The Fresh Network Blog

Home poisonous home?

We often think of home as a safe and secure place, but our homes could be poisoning us. So what do we do? Philip Weeks explains all

We may think that toxins and harmful chemicals are solely a result of environmental pollution in the outside world. However, our homes can contain many damaging and potentially detrimental influences, which could severely degrade our health. The air pollution within our homes can be many times, even hundreds of times greater than outside. This can be a significant factor in the area of health, especially as the average person spends 90% of their time indoors.

Channelling Spring Energy into Positive Lifestyle Changes

by Saskia Fraser

Spring is a time of renewal and rebirth.  What better time of year to renew your positive resolutions and birth a happier and healthier version of yourself?  Embrace spring’s energy and channel it into shedding negative self-perceptions and embodying a new self-identity that’s empowering and positive.

Through my own journey, and coaching my clients, I’ve come to realise that we often get stuck around self-identity.  We’ve been developing and honing our self-identity since we were born.  As we get older, we get stuck in the subconscious belief that our self-identity is unchangeable and inflexible.  ‘I am a stressed person’; ‘I’m undisciplined’; ‘I’m fat’; ‘I’m not clever enough’; ‘I’m not attractive’.  Beliefs like these serve to keep us stuck and unhappy, disconnecting us from our innate potential for joy and from being the best we can be.

Protecting your health freedom - what YOU can do

Last week we posted an in-depth article on the widespread legislative attempts to curtail our health freedom - moves which are dressed up as being for our protection but which in reality benefit only the world's biggest food, agribusiness, biotech and pharmaceutical companies.

You can read the article here and if you haven't already we really recommend that you do if your freedom to source the best and most natural foods, supplements and medicines (as well as accurate information about their benefits) is important to you. Today we bring you the promised follow-up - our guide to what YOU can do about the challenges outlined in last week's article.

1. Inform yourself, and others, about the issues using reliable sources such as the European and US websites of Alliance for Natural Health International (www.anh-europe.org and www.anh-usa.org respectively) and the official Codex website (www.codexalimentarius.net). As mentioned earlier, inaccurate information or disinformation can do more harm than good.

2. Support Alliance for Natural Health International’s efforts to protect your health freedom with a donation, and consider making it a regular one. You can make an online donation at
www.anh-europe.org/donate or www.anh-usa.org/donate.

3. Take responsibility for your own health, foster awareness and lead by example.

4. Eat a diet that’s made up largely of local or regional organic/biodynamic/sustainable whole foods, including heirloom varieties (and if you are able to cultivate such foods, better still).

5. How you spend your money is one of the most powerful ways of bringing about change. Support local and community based food production systems by shopping at farmers’ markets, farm shops and local organic stores.

Natural health - protecting YOUR right to choose

This week the US House of Representatives passed a 'food safety' bill that looks likely to force many small organic farmers out of business and thereby massively restrict the availability of local, organic produce. This is just one of an ongoing series of legislative measures worldwide that has been presented as being in the public interest but that, in reality, protects only the interests of the world's largest food, biotech and/or pharma companies.

The Winter issue of Get Fresh! magazine (which mailed out to subscribers this Wednesday, incidentally) carries an in-depth round-up of the most pressing issues affecting our health freedom, and what we can do about them. To ensure the most accurate and up-to-date information on this topic we went straight to one of the world's most vocal and respected health freedom campaigners - Dr Robert Verkerk, founder and executive director of Alliance for Natural Health International. Here is an excerpt from editor Sarah Best's interview with him.

Sarah Best: Let’s start with the big-picture view. What are the biggest threats to our health freedom right now? If 'the powers that be' are successful in all they are currently trying to achieve, what health freedoms that we take for granted now will we no longer have, say, five years down the line?

Dr Robert Verkerk: Unfortunately, it’s not scaremongering to say that our ability to care for our own health as we see fit is under the greatest threat in our history. The screws are being tightened in every direction.

We hear all the time from regulators – whether trading blocs like the EU or supranational organisations like Codex Alimentarius – that “the public must be protected” through comprehensive new legislation. However, when you actually look at the proposed or existing laws, it’s frighteningly obvious that the only people being protected are those in the big corporations. Their power and ability to reap enormous profits from our healthcare will be very safe indeed if they achieve their aims!

