I grew up in Western Nebraska.
Between the 7th & 8th grade my father put me to work on a 48 square mile ranch. The ranch had 6,000 head of cows and 40 horses. We did everything at $5/day plus board and room. It was a great deal for my father who had two teenage sons eating out of someone else's refrigerator. Plus we had no place to spend our money.
We were involved in spring round ups. It is a good thing my horse knew what was going on, as half of the time I sure didn't. We delivered calves in late spring blizzards that we later branded, doctored for pink eye, vaccinated and then castrated almost all of the males.
During the summer we worked in the hay fields. It was in the hay fields that I went without a shirt and usually pealed from head to waist about four times a summer. I also took up smoking, given that I was around a number of ranch hands that smoked. Great role models some of them were not. This went on for 7 years. One of my friends became an actual "Marlboro man".
My family has a history of cancer, dementia, diabetes and macular degeneration. All of my siblings, one brother and three sisters currently have macular degeneration and are being treated for it. I am the only one who does not have it.
When I first came across Juice PLUS it made sense to me as my two major veggies at lunch were catsup and french fries. But I must admit I didn't really know how much it meant to me. Over a period of years I educated myself during the conference calls and kept looking for something that I could do that would help protect me against cancer as I was a prime target.
As I grew to understand more and more about the power of fruits and vegetables, I knew that I was on the right track. Since I started taking Juice PLUS eight years ago I have rarely been sick. If I have a scratchy throat it usually goes away in less than a day and that is about it. I have tons of energy and my sense of vitality is wonderful. There are three outward signs of inner health I am happy to have -- thick strong nails, my hair quit falling out and became vibrant and ... I am regular. I have also noticed that the brown spots on my hands have almost disappeared.
I have found no other product on the market that can produce the results that Juice PLUS can produce in a convenient, cost effective manner. Because of the business model and the 23 major research institutions behind Juice PLUS, I knew that I would be doing things like telling my story on a one on one basis so I paid my $50 business fee and got into the business.
I love my results and the results of those with whom I share Juice PLUS. I am so thankful a friend told me about Juice PLUS. The truth is that if you can fog a mirror you should be on Juice PLUS.
I am also thankful that my son who came down with fibromyalgia got on Juice PLUS. He now teaches film at the college level and is the President of his Adjunct Professors union. He is really doing well but that is another story.
Mardy's Note: 12/8/11: The distributor who provided this content on Lumigrate at my encouragement and with my support in the past has messaged through Lumigrate to request the content he provided be removed as he doesn't wish to participate in this 'effort' anymore. The forums at Lumigrate are a social media format, similar to facebook. That would be like contacting facebook and saying "take everything I ever commented on or posted off". Many conversations and exchanges of other providers are woven in 'threads' and that would be disrespectful to the other forum participants who gave their time and energy to participate in the 'social' media of Lumigrate's forums. However, I have changed the UserName to be Juice Plus 007, removed the photo, and am posting this in the signature and removing the contact information that is set up in the signature in order to make it clear this contributor no longer wants to be 'connected' with the posts. Additionally, as time permits, I will work to replace the content with similar but that will entail selecting another person distributing for Juice Plus. I wanted JP represented on Lumigrate because it is a well-known company based on the concept of supplementing fruits and vegetables. Also because JP reaches many people due to it's vast number of distributors; there are 10 in Grand Junction, population 50k or so. In addition to removing the information in the signature for contact, I have changed the username and email address associated with it to route to me if anyone were to send a "private message" to JP007. My first step will be to edit out any internal contact information/links to the requestor. I guess you call this an "imposter"? Grins! I hope this is a clear statement for the users of Lumigrate to view related YOUR forum area and how I manage it. After all, it is YOUR health education (and mine) I'm advocating for but Lumigrate, at the end of the day, is my website. I care a great deal about the users of Lumigrate feeling they are being treated well and providing a forum area which is a FUN place to come get valid, progressive information in a streamlined way when searching for health information our audience of consumers is seeking.
Links:
[1] http://www.lumigrate.com/forum/my-story-why-i-take-juice-plus#comment-953
[2] http://twitter.com/lumigrate
[3] http://www.lumigrate.com/forum/my-story-why-i-take-juice-plus#top
[4] http://www.lumigrate.com/user/login?destination=node/671%23comment-form
[5] http://www.lumigrate.com/user/register?destination=node/671%23comment-form
Comments
I'm used to getting to looking at what's new on Lumigrate every morning and knowing that if it's Yenta I'll get a chuckle and a heart warming story, but today it came from Tom! Thank you for this!
