Everyone knows that breastfeeding is best, but saving lives?

That’s the latest news from Nigeria.

Last weekend, Susan Grant from an organization called Save The Children stated that, “…mother’s breast milk can save a million children’s lives each year.”

Wow… a million kids saved every year — just by breastfeeding!

Read the whole story here!

May 6-12 is Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week — yet many still are not “aware” that a child’s diet has a lot to do with mental health.

Even fewer understand that mental health really begins in the colon.

That’s right, the colon.

About 80% of our immune system lies right within the gut, and our gut has its own nervous system, connected to our brain.

In fact, about 90% of the serotonin in us is produced by our gut, and all other classes of neurotransmitters found in our brain are also in our gut. (Hyman MM. The UltraMind Solution: Fix Your Broken Brain by Healing your Body First. 1st ed. Scribner; 2008)

What is wrong in a child’s gut has a huge impact on what is wrong in the head.

In situations where a child has a mental challenge like autism, this gut imbalance has to be corrected for any healing to occur:

• Candida and pathogenic bacteria must not be fed — refined sugar has to be eliminated.
• Inflammation has to be reduced — fruits, vegetable juice, and omega-3 fats are all anti-inflammatory foods.

In fact, the vast weight of science indicates that long-term health (including mental health) requires a plant-based diet, like The Hallelujah Diet.

Cleaning up chronic infections and toxins and adding effective doses of anti-inflammatory nutrients (cod liver oil and vitamin D are great) help, too. They allow the brain to function correctly.

Heal the body and the brain will get well, too!

Your turn…

Have you read Dr. Michael Donaldson’s article on diet and autism?

Click to comment!

Technically, you may not be lactose intolerant, but dairy can play havoc with springtime allergies no matter who you are.

Dairy causes phlegm to form in most kids and adults and that can compound the trouble of springtime allergies.

But guess what?

Creating phlegm when presented with dairy is what your body is supposed to do! It’s your body’s way of collecting the toxin and expelling it!

Oh, but “I don’t have toxins in my milk,” they say. ” I drink raw, organic milk from grass-fed cattle.”

That’s perfect… for a grass-fed calf!

Unless you’re a calf, you have no business drinking the milk of a cow, or a dog, or a cat, or a pig for that matter.

You are a human being. And when you were weaned from your mother’s milk, your body no longer needed the hormones in milk, or the hormones in milk from a cow for that matter.

Even if you drink the purest, most organic, so-called “hormone-free” cow’s milk, you’re still drinking naturally occurring hormones — hormones intended for a calf before it’s weaned. Milk is, in itself, a means for a baby to get hormones it needs from its mother.

“Hormone-free” on a milk label simply means that no hormones have been artificially injected into the cow. But naturally occurring hormones are still in the cow, and thus in the milk.

Once the calf is weaned, it doesn’t need milk anymore. Have you ever seen a full-size steer go to its mother for a drink of milk? That’s absurd!

Even more absurd is a weaned human seeking mother’s milk from a different species. No wonder the immune system rejects it!

As long as you keep your immune system preoccupied with fighting off foreign hormones from dairy, it can’t help you with what should be a simple fix to some minor, pollen-induced annoyances each spring.

Take milk, cream, cheese, yogurt, and butter out of your diet this spring and we’re willing to bet you’ll see a massive improvement in your body’s ability to overcome springtime allergies.

Your turn…

Do you have springtime allergies?

Click to comment!

We’re so excited!

Our brand new healthy living guide, Living The Hallelujah Diet is now available, and it’s FREE of charge! (shipping charges apply) Just call 800.915.9355 and we’ll send you a copy.

It covers all the basics of The Hallelujah Diet in plain language, including how a vegan diet helps the body heal, plus testimonies, recipes, insider tips, a crossword puzzle, and a whole lot more — it’s easy to understand, it’s fun, and perfect for beginners!

Here’s just one small piece of what you’ll read…

The Hallelujah Diet is based on the diet given to man in the Garden of Eden, but our world is a lot different today — which is why eating a whole foods, plant-based diet is not enough.

To battle health deteriorating factors like stress, pollution, and reduced nutrition due to depleted farming soil, your body needs concentrated nutrients — and the best form of concentrated nutrition is juicing.

When fresh vegetables are fed through a juicer, the machine separates the pulp (fiber) from the juice, which concentrates all of the vegetable’s nutrients into an easily digestible form. This means that juicing can deliver much more nutrition to your cells much quicker and with much less energy than digesting whole food.