In short, the main problems in the EU come from EU-based legislation that will, amongst other things, (a) ban many thousands of herbal medicinal products from May 2011, (b) set unscientifically low limits on doses of vitamins and minerals in food supplements, and (c) ban any claim about the benefits of foods or food ingredients, unless pre-approved by EU authorities according to very narrow criteria that are often impossible to achieve.

These laws are already in place, but their provisions are in a ‘sleeping’ or transitional phase to give manufacturers and suppliers time to adjust to the radical changes. They will come fully into force after preset time periods – for example, the three legislative catastrophes I've just outlined are expected to become fully operational EU-wide in the narrow window between May 2011 and December 2012. We refer to this as “boiling the frog slowly” – the changes are made gradually and incrementally, so that people don’t notice what’s going on until it’s too late. We’re pretty much at that point now.

The tests that can take the guesswork out of your health regime

Did you know that there are safe – yet extremely under-utilised – tests that can give you valuable feedback about what is going on in your cells, and help you establish which diet and lifestyle will be optimal for you? Nutritional therapist Niki Gratrix reports.

I am excited to be sharing information in this article which is literally at the cutting edge of nutrition and really gives the reader a glimpse into the future direction of this field. This information is very timely and appropriate for those interested in optimum health and raw food. While disagreement continues to rage within the field about what is the “best” diet, in this article I’ll run through the tests which can help you to discover whether or not a particular diet and lifestyle is right for you. 

I’ll be covering two categories of tests in this article. First, some basic “functional” tests which you can use to get information about your level of health before a diagnosable disease state occurs. They can also help you establish if your diet and lifestyle are leading to any deficiencies or imbalances.

At the moment, functional testing is greatly under-utilised by those interested in optimum health and well-being. This is partly because some of the tests that can be really useful have to be paid for, and – in the UK anyway – we’re all used to getting healthcare for free on the NHS. In addition, increased regulation means that these tests can only be ordered by qualified practitioners. There is no direct advertising about them to the public, so they are little known about. 

Yet there are some fantastic tests out there which can give you valuable objective feedback as to how well balanced you are biochemically, and take the guesswork out of your diet and lifestyle choices. Sometimes, having a result in black and white can really motivate you to complete the regime or make the changes you need to. Other times it can confirm you really have cleared that parasite or candida now, or the other goal you were trying to achieve, so there’s no need for the strict diet or supplements any longer.

Dairy didn't work for me, says Debbie Took

2010 has been a year of fierce debate among raw food fans about whether or not our optimal diet is a vegan one. We first chimed in on this topic in January with our article Why the shift away from veganism in the raw world?, and again in February when Doug Graham and Thomas Billings debated the topic in the article Is 100% raw vegan our optimal diet? Later that month we revisited it in Are YOU getting enough vitamin D?

Popular raw food blogger Debbie Took contributed interesting material to the debate in March and April when she announced that she had tested below the normal range in vitamin B12 - B12 being one of the biggest deficiency risks among vegans. 

A raw vegan for around three and a half years at the time, she was forced to choose between taking supplements - something she didn't believe in - and compromising on the vegan part - something else she was dead set against doing. She tells the full story around this tough decision in her articles Debbie Does B12 Part 1 and Part 2.

She eventually decided that compromising on the vegan part was the lesser of two evils - largely because it was the more natural solution of the two - and she added a little soft cheese to her diet. However, she found raw cheese near impossible to source, and as for ethically produced - that unfortunately does not exist at this time. So she was forced to compromise not only on (1) her vegan diet but also on (2) her raw diet and (3) her strong desire not to cause suffering to other sentient beings. Nonetheless, for a while this decision still seemed to be the best option available to her.

However, Debbie privately emailed me an update recently, and I asked her permission to share this information with you, as it is written with such honesty and openness. At a time when there is still so much we don't know about optimum nutrition, all such accounts have something to teach us, and I know this one will resonate with many of you. Debbie kindly agreed to have her comments made public, and you can read them by clicking below. Thank you, Debbie, for sharing your experiences with me, and with our readers.

Let food be thy medicine

Dr Brian Clement makes the case for eating for health, not recreation.

From the time we are babies, food is presented to us as a mechanism for pleasure and emotional sedation. The first drug pushers we meet are most often our parents. When we please them, they offer us sweets. When we disappoint them, these addictive foods are withheld. When we go out into the world on our own, most of us continue the learned unhealthy pattern of eating to pacify uncomfortable feelings. Consciously or unconsciously, we use food as a tool for veiling the emotional brokenness that we suffer.

