Happy Healthy Gut (8 page)

1. You stop poisoning yourself. Artificial chemicals, such as preservatives, colors, flavors, antibiotics, growth hormones and more, cease to infiltrate your body. And I haven’t even touched on cosmetic chemicals yet! Prescription medications will eventually be rendered unnecessary, and your body will thank you for that too. (Consult a physician before going off any meds, though. It’s easy to imagine why that might be a good idea . . . )
   
2. You give your digestive system a break. Substances like the ones I just listed above are confusing for your body to deal with. Because of this confusion, your body deals with it in ways that create problems for you in the future. (For example, too much sugar intake contributing to a worn-out pancreas and the emergence of diabetes. Or, digestively speaking, too many animal products clogging up your colon and creating chronic disease there.)
   
3. You naturally detoxify your body and your intestines by sweeping out toxic debris that live there, through clean,
   whole, plant-based eating. Brown, sprouted rice does a much better job of clearing the intestinal tract than polished, white rice does.
   
4. You allow your organs to clean up, and begin healing. This way, they can deal with their processes and do their specific jobs more efficiently. If your liver is constantly run down trying to filter out toxins that don’t belong there, eventually it is going to give up. Hello, liver failure!
   
5. Your body needs energy to heal and repair. It also needs a certain amount of vitamins and minerals to help accomplish these tasks. By adopting a whole food, plant-based diet, you automatically meet every level of the vital nutrients needed. You will not be filling up on junk; you will be eating nourishing foods that will help you from the inside out. (Believe me; you will see it on the out, too!)
   

“Nutrition is critical for health. Many Americans are taking numerous medications three to four times a day, yet they haven’t changed the dietary regimen that made them sick in the first place. Most people are not aware that these foods are, if anything, more powerful than the drugs.”
⁷³

—Dr. Neal Barnard,
Forks Over Knives

Question:
Would you rather be prescribed medication, or be prescribed a lifestyle makeover, sans meds? One choice is the easy way, but it only masks the symptoms and doesn’t actually solve the problem. In fact, it might exacerbate it, and it’s a short-term solution at best. The second choice gets to the root of the issue, but requires education, persistence, and will power. However, this solution really is a solution; it’s long-term. Hint: take option number two!

I was diagnosed with colitis in 1994, when I was nineteen years old. Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) runs in my family; my oldest sister and my mom also have colitis, and my youngest sister has Crohn’s disease.

I had considered my colitis to be in remission for a long time (about thirteen years), when I began my most recent flare-up. This particular episode (which was pretty consistent with colitis symptoms), included major constipation alternating with diarrhea, rectal bleeding, and general misery. The flare-up lasted for about four months. I had just been given a colonoscopy and prescribed medication to put my colitis back into remission, when I decided to try an alternative, more holistic solution.

Basically, I changed my eating habits (which I fully admit weren’t great, even though I was pretty active), and switched to a whole food, organic, mostly plant-based diet.

I decided to adopt the new eating plan immediately. Within three weeks, I lost thirteen pounds and my stomach felt much better. I did end up taking the medication prescribed to me around this point in order to stop the rectal bleeding, but once that was taken care of, I stopped taking it, and continued to improve by simply eating whole, plant-based food.

Both my husband and I agree that eating this way contributed greatly to the huge improvement in my digestive health, as well as the weight loss. We will both continue to eat whole, organic foods and tons of vegetables.

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”
⁷⁴

—Albert Einstein

H
eads up: this topic is a sensitive one, and this chapter might be a little rough. One of the major reasons it is so difficult to achieve a calm, controlled conversation about plant-based eating with meat eaters, is because the person in the group who doesn’t eat animals is inevitably placing unintended blame and guilt upon the omnivorous members of that group. By telling someone that you don’t eat meat because it’s unethical, for example, implies that those who don’t share your view are themselves devoid of ethics. If you were to say that it is because you want to take better care of the environment, or help feed the starving people in the world by taking a stance against the expensive and destructive business of producing and consuming meat, you indirectly blame others for planetary
destruction and allowing fellow human beings to go hungry. If you say it’s because meat isn’t good for you, you are basically inferring that your fellow conversation members are unhealthy people. This is a heated and passionate topic, because there are so many personal biases and experiences that come out to play ball.

