The wonderful world of Holistic Medicine & Raw foods (Part 1)

To those of you who know me you will probably be a little surprised to hear about my recent enthusiasm in the field of holistic medicine. I have never been much for investigating into this field, partly because I never felt a need to, and also because I was never as motivated as I have been recently to.

My holistic experience began when I read a book called "Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips" by Kris Carr (link should bring you to her web page). To those of you who are cancer survivors or who are interested in it you should definitely check it out, it greatly helped me. I picked the book up in the airport on my way to my business trip in Malta the week before I was due to start radiation. I'd heard a few people recommend it, and it's gimmick was that it was a book geared towards women in their 20's and 30's living with and fighting cancer - it sounded right up my alley! :)

I honestly couldn't put the book down. I think I actually finished the entire thing by the time I checked into my hotel in Malta less than a day later. So many pieces of her story rung true to me: the incurable cancer, the Dr. saying well you'll just have to wait and see, the feeling of wanting to do anything anything possible to combat our diseases. It was very uplifting to say the least. I also stumbled up the chapter in her book on health/food/immunotherapy (boosting your immune system to help it fight the good battle) and the idea of the Standard American Diet (acronym SAD -- how apropos) being something that can cause or at least allow disease to eat through your immune system.

From her book I first learned of what's called a "Raw and Living Foods Lifestyle", basically it is a raw vegan lifestyle. No meat, no fish, no dairy, no eggs, no wheat, no processed foods...and here's the bigg-o NOTHING COOKED (well at least not cooked above 112 degrees). She backed up her argument for why this type of lifestyle support building immunity and drowning out cancer cells with some pretty convincing facts, but her opinion alone wasn't enough. I dragged my mom and sisters out to a couple of bookstores the following weekend and bought about 6 books that all talked about the theory and facts behind why eating raw works. Of course there are countless stories of people whose disease essentially disappeared by eating this way, and those always help one who's desolate feel a little better too :). But I was amazed at the amount of chemically intrigueing information was available on the ways the body reacts to cooked food, to non-organic processed items, etc... it was enough evidence and made more than enough sense for me to add this to my repoitoire of armor in my battle.

I started a raw diet about two days after that, during the last week of February, I actually tried to start on Feb 26th (the day after I finished radiation), but sadly my Uncle had just recently passed away and his wake was that evening -- which in my family meant a nice big ole' dinner would help us put a bit of pep in our steps after the solemn evening. So I started the next day :)

So far (I'm giving myself a small pat on the back) I've been doing o.k. with it. By no means am up to doing 100% raw, but I'd say in a typical week its about 80/20 which is a considerable change for anyone. Though as my mom pointed out I do seem to have pretty good will power when it comes to diet changes in my life (for those of you who have seen me lose about 30-35 pounds since Jan 2006 and keep it off since then).

There are quite a few tasty places even in the Boston area to eat out for Raw Food, two of my favorites are:

Grezzo and The Organic Garden

Grezzo is an upscale gourmet raw eating experience and is located in the North End in Boston, and The Organic Garden is a bit more like a regular cafe serving sandwiches, smoothies, pizza, salads, and entrees etc.. up in Beverly, Ma.

More on the rest of my holistic stuff coming up next...