Some of us are later provoked into leaving the standard fare of our heritage. If we are lucky, we springboard into the universe of natural whole foods and if we’re luckier still, we eventually arrive at the realm of raw foods. But unfortunately, our unhealthy emotional patterns around food often continue to prevail. Rather than traditional white refined sugar, we use sugar called agave (or other concentrated sweeteners, or bags of dried fruit). When these foods are consumed habitually, they create much the same disconnected consciousness refined sugar does.

The same goes for fats, which we formerly consumed from meats, gravies, butter, ice cream, and so on, and now derive from large amounts of oils, nuts and seeds, often mixed together in heavy concoctions. And raw chocolate, in my opinion, is like methadone for chocoholics. 

The case of Dr Sarah Myhill

By Sarah Best.

Sarah Myhill is a GP in private practice who left the National Health Service (NHS) so she would have more freedom in how she works with her patients. Her apparently controversial approach to medicine focuses on identifying the underlying causes of illness and making recommendations about nutrition and other holistic interventions – in conjunction with pharmaceutical drugs, if there are science-based reasons for including those in the treatment programme. Myhill specializes in ME/CFS and has treated many patients of this illness (and other illnesses) who will tell you in no uncertain terms that they owe their restored health to her.

So why is it that last Thursday, Dr Myhill was forced to defend herself at a hearing in front of the General Medical Council (GMC) for the seventh time since 2001? That is a hard question to answer when, astoundingly, no patient has ever complained to the GMC about Myhill. All the hearings have been prompted by complaints from other doctors – except this last hearing, which was prompted by one complaint from doctors, and another from a member of the public about information on her website. 

Interview with Rozalind Graham

Professor Rozalind Graham spent 18 years as one of the most active writers and speakers on the raw food circuit. She is revered as much for redefining what constitutes compassionate living as for her straight-talking logic in matters of nutrition and health. Her husband is raw food promoter Dr Douglas Graham and for the last five years she has been a full-time mother to their daughter, Faychesca. She rarely writes these days and if you have made it to one of her few speaking engagements you should count yourself lucky. In this exclusive interview, she talks to Sarah Best about her own transition to raw foods, and shares her insights into the reasons behind disordered eating, and the importance of reconnecting with our true nature.

You’ve been following the raw vegan diet for over 23 years and in that time you’ve also been one of the world’s leading promoters of it. But I think it’s accurate to say you first started out on the alternative lifestyle path for compassionate reasons rather than health ones?

Yes. As I grew up I started to become more and more aware of what I now call congruency, although I didn’t have a word for it at the time. I had a deep, deep love of animals so I knew it wasn’t appropriate to be causing suffering to these precious beings by eating them. I honestly don’t remember what age I was when I went vegetarian, but I do know I was just a child.

What led you from vegetarianism (and later veganism) to discovering and adopting the raw diet and lifestyle?

As a young adult I was teaching exercise classes and one of my students was an Anglo-Indian lady. When she started coming she was quite heavy and didn’t look very well. She was absent for some time and one day I was in the supermarket and I bumped trolleys with a stunning woman – sparkling eyes, amazing skin, shiny hair. I knew I knew her but couldn’t work out from where. When she told me who she was I was astounded and I had to ask her, “What’s your secret – it obviously wasn’t my classes!” She put a copy of the book Fit For Life in my trolley, told me to “Read that,” kissed me on the cheek and left!

Kris Carr's casting call

In our recent interview with Kris Carr we broke the news that the Crazy Sexy Cancer creator has "a development deal with a major TV network". We can now reveal that the network in question is the new Oprah Winfrey Network. Go Kris!

They are shooting a pilot soon and looking for people Kris can transform. Here is the casting call: "Are you at a personal crossroads? Do you need a major life rejuvenation? Are you a Type A, stressed-out workaholic who puts yourself last? Or are you stuck in a personal rut due to an illness, divorce, care-giving situation or other life lemon? Do you (or someone you know) want to change but don’t know where to begin? If you need that kick-start to live a more empowered, healthy and whole life, we’d like to help!"

Interested? Go here to find out how you can send in your application.

Kris is on a mission to make the world a healthier place and we congratulate her on her biggest achievement yet!