Unusual Medical Exam - Great Results

How Not To Die, by Michael Gregor

I went to my annual medical exam with an unusual response. The doctor is one of the best. We enjoyed the previous one, where I noted how he observed my high blood sugar and my lower cholesterol. Yes, I put lots of walnut halves on my vanilla ice cream.

The shock came from him handing me an envelope with three checks in it. Those checks had been left for him after my previous exam - one year before. I give books away. I was sure he would like How Not To Die, by Michael Gregor M.D.. He read it completely - "That is the best medical book anywhere!" Because he was away from the front desk when I left the book, he did not allow anyone to name the three people.

The exam was filled with laughter about the checks and the latest results. I started a sensible diet over three years - from 215 pounds of ice cream and pizza to 160 pounds of leafy greens, spinach especially, all kinds of vegetables, fresh or frozen fruit, nuts and spices.

I did not have all the latest results, but I will soon get the print-out, predictable but enjoyable facts to observe. God's Creation gives us the power to use what He gives us, who would gladly make His handywork our nutrition. 

By Request - Charlie Sue Stew

 

The two nutritionist authors I follow are Joel Fuhrman and Michael Greger. The Fuhrman books are more practical. Greger is filled with the fine points and scientific surveys - with easy to follow instant questions answered here -

Friends were here for some improvements, and they really liked the aroma of Creation Stew. We had talked earlier about nutrition, and they asked for the recipe, which I am revealing today, the way I make it.

Charlie Sue Stew

I use a two-quart pan and serve half for morning and the other half for late afternoon.

1. Water in the pan floats the blueberries and walnuts. The blueberries are good against cancer and walnuts are great in lowering cholesterol. Some people do not tolerate walnuts so that should be noted.
2. Initial spices are turmeric, mustard, and fresh ground pepper. Turmeric is a ginger and very good against pain, etc. Mustard is good for crucifer vegetables. Ground pepper is good for improving turmeric.
3. Charlie Sue waits for her meat portion, sliced ham at the moment and sausage for backup. She gets initial samples and then more when I am eating the stew.
4. Frozen, chopped, leafy greens are zero-caloried, lacking salt, and loaded with nutrition. Kale is primary and spinach secondary. Keep stirring. 
5. I add spices and stir greens in - cumin (backbone of stew flavor), cinnamon (enhancer), Italian seasoning (very popular), bagel seasoning (adding garlic, etc), curry (very good), marjoram, and ground cardamom. Results vary from day to day, and that is more fun than fishing the frozen lakes of Minnesota, eh?.
6. Charlie Sue gets impatient at this point and leaves for her queen sized bed.
7. Tomato paste is the best base for this stew - texture, flavor, and nutritious tomatoes. I almost forgot...
8. What I add after spices and leafy greens will vary for each meal.
9. Mushrooms are anti-cancer and a pleasant addition to the food.
10. Onions are delicious and often paired with green peppers. Similar vegetables share and swap anti-oxidants, so I pull bags out of the freezer and put them back in small amounts.
11. Frozen peas are my life-long favorite. That includes the flavor, fiber, and protein.
12. Brussel sprouts are high on the list as a crucifer and fun/soft to chew.
13. I do NOT use "seasoned" frozen food because it is simply frozen vegetables with salt and pepper added - for a very expensive frozen food.

The variations are fun to make and delicious to crave. Here are some bad ideas, lacking nutritional value and loaded with -

Oil, shortening, butter, eggs, milk products.

Artificial sweeteners, sugar, corn syrup.

Prepared foods - breads, crackers, Fritos, pizza, all desserts.

Medicine versus the Pharmacy - Three Categories

 

Hard Candy and Sugar Syrup

Many forms of sugar are dispensed promiscuously in the pharmacy, since family drugstores faded away decades ago. Some cough syrups have pungent flavors that make the hard candy or syrup seem medicinal. Their value is psychological. Hard candy means "hard to stop eating."

Prescribed Pills and Shots To Reduce Symptoms

These are wonderful, because they devour medicine costs via the back door, through medical insurance, Medicare, and gubmint welfare plans. Many cost as much as a jet fighter or even an aircraft carrier in the Navy. Best of all, prescriptions beget prescriptions, either by adding even more items - or by playing prescription roulette, where the potions are magical, mystical, and an endless source for conversations.

