Friday, February 22, 2008

The Ultimate in feeling Groovy: Sunshine
DAY 9 JFP: How To Be A Clever Raw Vegan

Introduction
Hello! How is everyone today? How is your blood sugar? Making you want to Juice Feast? David's has been perfect every morning, well below 85. Mine, well, I have come a long way, let's say that. When I took my FBS for 10 days almost a year ago, I was hitting between 95 and 110, and as I've mentioned before one of the many reasons I went raw was blood sugar. I never knew to take my FBS during my days of dizzy spells and sugar crashes, so I don't know what it was then but I imagine it was a little higher than I'd like to imagine! Now, in the past four mornings we have been doing it, I am between 92 and 85! This morning it was 85, perfect, wonderful, a reason to celebrate! Even though my blood sugar stabilized as soon as I went raw, you can see this raw path creates constant, never ending improvements! I really do feel it emotionally too, when your blood sugar is stable, it is so much easier for emotions to be stable.

Little Side Note: Please do not worry if your blood sugar has been higher than you want to see it. Instead, be very excited and grateful that you are doing wonderful things to create a blood sugar reality that will create optimal health for you, long term!

So sorry to be a day late with this post, but let us put it up anyhow. Today we are going to talk about one of our favorite things: Sunshine! On the topic of sunshine, we will also look at the importance of Vitamin D, which has been at the forefront of some very important and exciting vitamin discoveries of late. And while we’re at it, lets find out the best way that we have discovered to store your juices, and make sure that we have a nice big bowl for juicing into. We are going to be drinking a lot of juice, and that juice has to go somewhere before it goes into us!

We mentioned yesterday that we would be talking about talking about Juice Feasting with friends and loved ones, but this topic is so important that we are going to work on it for a few more days before we put out our thoughts on it. Also please remember, this whole Juice Feasting Prep is a work in progress, soon to be published properly, so thanks for being our guinea pigs dear readers!

New Life Practice
“Separation from sunlight will result in disease, just as surely as will separation from fresh air, food, and water.”
–Dr. Zane Kime

Have you ever craved sunlight the same way that you crave a nutrient or food? Most likely you have, and there is good reason for it! Sunlight causes our bodies to produce vitamin D, which we will see in the supplements section, is a very important vitamin!

Studies show that it is important to get a healthy amount of sunlight each day for ocular, skin, mental, and bone health. In Heliotherapy: The Principles and Practice of Sunbathing by John Fielder, we discover that the sun is a healing agent on many levels that has been known about for millennia. Only recently with the advent of processed foods and the resulting skin cancers has the sun been demonized to such an extent.

Sunlight and Sunbathing
Steve Arlin, in Raw Power! writes: A common myth is that the sun causes skin cancer. The sun doesn’t cause skin cancer, the sun causes all life on Earth! Skin cancer is caused by toxicity within the body. When this toxicity is detoxified through the skin (our largest eliminative organ), it is sometimes “baked” onto the skin, bringing forth a cancer condition. Blaming the sun for skin cancer is like blaming fresh air for lung cancer.

You must have internal protection from the sun’s rays in the form of proper, natural, raw-food nutrition. External “protection” like sunscreen is an abomination. The same internal mechanism that keeps a plant from burning up under the hot sun can keep you from sunburning. A plant is in direct sunlight for hours upon hours every day of its existence. A plant dries up and dies when it no longer has the internal protection that it requires. The second best protection from sunburn is knowing when to retreat to shade for a rest.

There are many, many benefits to getting sunlight on your skin, including lower blood sugar, increased digestive strength, improved eyesight, regulated hormones, reduced funguses, increased healing of surface wounds, and of course, a happier disposition.

I’m sure we’ve all felt the emotional shift that occurs when the sun comes out! There is a reason for the common metaphor of brightened mood being “the clouds clearing” or “it was as though the sun came out!”

Brian Swimme
calls the sun the “cosmic giveaway.” The beautiful, massive star we call the sun is constantly, radiantly, giving away energy. It is energy that we depend on in every aspect of our lives, and without the gift of such energy we would quickly wither away.

Besides sunbathing, which we strongly encourage you to do, another powerful way in which to absorb the energy of the sun is to eat the foods closest to the source of sun energy- raw foods! During this Juice Feast, you are going to be putting so much sunlight into your body through the fresh raw juices you are drinking that you will literally begin to glow like the sun! The green of your leafy greens, chlorophyll, is liquid sunshine in plant form! Yum!

Enjoy the sun, and your JUICES--all-important elements in your Juice Feasting and nutrient-dense diet. Here's to living without fear of the sun!