That being said, we are totally going to go there.

If you’re living with digestive problems, than you should definitely give plant-based eating a go, simply because plants are easier to digest, and proven a healthier alternative to animal meat. The reason I gave up most animal products was for this exact reason. However, since doing so, and researching vegetarianism and all it entails, I have solidified more reasons for myself to remain meat-free. Because I strongly advocate for plant-based eating in this book, my desire is for you to look for even more reasons to go veg. I feel as though the more incentives that are provided for you to adopt the plant-based part of the plan, the better the chance that you might stick with it, and the clearer your mind may be when confronted with skeptical friends and family, or those less educated in the benefits of plant-based nutrition. So, in the hopes of making a well-rounded and convincing argument for adopting a plant-based diet (other than the elimination of chronic stomach pain), I have outlined some major reasons to stop eating meat, and start a lifestyle change that as you will see, will greatly improve your whole life for the better.

Here goes something . . .

So, what exactly does it mean to follow a plant-based diet? Most people think of this act as vegetarianism, and it is usually referred to as the elimination of animal products from one’s diet. However, there are different degrees in which a person goes about doing this. There are lacto-vegetarians, who don’t eat animal meat (including fish) or eggs, but do consume dairy. (Often because eating these animal products does not directly impact whether an animal lives or dies). There are ovo-vegetarians, who abstain from meat and dairy,
but do eat eggs. There are lacto-ovo vegetarians, who do not eat any animal flesh, but do dabble with dairy and eggs from time to time. Pescetarians abstain from all animal meat, except seafood. Last, but certainly not least, a vegan completely abstains from not only animal flesh, eggs, and dairy, but also any other animal by-products, such as gelatine and honey.

“Plant-Based” is a looser term. It means that the basis for your diet is composed of plant foods—foods that literally derive from plants. However, it does not sport the label of “vegetarian” or “vegan,” which I personally like. I am not compelled to define my diet by what I eat or don’t eat, but I do try and stick with foods that are easily digestible, which means the vast majority of them are whole (not processed) and plant-based. If you feel uncomfortable about being labeled “vegetarian” or “vegan,” or labeling yourself as such, then don’t. Just think “plant-based.” If along your path, you happen to adopt a stricter diet that falls into one of the first two categories, then great. If not, no sweat. Just do the best you can, and you’ll know when your diet becomes your perfect fit. You won’t hurt anymore!

By removing as much meat and other animal products as you can from your diet, you heavily influence your body to become more regular, work more efficiently, wean off all those added hormones and antibiotics, become less acidic and more alkaline, and generally begin to function the way it was designed. This all equals much better health, beginning with optimal digestion. So, in order to begin healing that stressed-out tummy of yours, consider eliminating one of the biggest factors for digestive (dis)ease: animal products.

Here’s the deal with going veggie: like Alicia Silverstone says, “it’s a kind life.”
⁷⁵
It’s easy on your body, your pocketbook, the animals, and the planet. The following are seven distinct arguments for vegetarianism, each directed at what you might consider the most important aspect of adopting a plant-based diet. These arguments are followed by supplementary topics that will hopefully help round-out this chapter.

I think deep down, most of us know that regular consumption of red meat is highly correlated with high cholesterol levels and heart disease.
⁷⁶
One of the first things any physician does when treating a patient that exhibits the symptoms associated with these diseases is to recommend they cut down on eating red meat. If that physician were to take his own advice one step further, and change that suggestion to include all animal products, then you would have the recommendations of the doctors that I wrote about in the previous chapter. Those doctors have changed their patients’ entire lives by doing nothing but providing them with fabulous knowledge regarding exactly what foods they should be ingesting, and why. No medications, no surgeries, no problem! It’s all about nutrients, baby.

