So you’ve heard the rumours then? Eating raw food not only makes you feel great because you have more energy, but eating a balanced high raw food diet also helps you feel happy, calm and in control of your life; it gives you clarity and focus AND helps you reach your natural body weight while looking younger than you have in years. So what is it that’s so miraculous about raw food that it can do all these things for you just by changing the way you eat?
Detoxification
Eating a high raw diet is naturally detoxifying. This means that the cleanness of raw food gives your body space to start getting rid of toxins that your body has been storing for years. It is common for people to experience the taste of medicines they took 10 years ago or the symptoms of an illness they had as a child when they start detoxing, as the body releases stuff that it’s been holding in ‘safe storage’ until it had the space to process it out of the body. Illness can often be driven deeper into the body by drugs because they tend to deal with the symptoms rather than the cause of the problem in the first place. And so this is why I’ve been able to help clients heal their asthma and come off their inhalers, get rid of period pain so they no longer have to take pain killers, reduce cholesterol so they no longer need to take their cholesterol drugs, regain natural thyroxin levels etc. etc. with raw food. For those of us with less serious symptoms of a toxic system, such as low energy, erratic moods and aching joints, raw food can quickly and easily reverse what you may have started putting down to the aging process. STOP! Our bodies are designed to age both fit and healthy, not with pain and depression, not with illness and the feeling of ‘it’s all down hill from here’. Raw food is a tool by which you can regain control of the health and vitality that’s naturally yours by eating a cleansing diet that aids, not hinders, energy, healing and rejuvenation.
Enzymes, Digestive Load and Your Metabolism
We all need enzymes to thrive and survive. They are called ‘the spark of life’ because we need enzymes for every single metabolic process in our bodies – the whole range of biochemical processes that occur within us to keep us alive.
There are 3 types of enzymes. Two of these we are born with and have a finite amount of: metabolic enzymes and digestive enzymes. Our metabolic enzymes heal and regenerate cells (amongst other things) and our digestive enzymes are used to digest food. If your body’s supply of digestive enzymes gets low (which tends to happen on a cooked diet) it pulls on your precious metabolic enzymes to help in the digestion and assimilation of food, taking them away from the very important work of healing and regenerating your cells.
And this is where the 3rd type of enzymes come in. This 3rd category of enzymes are known as food enzymes, contained in raw foods not heated above 40 degrees C/110 degrees F (this is a safe limit for keeping food enzymes alive) and completely destroyed by cooking. One of the main purposes of food enzymes is to aid the digestion of food. This means that we then use less of our finite digestive enzymes up each time we eat, which in turn means that our metabolic enzymes are not called away from their primary work of keeping the body vital and healthy. And this is why people who eat a balanced raw food diet generally look younger than their years – because the food they eat adds enzymes to the digestive mix rather than pulling metabolic enzymes away from their healing and regenerating duties. Younger skin, agility and flexibility and shining hair are all signs that your metabolic enzymes are able to do their jobs efficiently and that your digestive system is working as it should.
The body uses a huge amount of energy digesting most cooked foods (and some raw foods). Think of how you or folk you know get sleepy after a big Sunday lunch. This is because the body is directing a vast amount of its energy to your digestive system to deal with the meal that’s just been eaten. In comparison, after a high raw meal you will find that your energy actually rises and you want to get up and do things or engage in lively conversation, because your body is able to usefully utilise the energy (fuel) that you have just ingested.
Nutrients & bio-availability
Raw food generally contains far greater amounts of bio-available nutrients than cooked foods. Bio-available means in a form that your body can directly utilise without having to waste precious energy transforming food into a more useful form to then be used in metabolic processes. For example, meat contains complex proteins that the body needs to break down into individual amino acids before it can use the nutrition from the meat. This requires more metabolic energy to assimilate, compared with the simple plant proteins (amino acids) available in nuts and seeds, sprouted seeds and pulses, greens etc. which the body can use directly. So eating raw food with its bio-available nutrients frees up your body’s energy to be directed to the healing, regeneration and detoxification that it’s naturally designed to do.
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