I found several things interesting, particularly what you said about the outward signs such as 'sun spots' on your skin. It made me recall something I saw a while back on Dr Oz's show when he wanted to demonstrated something that's in tomatos that's beneficial for protecting the skin from sun damage. They did a little experiement and had a woman eat a bunch of tomato paste and then compared her skin's reaction before that to after that when they held a light simulating sun to her skin for a measured unit of time. It was really a very dramatic demonstration that made me much more aware of nutrition and the skin. That was at a time when I was learning about vitamin D and switching my thinking about being in the sun and feeling conflcted about protecting my skin with sun screen as we'd been trained in the past.
I've noticed my nails finally FINALLY have hardened up this year. (You know, we have a piece in the Forum on Aesthetics about nails by our 'Cutee-cle Lady', and Deirdre Rawlings, ND, PhD and Marc Spurlock, MD elaborated further on what they see in nails and fingers related to health.) My hair has also gotten back to being more like it used to be when I was younger -- it took a real hit from all the medications I was on and then having not had my underlying thyroid dysfunction properly tested and treated until recently or currently. When I saw my nails growing so long for the first time in my life just in the last weeks (meaning it's something I changed recently), I thought that was very interesting. So I'm glad you wrote something here about your observations.
And, just like Dr Oz and Oprah, I'm glad you brought up 'poop' -- being 'regular' is such an important piece. I would presume you ALSO eat a good diet, Tom. I've included much about gut health on Lumigrate related including fiber in the diet or supplementing. You'd be amazed at how many people Search on Lumigrate for something placed here long ago by an RN who had a chronic and extreme pain condition, related to the 'best enema recipe ever'. People remember they've seen it here and then pop back to Lumigrate and look it up by Searching in Lumigrate for it. So I hope that people who are on narcotics also start thinking about the aspect of offsetting some of the side effects of that with as healthful remedies as they can.
I'm happy to hear of your son's progress and successes and hope your health stays spectacular and that your siblings realize it's never too late to make positive changes as it can slow deteriorations of the body if not stop and reverse. Same is true for the other topic I've been immersed in this week, which has to do with dementia.
Sounds like an interesting life you came up through -- that's funny, your dad sending you guys off to work on a ranch. I grew up in the mountains of Colorado on what had been the RoseBud Ranch (owned before my parents by a husband and wife named Bud and Rose, isn't that cool?). I likely wasn't riding and working as many hours as you were, but I had a thing for gardening and we had to conserve irrigation water for the grass for the horses so I had to water with a hand sprayer. Then, because it was 'the thing to do' in the early 70s, I'd lay in the sun with baby oil that had iodine in it, though my mother did insist I do that before 10 or after 2 and by 2 it always was clouded over and then it was about time for her friend to come have iced tea and if I was lucky we'd go play some tennis at the elementary school -- they put a fence around the tar pad and a net through the middle of it -- it even had patches where pipes and trenches had been dug so we had some interesting bounces!). There was much good in those days, and we were kinda lucky we didn't have so much to 'worry about'. I've been concerned about cataracts as we were at 8,000 ft elevation and I wasn't into sunglasses until I learned it was better for your eyes related to UV rays.
Again, thank you for starting my day off so well! I really enjoyed your story. Hope you enjoy a piece of mine as well. Yet I want to note that I've really enjoyed a lot of returning of health based on the way I do nutrition and supplementation as well, so there's more than one way to get there, but I am really glad you're here helping people see how YOU go about it and made a business out of it as well. ~~ Mardy
Live and Learn. Learn and Live Better! is my motto. I'm Mardy Ross, and I founded Lumigrate in 2008 after a career as an occupational therapist with a background in health education and environmental research program administration. Today I function as the desk clerk for short questions people have, as well as 'concierge' services offered for those who want a thorough exploration of their health history and direction to resources likely to progress their health according to their goals. Contact Us comes to me, so please do if you have questions or comments. Lumigrate is "Lighting the Path to Health and Well-Being" for increasing numbers of people. Follow us on social networking sites such as: Twitter: http://twitter.com/lumigrate [2] and Facebook. (There is my personal page and several Lumigrate pages. For those interested in "groovy" local education and networking for those uniquely talented LumiGRATE experts located in my own back yard, "LumiGRATE Groove of the Grand Valley" is a Facebook page to join. (Many who have joined are beyond our area but like to see the Groovy information! We not only have FUN, we are learning about other providers we can be referring patients to and 'wearing a groove' to each other's doors -- or websites/home offices!) By covering some of the things we do, including case examples, it reinforces the concepts at Lumigrate.com as well as making YOU feel that you're part of a community. Which you ARE at Lumigrate!