Eat Your Way to a Healthy Colon and an even Better Life!

Every day, we find ourselves caught up in a whirlwind of motion where everything is in a fast forward pace – a person is just a speed dial away, maps being thrown out the window for the newer GPS navigation, and even home cooked meals reduced to just a Christmas or Thanksgiving memory! That is an extremely sad fact and little by little, society has been paying for this negligence, particularly on their health.

So, how about taking a few minutes off your busy schedule to ponder on this? You might also want to put down that hotdog you just bought from the stand around the corner, too, while you are at it because that hotdog may very well be the last meal you will have before learning that you have colon cancer. This is not an exaggeration. Statistics show that the colon is the third most common site for cancer and is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths both in the United States and in Canada. If you have been having that kind of diet since God knows when, then you might have been eating your way straight down that cancer road. Sounds scary enough? It is.

What can we do? We still have our careers and that still would not allow us the time to prepare home cooked meals everyday. That may be your line of thought right now, right? It is actually very easy. We improvise! We learn about the right kind of food to eat and then we modify our diet. There is a growing consensus about plant-based diets being the best choice to decrease the risk of developing the so-called diseases of the 21st century. We might want to start there. So let us get a head on!

First up, a plant-based diet is made up of hefty servings of fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, and whole grain. The common factor for all these? Dietary fiber. The body needs about 20 to 35 grams of fiber per day. Rich sources would include flax seeds, oats, whole wheat, barley, rye beets, carrots, cabbage, turnips, cauliflower, and apples, skin and all. For the vegetable part of the diet, although diversity on choices is encouraged, focus more on the green and leafy ones. The chlorophyll content of alfalfa, spirulina, and blue green algae, to name a few, apart from cleansing the colon, actually aids in the healing of injured tissue in the digestive tract.

In addition to all these, we can also bring fermented food into the diet, like yogurt and sauerkraut. These food items contribute to number of friendly bacteria that normally exists in our colon. This normal flora, of up to 100 trillion bacteria, help in certain bodily functions, like the synthesis of certain vitamins, particularly vitamin K, and in breaking down toxins.

Combine all these with six to ten glasses of pure water a day, then we all would definitely be in better shape than we were yesterday! So, here’s to better health and to better living!

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