How many servings of fruits and vegetables did you eat today?

That's good to be bringing heart disease into the conversation at Lumigrate, so thank you for that.  Yesterday Oprah's show, in it's final season, was about meat / vegan and diet.  I wrote about it and posted a link to her website where there are really good follow up components from Michael Pallan (sp?) and the woman who was heralded by Oprah as the vegan queen essentially, for having written a popular book on the topic. 

She had her staff volunteer to eat vegan for a week; almost 400 signed up.  They never had such long lines for food at their food service area -- maybe because people had to ask a lot of questions and ponder it seemed.   Change takes time, in more ways than one.  Their use of toilet paper at Harpo Studios rose dramatically as well.  In the end, they reported on how many people were compliant, how many fell off the vegan wagon, and most importantly that some were continuing on or significantly modifying their diets as they saw such dramatic results within days.  Migraine headaches, heartburn, etc in one male staff, for instance.  

At the end of the day Oprah and all the people as guests on the show had the overall sense that at the very least, everyone was going to be more aware of what they put into their bodies. 

I encourage everyone to embrace the multi-faceted nature of Lumigrate.com which is about integrative medicine, a way of approaching health through mind, body, and spirit.  Foods and what and how we eat affects all three in my opinion; it's a spiritual practice the way we eat.  I recently ate with someone who has a lot of health issues and I thought it was bad enough that we picked up (at my suggestion) fast food as her son was in need and that's what worked best for our schedule.  But we ddin't sit down at the table with it -- they went to great pains to set up TV trays and start watching a recorded show that required questions/answer quizzing/thinking.  Were we thinking about eating? Were we connecting with each other, let alone our selves?  

Today is Ground Hog Day 2011 -- the day the animal comes out and either sees its shadow or not.  More accurately, people look to see if there's a shadow, who knows if the critter even perceives it.  That predicts winter's timeframe and is 39% accurate.  I suggest from this that people start thinking about how much time they spent today learning about something irrelevant and they might free up some time, energy, money resources to make more progress on themselves. 

Since it's the midst of winter and people are very inside with nothing to do, I've announced that all the videos on Lumigrate.com are now $0.00 to download.  I suggest people take an hour, try downloading if you think it's too hard you might find it's not!  Learn for an HOUR -- a full hour from our wonderful complement of experts.  The videos are designed by me to apply to most people interested in health from a progressive standpoing.

  Supplements and Disease Prevention has a big component in it related to heart disease, by an MD who does his homework and is an integrative medicine fan.  The others include Detoxification and Cleansing, Food Allergies (Sensitivities) -- as in an IgG way, not the typical IgE way most people in the US have been trained in the past to think of all allergies are, hypothyroidism (which has a huge part in diet and leads to weight gain which then leads to cardiovascular disease), and then Dr Paula King's fabulous video which explains why people have trouble making new habits and introduces mindfulness meditation and guided imagery as tools for solutions.

So you might want to hit that 'Videos' tab at the top of the page just to the right of Home and go download one of these hour long seminars 'on us' now!  Or join those who were willing to give up 20 minutes of time to learn about Chronic Illness: Full Barrel Syndrome, which represents how nutrition is a part of chronic illness and 'chronic wellness' as I jokinglly refer to it as.  Everything from foods to spiritual stress contribute.  

Sometimes people won't address the nutritional aspects of their lives because they're needing to first deal with something from one of the other apsects.  In the case of the person I referred to eating with in front of the TV, which was just so odd to me to do when you're rarely with someone let alone to eat, there are many components.  But I was contacted recently to help guide on an individual basis toward solutions and I'm hopeful they'll experience as much change in their family and health as the people on Oprah yesterday.  (To find that, search on key words in Lumigrate such as vegan, or look for it in the Foods forum.  The links at the top of this topic are what can take you 'up' one level or more in the forums; there are many novices to website navigation utilizing Lumigrate, so I wanted to work in a little education for them about that here too. )

Again, thanks to Tom for posting something here about heart disease.  Since Lumigrate and integrative medicine comes from a wellness instead of disease model I'll hope you also search and find things on Lumigrate under the keywords 'heart health'.  On to Valentine's Day now that Ground Hog's is over, so GRATE timing from Tom.  ~~ Mardy