Vegetables and Fruit

Visit a Walmart to compare inexpensive medicine from Creation (vegetables and fruit) with the stupendous aisles of:

• Chips, cookies, soft drinks, desserts, and ice cream.
• Milk, cheese, variations of cheese, and eggs.
• Candy, wine, and ready to eat or heat dinners, even pizza and chickendale dinners.

The shock - which came late in life for me - is the low cost and mega-value of nutrition - at the bottom of cost but the height of effectiveness. 

The way to quell the craving for desserts is to load up on fresh fruits, which are quite filling and preventative - even curing - for many ailments. Chew an apple or a vitamin pill - who wins the most and pays the least?

Greens should be eaten daily because they have so much nutritional energy - kale, spinach, collards, and various leafy items. Our beloved country has dedicated itself to fiber - smoking marijuana, once manufactured for fibrous ropes. 

Fiber makes it possible for the body to slowly engage in re-arranging the various ingredients in beans, peas, carrots, onions, fruits, and many more items. A fast-food meal will provide little of what the human body needs, but lots of sugars, fats, and grease, which become addictive.

Protein is found in beans, but many other plant medicines too. 

Healthline -

Chick peas packed with nutrients

Chickpeas boast an impressive nutritional profile.

They contain a moderate number of calories, providing 269 per cup (164 grams). Approximately 67% of these calories come from carbs, while the rest comes from protein and fat (1Trusted Source).

Chickpeas also provide a variety of vitamins and minerals, as well as a decent amount of fiber and protein. A 1-cup (164-gram) serving of cooked chickpeas offers (1Trusted Source). Healthline

• Calories: 269
• Protein: 14.5 grams
• Fat: 4 grams
• Carbs: 45 grams
• Fiber: 12.5 grams
• Manganese: 74% of the Daily Value (DV)
• Folate (vitamin B9): 71% of the DV
• Copper: 64% of the DV
• Iron: 26% of the DV
• Zinc: 23% of the DV
• Phosphorus: 22% of the DV
• Magnesium: 19% of the DV
• Thiamine: 16% of the DV
• Vitamin B6: 13% of the DV
• Selenium: 11% of the DV
• Potassium: 10% of the DV

Walnuts and certain seeds are included in these plant-based programs.

All the Nutrition And Weight Loss Books Distilled in One Post

 

These Are the Bad Categories - Easy To Remember To Avoid

Dairy 

Milk products - milk, cream, ice cream, cheeses, cottage cheese, yogurt. The fat content is high and the protein is over-done, except for baby cows.

Eggs

Eggs are very satisfying but loaded with fat.  They attract salt the way milk attracts sugar, which is not good.

Prepared And Fast-Food Meals, Often Frozen

Swanson TV Dinners bequeathed the Swanson House in Fayetteville to M/M Bill Clinton  (not my fault). The Jacksons ate those salted up frozen dinners while watching TV in the 1950s. Lots of salt and a tiny dessert. 

Frozen pizza - easy to microwave, loaded with cheese, salt, and fat.

Fast-food joints - the product is delivered to the little restaurants, thawed and often soaked in grease to make them delicious (ha!). Lots of salt is used in them and on them, with the addition of mustard (salt) and ketchup (salt) etc. Anything made in a real restaurant is far worse in fast-foods. Sugar and sweeteners add to the disaster.

Candy and Treats - Heavy with Sugar, Salt, and Fat

Candy and treats are mostly sugar and oil, often stale but who cares when the cravings crave and no one is watching? The main advantage in retail is their high volume, high cost, and long shelf life, or rather, stale life. The instant jolt of sugar is enhanced with fat and some salt. Added nuts make sweets look more like food. 

The candy aisle at Walmart is simply gigantic, competing with only small areas of various frozen vegetables and fruits, tip-toing into ready made versions (seasoned? you mean salted!). A dash of salt vastly increases frozen food prices and profits.

Stop! Lots of Nutrition Below in Simple Categories

Fresh Produce - Paradise Forgotten

The best part of a grocery store is filled with apples, oranges, peaches, berries of all types, pineapples, bananas, vegetables, and more. The juices are merely colorful delicious sugar water but not nutrition.

Note that cashiers are appalled that a septuagenarian is filling his cart first with fruit, especially apples, bananas, blueberries, and oranges. Fresh fruit makes up two out of three meals each day, which means an enormous amount of God's Medicine is being consumed. 