For example, even if your digestive system is healthy, you can only assimilate 35% of the nutrition in a whole carrot. But if you extract and drink the juice of that same carrot, you would assimilate up to 92% of the nutrients!

This is less than half a page of the information jammed into this colorful, fun-to-read, 32-page guide! Orders yours now (and a few for friends), FREE (shipping charges apply) at 800.915.9355.

Your turn…

What’s the most common question you get about The Hallelujah Diet?

Click to comment!

Raw, steel cut oats for breakfast; a veggie burger on a bun for lunch; and a big salad with dinner rolls at supper.

If you don’t have celiac disease or a sensitivity to gluten, you may not see anything wrong with this picture. And maybe that’s the problem.

Hallelujah Diet or not, our food-frenzied culture is permeated with gluten.

Could you be sensitive to gluten and not know it?

Read the rest of this article in the May-June 2012 issue of Hallelujah Acres Health News magazine.

The words “vegan” and “uptight” don’t seem to jive.

And there may be a scientific reason for that.

Researchers at Benedictine University in Lisle, Illinois have found that eating meat can put you in a bad mood while a vegetarian diet can improve your mood.

The researchers point to arachidonic acid as the culprit, which is found in much higher amounts in meat-based diets than vegetarian diets. Though some is necessary for good health, high amounts of arachidonic acid promote changes in the brain that can disturb mood.

EPA and DHA found in fish is known to curb the effects of arachidonic acid, but in this study, despite that the omnivores were eating a lot of fish, the vegetarians in the study still had better “mood scores” than the omnivores.

That finding coincides with our most recent blog post, which mentioned that plant-based foods restore cellular health and toxin removal, thereby promoting emotional stability — and that animal protein is a worry trigger.

Too much arachidonic acid is also a major source of inflammation, which can lead to all kinds of disease.

Do you get the sense that the body just isn’t happy when it’s bombarded with this stuff?

On the flipside, little or no arachidonic acid is found in plants, and thus plant-based diets (like The Hallelujah Diet) do not contribute to the mood alterations seen in this study.

Could a plant-based diet make you more calm and level headed?

There’s only one way to find out.

Your turn…

What foods make you mellow?

Click to comment!

We all know that stressful situations can be draining, both emotionally and physically.

But do we consider how each moment of stress can affect our longevity?

Just as each cigarette contributes to a smoker’s risk of lung cancer, episodes of stress have a snowball effect that can literally shorten your lifespan—if you let them.

In 2007, researchers at Purdue University concluded a study of 1,663 older men, revealing that their “level and slope of neuroticism (excessive worry) interacted in their effect on mortality.”

Essentially, the longer they continued to worry about things, the shorter their lives became.

When we worry, we spark a chemical reaction in the body, creating excess free radical activity within our cells. The same thing results when we eat poorly; in fact, part of the reason that we worry may have to do with what we eat.

Certain foods are worry triggers—especially acidic foods like animal protein, processed foods, caffeine and sugar.

When the body is too acidic, it cannot effectively eliminate toxins, causing bodily stress and weakness, which can allow anxiety to take hold.

Conversely, an alkaline diet of plant-based foods like The Hallelujah Diet helps build and restore cellular health while promoting toxin removal, and thus, emotional stability.

Adequate water intake is also key. Like every other part of our being, our emotions are controlled by our brain.

Since 85% of our brain is composed of water, it only makes sense that good hydration is the lubricant for good overall health.

Exercise is also a good stress reliever, which (go figure) is good for you even if you’re not stressed.

Hmmm… seems like the more good you do for your body in terms of diet and exercise, the less stress you’ll have, and longer life you’ll enjoy. Funny how that happens, isn’t it?

The moral of the story? Don’t worry… be happy.

Your turn…

What stresses you out?

Click to comment!

We North Americans are just not getting it.

A new study has shown that fast foods contain more salt in North American locations than their overseas counterparts — in some cases, a LOT more!

McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets in the U.S., for example, have 2.5 times the amount of salt as the same Chicken McNuggets in Britain.

And McDonald’s french fries in Canada have 2 times the amount of salt as fries at McDonald’s in the U.S.

Comparisons were made between 2,124 fast foods from McDonald’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut, KFC, Domino’s, and Subway in the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand, the United Kingdom.

There were variations across the board, but in most cases, salt content of any fast food was highest in North America.

And the most shocking thing?

Salads were some of the saltiest foods!

