Healing and Optimizing
the Body
As a former pro athlete, a plant-based author and thought leader, and a devoted spiritualist, I have a few key guidelines for optimizing the health and performance of our bodies. Quite conveniently, these steps overlap significantly with those that will most effectively save our natural environment. What this means is that healing the body and healing the planet are intimately interconnected.
Fast
Fasting is the quickest, easiest, most ancient way to heal virtually anything that ails us, and to reboot our "system." Due to a periodic lack of food over recent millennia, humans have evolved to thrive with intermittent fasts. Only when the digestive system shuts down completely (generally for at least 18 hours) can our body "clean house," release toxins, and shift into a state of autophagy where it recycles and removes unwanted materials at a cellular level. The health benefits of this are unparalleled: inflammation and disease causation plummet, human growth hormone skyrockets, insulin sensitivity is restored, energy production increases, and mental acuity and mood is enhanced.
Eat Whole Food & More Plants
An appropriate diet for human beings is much simpler than we are made to think. Eating unprocessed, whole natural foods would alone solve most of our health problems. And plants should make up the bulk of our diets, as they cleanse the body while nourishing it. The fiber and anti-oxidants in plants fight disease, while animal products and sugar tend to fuel disease. Beyond that, through trial and error, each of us must discover how well we tolerate gluten, stimulants, dairy, etc. and limit or include those accordingly.
Detoxify
It's critical to limit the toxins that are clogging and harming the functioning of our bodies, our brains, and even our spiritual capacities. In modern industrial society, toxins are constantly entering our bodies through our lungs, our skin, and especially through our digestive tract. Pesticides, for example, kill the "good" bacteria in our gut which then slows energy production, suppresses our immune system, and decreases serotonin levels. Endocrine disruptors (in plastic, food additives, pharmaceuticals) destabilize hormone levels, causing myriad problems. Minimizing your exposure to and consumption of toxins is critical for optimal health. Occasional cleanses are also essential. Fasts, herbal cleanses, and coffee enemas are excellent, and there are a plethora of other effective options.
Don't Eat Sugar
It sounds simplistic, but its critical. Processed sugar is the poison of our time. It has only existed for a few hundred years, so our bodies don't know how to deal with it. It accelerates the aging process, cognitive decline, obesity, and it is the ideal fuel for virtually all diseases, including our leading killers: heart disease and cancer. For optimal health, the goal is to keep our bodies in an alkaline state, while sugar and animal products (and persistent negative emotions, by the way) are highly acidic.
Exercise & Be in Nature
You incarnated into a physical body -- so activate it, move it, challenge it, and express yourself through it. Physical optimization must include -- but also far surpasses -- physical exercise. Exposing your body to cold, heat, fresh air, and sunshine triggers primal hormonal and biochemical levers. Your body is a part of nature not apart from it. Spend time in wilderness, away from EMFs, where your sensory experience can stimulate healing and reset your main operating system (epigenetic gene signaling, engagement of your subconscious, etc.).