The pharmacy knows - most of their products are very expensive but seldom heal, and only treat symptoms. Cough syrup is a sweet potion that can make matters worse not better. Apples help - a lot. 

Enormous jars of powdered protein (milk) are sold in pharmacy, without doubting the long-term effects. Numerous over-the-counter meds and magic formulae make much more money to the store than fresh produce. 

Greens and the Incredible Creation Factory 

As far as I know, lettuce is worthless, except for decoration on a plate.

In contrast, leafy greens are ignored, shunned, and ridiculed. Whether fresh or frozen, leafy greens are the Mayo Clinic of genuine healing and strength.

Let's be frank, even when Frank is not frank anymore, but calls himself Franklin.  God has given us the miraculous system of turning delicious foods into effective medicines of all types.

Without asking, the body starts the use of foods by chewing, swallowing, and mixing in the stomach. Shamelessly, the body shifts the food into the small and large intestines. This slow process allows the bacteria and other helpers take apart food, to combine what is needed at the right point. Fiber and resistant starch slow down the action that turns food into healing and support for the body.

My blood results were horrible in 2022. Worst was blood sugar in the diabetic range, with cholesterol and blood pressure high. I was eating walnuts to reduce cholesterol, but I always enjoyed them on vanilla ice cream, sometimes taking second helpings. The doctor saw great results later, and his successor was equally astonished - 40 pounds of fat storage gone from a menu of greens, beans, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and some meat.

Dr. Joel Fuhrman's book convinced me about leafy greens and the enormous internal factory provided by all the foods I used to ignore in favor of fast-food joints, ice cream, candy, donuts, pizza, colas, and similar low nutrition foods. The medicinal value of  greens, beans, vegetables, and nuts is difficult to comprehend in variety and power. Best of all, eating valuable foods changes the craving to modest amounts of all those things generously given by the Creator for our benefit.

Ever-Changing Ichabode Health Ideas

 

"Mom, I am only going to eat one at a time."

I could  conjure up a number of dazzling recipes and diet catastrophes. Instead, I am going to list some basics that are easy to follow and use with steady (not roaring) success.

1. In early 2022, I began weighing myself daily and posting it on Google calendar, using lb to accumulate ups and downs. 215 lb was the starter, though I recall it being higher but not written down earlier.

2. I read Dr. Joel Fuhrman repeatedly, which opened my eyes to the value of basic nutrition and the folly of my Standard American Diet (SAD). I still read Fuhrman and added Dr. Michael Greger to my row of nutrition books.

3. I was eating walnuts daily (YAY!) but I always used them on ice cream (BOO!) My cholesterol went down and I was diabetic on the blood test. 

4. One day I bought some ice cream that really appealed to me (carton graphics). It was truly horrible and probably not real ice cream. I gave it to the squirrels and they would not touch it. Though I wavered, the ice cream deep freezer was converted to bags and bags of frozen chopped greens and vegetables. No more ice cream, pies, or frozen pizza. McDonalds? Nope.

5. I was staggered at the relationship between basic foods (chopped greens, vegetables, fruit) and SAD (cow and chicken products, bread, candies, fried chips, fried everything, desserts, sugared and dietetic drinks).

6. Greens, fresh fruits, and vegetables were filling and often delicious.  I kept trying new/old foods and found them very tasty in time. My vegetable consultant urged me to also try spices, so I now store and use many kinds - mustard, ground black pepper, turmeric, cumin, allspice, bagel spice, etc. I have one sausage serving in my patented Creation Super Stew. Meat is essential but we mostly overdo it.

7. Shocking facts - The SAD Diet is very expensive, especially since we add fast food restaurant items to the sugar-fat-salt prepared foods from the grocery store. Prepared food (microwave and fast-food) can be delicious when everyone is starving or at least feeling starved. Once away from sugar-salt-fat enhancers, returning to them is painfully disgusting, even when venturing back just a wee bit.

8. Encouraging facts - God has already arranged a vast array of healing medicines in greens, vegetables, fruits, and meats. I need eye drops (cataract surgery) so I see the pharmacists once a month. I said to the pharm tech who has waited on me since the Walmart opened nearby, "You have very few cures in your department, especially the over-the-counter things." She said, "I know." I asked, "How did I get perfect blood results?"

"I'm not getting paid?!"