Kitchen, Bath, and Body

Quart Sized Mason Jars: Wide Mouth.
When Juice Feasting, these jars are excellent for measuring the amount of juice you are drinking, and for taking juice on the go without concern for spillage. Since they are made out of glass, you will not find the taste and health quality of your juices affected by storage in plastic. Mason jars store easily in a cooler, which you may want to use if your juices are going to be a while between juicing and a refrigerator at work. They are also great for mixing in any supportive elements of the fast, such as Green SuperfoodMSM, and so on. The lids seal up tight, so that you won't find your juices spilling all over the place as you take them with you.

When you pick these up at the grocery store or big box store (if necessary) make sure you get a set of wide mouthed mason jars, so that you can fit your hand inside to get them clean. We also suggest that you purchase a case of 12, so that you can always have enough to carry your juice, some are in the sink or dishwasher, and if a few get broken, not big deal. A case should cost around $12, and these are great for taking your smoothies, etc. on the go with you after the Juice Feast.

David and I also use our quart sized jars for our morning quart of water with lemon and MSM. The Mason Jar has become the un-official mascot of Juice Feasting, and I have to say, what a sexy mascot!!

Finally, if you have a Food Saver device, there is an attachment that will allow you to vacuum seal these jars completely. If you can do that, great. It will remove more of the oxygen and keep your juices more vibrant.

Big Bowl or Jug.
If you are going to be of the blending/squeezing juice making type (rather than the juicer juice making type) you are going to need a wide mouthed bowl or jug to squeeze your juice into. We find that something with a opening big enough to surround both your hands while you squeeze works the best, is the least messy, and is the most time efficient. We use our big salad bowl, and squeeze up to four Vita-Mixer full of juice into at once. Then, we pour it into our quart sized mason jars, cap it off, put it in the fridge, and clean up!

Juice Feast
Katrina and her Dad making juice the blending/squeezing way.

Supplements and Superfoods

Vitamin D
One question raw vegans are often asked is about their calcium levels and vitamin D. A recent study was done on raw vegans, and the results on vitamin D levels surprised Dr. Fontana, who headed the study. He wrote:

The [raw vegans] also lacked other biological markers that would signal osteoporosis in other populations. "These people are clever enough to expose themselves to sunlight to increase their concentrations of vitamin D," speculated Dr. Fontana. "I thought vitamin D might have been a problem for them, but it was not."

Those clever vegans! Imagine, getting out in the sunshine for their vitamin D!

Recent Research has shown that adequate Vitamin D Levels reduce the risk of developing cancer of the breast, prostate, colon, and lung by a staggering 77%!

Here is how to do it: If you are light-skinned, 20 minutes of full-body exposure each day will do it. If you are dark skinned, your absorption of Vitamin D is not as good. This is okay if you live in a climate where you are in the sun much of the day, but if you are not, then supplementation with Vitamin D is of the utmost importance. On the days/months that you are not able to get adequate sun exposure, you can take 1,000 - 3,000 IU of Vitamin D each day.

More detailed information on Vitamin D can be found in my file on D that I have for you to download on Day 67, containing excellent information from The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., Conscious Eating by Gabriel Cousens, M.D., and much more

Exercise
Oh the ease of sunbathing! (Yes, we can call this an exercise!) Such a wonderful exercise, anyone will enjoy doing it. You can also rebound, walk, skip, do yoga, run, lift weights, dance, nap, read, lay in a hammock, and drink your juice in the sunshine for a double whammy excellence.

Multimedia
Have you checked out Mike Adam’s site yet? If not, you are in for a treat. Go to www.naturalnews.com and search around, and why not look around for more info on vitamin D? There is a lot of excellent information there!

What’s Ahead
Tomorrow we will re-visit the enema kit! Have you practiced with yours yet? We will also look at our favorite oil, from the beautiful nut called Coco. Coconut oil is wonderful in many ways, you will see!

That’s all for now, check back later today for Day 8 JFP (I’m going to go work on it right now!)

Blessings,

David and Katrina Rainoshek

PS. Today I made amaZING juice with a very LARGE piece of ginger, and WOW what a ZING! 1 cucumber, 1 head of celery, 1 big piece of ginger (2” fat piece), 6 carrots, 1 lb mixed greens, 4 leaves kale, 5 oranges, and ½ cup of water to get the blend going. Makes just over 2 quarts of ZINGerful juice. Enjoy!

1 comment:

NifteThrifte said...

I do agree that the mason jar IS one sexy mascot! To answer your previous question, yes I will be joining you in GJF! I feel much more prepared now than I was when my youtube videos were up and thanks to you, I'm sure I will follow this feast wherever my body leads me! I will be blogging it and probily be doing some youtube videos also. I'm so excited! It's just around the corner!