Blog - Green Smoothie Health

Eliminating Sugar Did What?!

I grew up loaded up on sugar. Most days for breakfast I’d have a little cereal with my sugar. I’d have a pancake or two with my syrup. The fact that I still have my original teeth (most of them anyway) is a miracle. Since then I’ve had a number of experiences that have proven to me how damaging sugar can be to our health. Yesterday CNN posted an article, “No More Thank Six Teaspoons of Sugar a Day for Kids,” that drives that point home. In the article they quote Dr. Miriam Vos who said, “A diet high in added sugars is strongly associated with weight gain, obesity, insulin resistance, abnormal cholesterol and fatty liver disease in children and all of these increase future cardiovascular risk.” As a child I spent a great deal of time outside burning calories, which helped to mitigate the damaging effects of the sugar. As our nation’s children become more sedentary, reducing their sugar intake (and getting them more active) is going to play a large role in their current and future health. It will also be a major factor in the future cost of healthcare for our nation.

There is actually more at stake here than the child’s health though. I need to share a personal experience that has really solidified my current distaste for sugar and sweets. For years my son struggled in school. We didn’t take him in for testing, but we, and his teachers, suspected that he struggled with ADHD. He had a very difficult time focusing, his grades were poor, and he was sometimes belligerent and uncontrollable. We could see great potential in him, if he could just calm down and focus.

Shortly after his 9th birthday we took him to the dentist. The dentist let us know that sugar was damaging my son’s teeth and that that we should have him cut back. My wife and I told our son what the dentist said and he surprisingly agreed to go cold turkey on candy, sodas, and other sweets. Nice!! Ironically, at our church Halloween party the next week he guessed most closely the number of pieces of candy in a huge jar and won the full jar. Argh!! We were proud of him when he shared the entire jar of candy that night and didn’t keep a single piece for himself.

In the months that followed we saw an amazing change in our son. He was much more focused, easier to get along, calmer, and his grades improved dramatically. He went from being one of the slower students in his class to near the top. Rather than being tutored he started tutoring other students. He was invited to join the National Junior Honor Society. He was honored in our county as one of two ‘Great Kids’ in his school. It has been amazing to see his growth and progress, which started with cutting sweets out of his diet. I am confident that if he didn’t eliminate the sugar and candy from his diet that the transformation would never have happened.

Is it only him or would other children too benefit from reducing their sugar intake? The evidence clearly points to the need of substantially limiting the amount of sugar our children consume.

Healthy Pregnancies Require Healthy Foods

Today on a local morning radio show, Dr. Mark Hiatt, executive director for Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield of Utah spoke about an alarming statistic: women in the United States are more than three times more likely to die in child birth than women in other wealthy nations. The United States offers outstanding physicians and facilities, so why are more women dying? Dr. Hiatt points to the poor health of the mothers.

Diet is a key part to a healthy pregnancy and studies have repeatedly shown that a healthy diet must include a large variety of fresh vegetables. Another great reason for a daily glass of The Doctor’s Advanced Green Smoothie!

Health – The Healthcare Solution

An August 17th CNN article explores the challenges facing Obamacare. It notes that major insurers are losing hundreds of millions of dollars and are therefore drastically scaling back their participation in the exchange. The core issue is that the people who are in good health are not signing up in sufficient numbers to compensate for those in poor health who are enrolling. In past posts I’ve discussed the healthcare crisis in America where the top issues are heart disease, cancer, type-2 diabetes, dementia and obesity. Again, the only proven solution in the prevention or lessening of these issues is to eat right and exercise.

The current culture in America for most people is to go to the doctor to treat problems as they happen. That is well and good, but most of the issues that doctors are treating are preventable. To reduce the cost of healthcare the conversation has to change to prevention through a healthy diet and exercise.

A key part of the problem is the compensation structure of our current system. To a large extent medical professionals are compensated for patients they treat and procedures they perform. The more procedures they perform the higher their reimbursements. The more patients they see the higher their compensation. Note the misalignment here. They are not (again for the most part) compensated for preventing illnesses, but rather for treating them. Also, they are actually penalized for spending very much time with any patient because doing so comes with great opportunity cost. Fortunately we have some outstanding physicians in our country who, at their own expense, choose to assist with prevention and spend more time with patients. Rather than throwing more money into an every growing demand for treatment, we need to fight the problem at the source and educate and enable people to make dietary and lifestyle choices that will promote health and wellness.

ProHealthy 365’s mission is to improve health and happiness by helping people to eat the right foods. It is a key part of the nation’s healthcare solution and as the United States changes it’s focus to prevention many of the issues facing the health systems will be greatly reduced.

