If you’ve given any thought to cancer prevention, you have probably thought about your diet. Almost every week a new trend is hitting the health food headlines. It can make it almost impossible to settle on what to eat and not eat. But there is one diet that is consistently proven, over more than two decades, to reduce your risk for cancer. It is a plant-based diet.
There is no clear definition of a what constitutes a whole-foods, plant-based diet (WFPB diet). The WFPB diet is not necessarily a set diet — it’s more of a lifestyle.
Nonetheless, the basic principles of a whole-foods, plant-based diet are as follows:
For these reasons, this diet is often confused with vegan or vegetarian diets. Yet although similar in some ways, these diets are not the same. People who follow vegan diets abstain from consuming any animal products, including dairy, meat, poultry, seafood, eggs and honey. Vegetarians exclude all meat and poultry from their diets, but some vegetarians eat eggs, seafood or dairy.
It’s Electrik focuses their health philosophy largely around an alkaline plant based lifestyle due to its medicinal benefits of eliminating acid in the blood, thus reducing risk for disease and promoting healing.
The alkaline plant-based lifestyle was developed by the late self-educated herbalist Alfredo Darrington Bowman, better known as Dr. Sebi. This lifestyle is designed this for anyone who wishes to naturally cure or prevent disease and improve their overall health without relying on conventional Western medicine, and rejuvenates your cells by eliminating toxic waste through alkalizing your blood. Dr. Sebi’s philosophy revealed that all manifestation of disease occurs where and when the mucous membrane has been compromised. For example, if there is excess mucous in the bronchial tubes, the disease is Bronchitis; if it is in the lungs, the disease is Pneumonia; in the pancreatic duct, it is Diabetes; in the joints Arthritis. He argues that diseases cannot exist in an alkaline environment and begins to occur when your body becomes too acidic.
PH level measures how acid or alkaline something is. A pH of 0 is completely acidic, while a pH of 14 is completely alkaline. A pH of 7 is neutral. Those levels vary throughout your body. Your blood is slightly alkaline, with a pH between 7.35 and 7.45. Your stomach is very acidic, with a pH of 3.5 or below, so it can break down food. And your urine changes, depending on what you eat, that's how your body keeps the level in your blood steady. Eating alkaline foods helps your body maintain its blood pH level.
An Alkaline balanced body is healthy, vibrant, and energetic, free of sickness and disease. An Acidic body is one that is degenerating, breaking down, showing a myriad of symptoms of ill health from the simplest form being a cold or a rash, all the way to diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. We all know 1-5 people or more that are ill or dying of these or many other terrible diseases that can be solved with a change in their lifestyle and diet. High levels of stress, negative thoughts, lack of exercise and a poor all play a key role in this lifestyle and are acid forming. Changing your diet will improve your pH and reduce your symptoms to a certain degree, but you must also manage and balance these other pieces of the puzzle to reach optimal health.
Made up largely of meat, dairy, sugars, alcohol, saturated fats, highly processed foods and caffeine, we have become a very sick nation looking for quick cures from pills. The number of books being published on healthy eating is at an all-time high and many of them are slamming the typical diets that many of us thought were “healthy”. Instead of maintaining what we thought was a healthy, body we have created a hostile acidic environment within our body that now needs correcting before we develop disease, or before we die from one we’ve just been diagnosed with. The beauty is that you CAN reverse the negative effects of an unhealthy diet if you sincerely have the will to do so.
It supports your immune system. Plants have essential nutrients that you cannot get from other foods. The vitamins and minerals, phytochemicals and antioxidants in plants help keep your cells healthy and your body in balance so that your immune system can function at its best. Plants give your body what it needs to help fight off infection. A plant-based diet strengthens your immune system to protect you against germs and microorganisms.” A healthy immune system is essential for reducing your risk for cancer because it can recognize and attack mutations in cells before they can progress to disease.
Plant foods reduce inflammation. Plants’ essential nutrients work to resolve inflammation in your body. The same tiny phytochemicals and antioxidants that boost your immune system also go around your body neutralizing toxins from pollution, processed food, bacteria, viruses and more. To reduce inflammation, it’s important to eat plant-based and to listen to your body’s signals for how foods work for you. Prolonged inflammation can damage your body’s cells and tissue and has been linked to cancer and other inflammatory diseases like arthritis. A plant-based diet may protect you because it removes some of the triggers to these diseases.
A plant-based diet helps maintain a healthy weight. Staying at a healthy weight is one of the most important things you can do to reduce your risk for cancer. When it comes to cancer, the only thing more important than maintaining a healthy weight, is not smoking. This is because excess weight causes inflammation and hormonal imbalance. If you are overweight or obese, your risk is higher for 12 different types of cancer including colorectal, post-menopausal breast, uterine, esophageal, kidney and pancreatic cancers. If you eat mostly plants, you remove many of the foods that lead to weight gain. Add in exercise and you’re on a path towards weight loss.
Plants are high in fiber. Fiber is present in all unprocessed plant foods. It is what makes up the structure of the plant, and if you eat more of it you access a whole host of benefits. Eating a plant-based diet improves the health of your gut so you are better able to absorb the nutrients from food that support your immune system and reduce inflammation. Fiber can lower cholesterol and stabilize blood sugar and it’s great for good bowel management. Fiber is very important for reducing your cancer risk. This is especially true for your risk for the third most common cancer: colorectal cancer. A plant-based diet reduces your risk for other diseases too. The benefits of eating mostly plants are not limited to reducing your cancer risk. A plant-based diet also has been shown to reduce your risk for heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some mental health illnesses.
Not only does a plant based lifestyle help to reduce your risk of disease, but regularly incorporating minerals and herbs into your diet can significantly impact your overall health. Minerals help our bodies develop and function. They are essential for good health. Knowing about different minerals and what they do, can help you to make sure you get enough of the minerals that you need. It's Electrik offers a variety of herbs and minerals that can help to both heal and sustain a healthy body.