Human beings were created as herbivores and are not built to properly digest animal proteins. Check out your flat teeth, designed for chewing green stuff. We may have four teeth that are relatively pointy, but that’s out of a total of thirty-two teeth. Our teeth are very similar to gorillas’ teeth, and they are vegetarians. Carnivores, on the other hand, have exclusively sharp, pointy teeth. (All of them. Go take a look in your cat’s mouth.) Humans don’t have nearly enough stomach acid to process meat properly. Carnivorous animals have more than enough of the required amount of hydrochloric acid for that very purpose, and also possess very short intestinal tracts that allow them to eat and digest very quickly. Their stomachs are also kept at a lower pH of about 1-2,
⁷⁷
whereas the human stomach functions optimally at about 2-3.5. Our intestinal tracts are approximately twenty-eight feet long (twenty-three in your small intestine, and five in your large), and it takes us up to seventy-two hours to digest any meat we take in, from mouth to colon.

The result of our long intestinal tracts can equal total horror for those of us with that IBS diagnosis. If your intestines are already sluggish,
that means that those once-enticing chicken wings can be trapped in there for a very long time before we evacuate them. This is also why we all feel gross and exhausted following a trip to a steakhouse, not to mention being bunged up for days afterward. Anyone out there frequent unzipperers? (You may as well get used to a few made-up words here and there . . . I’m known for those.) You don’t have to be! I used to literally yank off my skinny jeans the very second I got home from dinner anywhere, and throw on my yoga pants. Those days, thank goodness, are a thing of the past for me. (Yoga, however, is not!) We may have evolved to be able to process small amounts of animal meat, but a quick evaluation of our anatomy suggests that it was not the original plan.

When you think of processed food, do you conjure up an image of animal products? You should. Meat is extremely processed, from the artificial insemination of the animals, to the feed laced with growth hormones that is supplied to them, to the conventional factory slaughter of them, right down to the way they are packaged and appear on the grocery stores’ shelves. In fact, meat might be the
most
processed food available. The process from conception to grocery store shelves is all very unnatural and unhealthy. I urge disbelievers to do a little research and decide just how much this process contributes to their already existing or inevitably impending digestive unease.

“Unless organically and naturally raised, meat and dairy products contain numerous hormones, antibiotics and toxic chemicals.”
⁷⁸

—Laura J. Knoff,
The Whole-Food Guide to
Overcoming Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Dairy is not much better. When a baby is born, their bodies are designed to digest their mother’s milk easily. When they are weaned, on average at about twelve months old, their bodies quit making it possible to digest milk. Milk is something that is specifically designed
for babies who cannot consume anything else for months, due to underdeveloped digestive systems, and lack of teeth. We don’t bottle human breast milk and still drink it into our thirties, right? (Unless you’re my brother-in-law, who thought it would be funny to take a swig from my daughter’s baby bottle before being informed that the contents was not formula.) Even cows wean . . . the baby calf stops nursing from her mother around age two. After that, no more milk. Nada. She’s like, “Here, eat some grass . . . ”

Ever wonder why so many people are lactose intolerant? It’s because our bodies are not designed to consume lactose, the sugar in dairy, or casein, the protein. It makes us gassy, constipated, irritable, and full of mucous. This is a train wreck for people with irritable bowels of any form. Eliminating dairy from your diet could be your life saver, especially if you live in a country like the United States, which permits antibiotics and growth hormones to be directly injected into conventionally farmed cattle, therefore creating heavily hormone-laced products, and very unnatural, miserable animals. I’m not letting Canada off the hook here. While it’s true that Canadian laws are stricter when it comes to these practices, the country’s laws make it legal to add both antibiotics and hormones to the cows’ feed, unless the products will be certified as organic.