The Genesis of The Doctor’s Advanced Green Smoothie

In a previous post I described how I learned about Dr. Fila’s smoothie and some of the health benefits I’ve seen. However, I quickly learned that making a smoothie every day wasn’t possible for me. Here’s what happened:

First, because a large variety of vegetables is required for the smoothie (you have to get 10-14 vegetables every day to get the heart and vascular results the smoothie can provide), I had to go shopping for a lot of vegetables. I found that the trip to the store took over an hour of my time. I also found that I wasn’t able to get the fresh vegetables in the quantities that I needed for each. Have you ever tried purchasing a portion of a head of cauliflower? So I had to buy larger quantities than I wanted for most of the vegetables, which I found that to be very expensive. Later on I found that a lot of it went to waste in my refrigerator because I couldn’t eat that much of some of the vegetables and my family wasn’t helping. Purchasing the bare minimum possible quantities of just the vegetables for the smoothie cost me nearly $20.

So I’m home from the store and it’s time to make the smoothie. Awesome. Wait, not so awesome. The vegetables all need to be washed and appropriately cut, which takes me another 20 or so minutes to do. I finally get everything in the blender, and the excess veggies back in the refrigerator. I blend the smoothie and get to enjoy a serving. Whew! One day down. Here is a nutshell version of why I couldn’t do make a daily green smoothie:

Fresh vegetables are very perishable, so I found that I needed to shop frequently to do daily green smoothies, which took much more time than I had. I found that

I don’t have time to go shopping that often. Fresh veggies are perishable, so I was having to shop almost daily.
It was expensive!
Too many vegetables were going bad in my refrigerator.
It took too long to prepare once I brought the vegetables home.
Dr. Fila’s spice blend included things that I didn’t have and don’t know where to get.

After trying to do all this for a couple of weeks it was clear that making the smoothie wasn’t sustainable for me. I wanted it, but I didn’t have the time and resources to dedicate to it. I then approached Dr. Fila and asked if he’s packages the smoothie ingredients and if so, would he sell me the packages to save me time, energy and waste. He let me know that he doesn’t sell the packages, but in discussing it we determined that doing so might be a good idea.

We worked with a great produce company who was very helpful and taught us that if the packaging isn’t done right that the package contents would spoil in just a couple of days. Through a great deal of trial and error they found a combination of preservative-free packaging that properly separated the vegetables and extended the freshness to nearly two weeks. Awesome!

Also, we did some product testing that showed that people wouldn’t get on a consistent smoothie diet if it didn’t taste good. So we worked with a great team at a major university to modify the formulation to still include only fresh vegetables and healthy ingredients that Dr. Fila approves and recommends, but to do so in a way that gives a great tasting smoothie, even when mixing with water (but I recommend almond milk…great nutrition and better taste!). The result is The Doctor’s Advanced Green Smoothie, and I love it. Our goal now is to make the kit available through various distribution channels that make it affordable and easy to get. We sincerely hope you like it!

Weight Loss – One Man’s Journey to Health

In my work with youth groups I saw a need to introduce them to outdoor adventures that promote exercise and build character. I live in an area with beautiful slot canyons and decided to take up canyoneering, which often requires hiking through rough and unpredictable terrain and rappelling down high cliffs. The youth loved it! At first I invited experienced guides (safety first!) to help us on our excursions, but then I received the necessary training and have for several years been leading groups on spectacular adventures.

About three years ago I invited an acquaintance, Dr. Ed Fila, to join me on a canyoneering trip and was happy to have him join us. On the morning of our hike he showed me a brownish-green drink that he has every day for breakfast. He called it “Dr. Fila’s Ultimate Green Smoothie.” He had created it through much research and he explained the health benefits of the smoothie and offered me a taste. I tried it and it tasted very healthy (that wasn’t a good thing). However, considering the health benefits I thought I could probably force myself to drink it on a daily basis. We had a great outing that day and I enjoyed getting to know Dr. Fila.

I didn’t commit myself to the smoothies and felt I was in fine health already anyway. A few weeks later I happened to come across a web site that gives you your body mass index (BMI) based on height and weight. I knew I had put on a few extra pounds over the last few years, but nothing to worry about. That is until the BMI it gave me placed me in the “overweight” category. What?! That was a real eye opener for me. I knew that being overweight frequently leads to chronic illnesses, as well as stroke and heart attack. I determined to make lifestyle changes that will lead me to better health. Here are the changes I made:

Drink a daily green smoothie (Dr. Fila’s recipe) (Note that I found this extremely time consuming and expensive. I’ll explain the solution for that in a separate post.)
Exercise daily
Drink more water (I began carrying a water bottle with me)
Take a daily probiotic
Eat less…especially sweets and junk food. No sodas.
Sleep a minimum of 7 hours a night

Doing these things, I began to see a dramatic improvement in my weight and my health. My weight dropped from 167 to a healthy 157 (I bottomed out at 153) and I feel great! At 50 years old I am doing things that many 30 year old people cannot do. I have been on the above program for about two years and in that time the only illness I’ve experienced is a head cold that lasted about 48 hours. I am convinced that if people make similar changes in their lives that they will, like me, be healthier, happier and more productive. The key is commitment and consistency.