How do you do that? Well, a salad just isn’t a salad without some chicken thrown in, according to fast food joints. Chicken products were found to be the saltiest.

Not to mention, we don’t assume that they’re using hand-harvest, unrefined sea salt here, either.

Refined, white, iodized salt is useless to the body and downright dangerous.

At least unrefined sea salt has some merits.

Dr. David Brownstein (who will be here at Hallelujah Acres for our Health Minister Reunion, starting Thursday, April 19) in an article written for the Celtic Sea Salt company says:

“Unrefined salt has a wide range of minerals including potassium and magnesium, providing the body with a complex of nutrients that it needs to function optimally.

The use of unrefined salt will not cause elevated blood pressure; in fact, due to its abundance of minerals, it can actually help lower the blood pressure in hypertensive patients.”

Your turn…

Are you a salt-a-holic or could you do without it?

Click to comment!

Gearing up for summer? Got your sunscreen?

Not so fast!

You probably know that most sunscreens contain questionable chemicals, and that’s bad enough.

But the most troubling part is that sunscreens block your body’s ability to produce vitamin D from sunlight by 95% — and yet getting vitamin D is the whole point of being in the sun!

Stop and think about this for a minute…

Why exactly are you putting on sunscreen? Is it to prevent burning?

That’s good, but sunscreen is not going to protect naked skin from being out in the sun longer than it should be. All you’re doing is blocking vitamin D production and overexposing your skin, meaning damage can still happen!

Try this instead… Go out in the sunshine WITHOUT sunscreen until your skin starts turning the first shade of pink. That’s your body’s way of saying “I’ve had enough.”

At that point, it’s time to put on some clothing or get in the shade. Put on a hat if you have to be out for longer.

Maybe even put on some healthy sunscreen, the kind that has no harmful chemicals and leaves a whitish film — that’s a good sign.

The fact that it doesn’t soak in means that its molecular particle size too large to penetrate your cells (which act like a strainer); if sunscreen penetrates your cells, it can carry harmful ingredients directly into your cells, potentially damaging your DNA.

The good news is that pale skinned people only need 20 minutes in the sun (without sunscreen) to generate 20,000 IU of vitamin D.

If you have darker skin, you’ll need to stay out longer, but your skin’s pigment will protect you in order to do so (don’t you love how God does that?).

A couple of days later, see if you can stay out longer. Keep repeating this until you have a base tan — did you know that having a tan is the best defense against melanoma that you can have?!

It’s true!

Melanoma is NOT a disease from proper sun exposure. It is a disease of indoor office workers, says Marc Sorenson, EdD.

Most importantly, the food you eat makes all the difference! A good, plant-based diet like The Hallelujah Diet will help your body defend itself, including your skin. Bad foods negatively affect your body and strip your body’s ability to protect itself from UV rays.

We’ll have more from Marc Sorenson, EdD in a sun safety article in the May-June issue of Health News magazine — coming soon! Read Health News online or subscribe to home delivery here!

Your turn…

Which brand of healthy sunscreen do you use?

Click to comment!

Looks like somebody other than Hallelujah Acres is going back in time to find the diet best suited for the human body.

Researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston say that a modern, Western diet, which is “low in dietary fiber and fermentable substrate, and high in saturated and trans fatty acids” is mismatched with the unchanged, ancient microbial makeup of the human body’s gut flora.

Though the researchers mention evolution in their study, their findings maintain that the human genome “has changed relatively little since humans first appeared.”

Furthermore, they say that “therapeutic diets that mimic plant-based diets from the early phases of human evolution may result in drug-like cholesterol reductions.”

Translation?

Modern research shows that God’s original, plant-based diet of Genesis 1:29 (The Hallelujah Diet) is best matched to the human body’s gut flora, which may trigger positive effects on the heart.

Apparently proper gut flora modulates cholesterol levels — and proper gut flora cannot be achieved on a typical Western diet. Is it any wonder why there are so many people out there with elevated cholesterol levels?

This is great news, but we had to laugh when we saw the phrase “drug-like cholesterol reductions.” We think it should be the other way around: drugs mimic plant-based-diet-like cholesterol reductions.

The good news is that this study confirms that it’s never too late to change your diet and see a change in health as a result:

“consuming a therapeutic diet rich in plant foods, dietary fiber, and fermentable substrate would be a useful strategy for improving systemic health, possibly by altering the gut microbiota.”

Your turn…

What’s your opinion on this new research?

Click to comment!