedom.
GABRIEL COUSENS, MD
The foundation of the Conscious Eating Training at the Tree of Life Café is to create food for the support of consciousness awakening. Conscious eating begins with conscious food preparation. Studies have shown that our intentions influence the smallest particles of creation. In living food, water crystalline structures take on the energy of our presence, as well as the energy of the environment wherein it is being prepared. At the Tree of Life Café, our live-food creations vibrate with a deeply healing energy that affects all levels of creation.
The focus of this six-day experiential course is to share with students the power of remaining present in our hearts while preparing food. This is the true essence of conscious food preparation. This exciting intensive guides you through the basics of conscious live-food preparation while immersing you in the Tree of Life experience.
The course content includes:
Educational lectures are by Gabriel Cousens and the Tree of Life Café staff on the following topics:
I have done fasting, yoga and meditation before, but never on the level of competence and integrity Dr. Cousens and his staff have designed to address medical, emotional and spiritual concerns in one fully integrated, lovingly supportive program.
G. L. D., PHD, TUCSON, ARIZONA
Hosted by Gabriel and Shanti Gold-Cousens, longtime experienced juice fasters, this retreat applies spiritual juice fasting to unblock the divine source of youth, vitality, and transformation. On the Spiritual Fasting Retreat, we release our resistance to healing, and open the body and mind to awakening to the Truth of who we are. Through the process of non-attachment to physical food, we open to spiritual nourishment and enjoy the spiritual feast of the four elements of air, earth (juices), water, and the sun (fire). Gabriel and Shanti participate in the group fast, teaching yoga on all levels of being. The Spiritual Fasting Retreat is the ultimate journey to the warrior within—inward and beyond to the One. During the retreat we offer the following:
The Spiritual Fasting Retreat, with deep meditation sessions, allows you to connect to your Divine Truth and personal holy rhythm
Spiritual fasting is a mystical death and rebirth into the arms of God. Spiritual fasting brings you into the pleasure of the Divine. You do not know what feeling good is until you fast.
GABRIEL COUSENS, MD
Know one’s self as a sacred child of the Divine, and explore the universe as a sensuous, wild, passionate, abundant playground. Master the art of Sacred Relationship and invoking Divine Union in every moment. Embark upon an intimate journey unleashing the dynamic forces of love, as body, mind, and spirit merge as a continual expression of subtle ecstasy.
GABRIEL COUSENS, MD
The Sacred Relationships course is one of Gabriel and Shanti’s favorite and most fun workshop to teach. Together, they weave a matrix of luminous love that inspires and supports all to find the flame of Divine Love within their own hearts. Couples explore the mysteries of intimacy as a spiritual path in which they are taught how to invoke the Divine in their relationship. Gabriel and Shanti help couples to awaken and strengthen the spiritual force in their relationships, which brings the healing of male and female energies on the planet in the process of returning to the One.
To broaden the community of support and create a collectivized experience in living in the Culture of Life, the Tree of Life is host to Interdependence Day on the July 4th weekend each year with David Wolfe and Gabriel Cousens. The Tree of Life also hosts a Thanksgiving potluck, open and free to the public. In 2006, nearly 200 people gathered at Thanksgiving to celebrate their gratitude for a nutrient-dense diet of plant foods, healthy living, a better planet, and for the community of people living in the Culture of Life as an Act of Love.
When we quit thinking only about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of con-sciousness.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL
Through living in the Culture of Life we become potentialists, seeing the true capabilities of everyone, individually and collectively. Remember not to worry about your ability to eat a low-glycemic Culture of Life cuisine. Who you are now, and the you that will arise through the Tree of Life 21-Day+ Program and living the Culture of Life—those are two different people who will see with unique eyes. You will experience a physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual shift in yourself as you realize your own true potential at each of these levels, living with a mind, body, and spirit that asks for the best things possible to enter your life.
We eat and live in the Culture of Life as an Act of Love and Consciousness, aware that happiness is not an individual matter, that we are each a person of great import who can be vibrant and healthy, free of diabetes, and inspiring self-confidence, joy, and hope in others. We can do this just by the very simple act of living an authentic existence that acknowledges who we are—organic plant-eaters who want to move beyond the processed diabetogenic realities of “modern” living to a Culture of Life in which few are ill, we honor the inheritance of our ancestors, we create a world that is safe for the health of future generations, and all are fed the best food possible.