Can You Choose to Eat Healthy?

Most people understand the health benefits of eating right, yet they persist in eating high-calorie, low-nutrition junk food. There are many reasons for this, including taste, habit, accessibility, comfort, and so on. However, the cost of such eating habits are high, not only to the individuals who’s poor diet lead to obesity and chronic illness, but to society, which must bear the cost of increased health care (and lower worker productivity).

But is our diet really a choice? In a recent article Stephanie Roque pointed out that many factors in our society condition us to eat and even value junk foods. She pointed to a study published in 2002 that showed 73 percent of teachers surveyed used candy as an enticement for classroom performance. Fortunately, many educators are recognizing that doing that glorifies unhealthy food and leads to poor eating habits. Other factors she pointed to are community characteristics and national policy.

As a nation in crisis, it is important for us to stress the value of fresh, healthy foods. Eating right, along with exercise, will have a profound effect on the heath and well being of our nation, and significantly reduce the high cost of healthcare to our society.

So how do you eat right? Frankly, it’s not easy. We’ve already mentioned the reason, and the bottom line is that it takes commitment and discipline. Some people point out that eating healthy is more expensive. However, when you consider the number of times that people choose to eat out, the cost of eating healthy can easily be mitigated by staying in for dinner a few nights. Recently I heard a health food salesman say, “Pay the doctor or pay the farmer.” How true! Yes, people can individually choose to eat healthy foods, but we as a society need to change the culture away from “sweets conditioning” and help people understand the benefits of moderation and fresh, natural foods.

Another way to eat right is to (yep, you guessed it) get a wide variety of vegetables by drinking a daily green smoothie! Using Dr. Fila’s smoothie recipe you will be sure to get the nutrition and energy you need every day.

Mediterranean Diet Kicks

Recently (actually much longer than just recently) a lot of people have been discussing the health benefits of a Mediterranean diet, which is rich in vegetables, grains, nuts and healthy oils. According to a recent study, there is evidence that the Mediterranean diet may also help to reduce heart disease, which is a leading cause of dealth in the U.S. Check out this clip of Dr. Richard Besser discussing the study and the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet:

In a more recent interview, Dr. Besser also discusses the potential of the Mediterranean diet for cancer prevention. In response to that video, one user posted the following: “I am a registered nurse at the largest oncology in the world. I am a certified oncology nurse. When I admit patients into the hospital. I ask about their diet. In particular I ask three questions. They are: Do you eat 5 are more servings of fruits and vegetables a day? Do you eat fiber everyday? Do you drink 10 or more glasses of fluid a day? In all my years I have been asking these questions (I have been a nurse for 25 years), I have only had one cancer patient answer yes to all three questions. Something to think about.”

A diet rich in vegetables will do your body good!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

What better day than St. Patrick’s Day to try a green smoothie?! Do something good for yourself and enjoy the health benefits of a green smoothie!

Healthy Solutions for a Better Life

You can feel and live better! ProHealthy 365 is committed to bringing you the information and solutions that will help you to feel and live your best. It starts with attitude, diet and commitment. For the past two decades we have been researching the foods and activities that will give your body the energy and nutrition it naturally deserves. We now have the solution and we are working to make it as easy and convenient as possible. Email me today at slarsen@prohealthy365.com for more information. In the meantime, here are a few recent articles that provide some great insight and information into ways of getting the nutrition you need.

Sticking to The Mediterranean Diet Nearly Halves Heart Disease Risk (March 4, 2015)

Speeding Up the Battle Against Slowing Minds (February 24, 2015)

A Third of Americans Use Alternative Medicine (February 11, 2015)

How Much Sleep Do You Really Need? (February 3, 2015)

Stores Under Fire for Selling Bogus Supplements (February 4, 2015)

Real-life Nutrition Tips for the New Year (January 27, 2015)

Tips to Keep Your Body Healthy When the Air Is Not (January 22, 2015)

Americans Don’t Trust “All-Natural” Food Labels (January 20, 2015)

What Are Natural Flavors, Really? (January 14, 2015)

Why I Get All of My Protein from Plants (April 29, 2014)