My main focus in chiropractic is to detect and remove vertebral subluxations. I do not diagnose diseases so that I can treat diseases. That is for the allopathic world. I truly believe vertebral subluxations can have a devastating effect on the human body as a whole if not corrected. It could take days, months, or years, but at some point a subluxated atlas or axis bone can and will ruin someone's life.

But here's the catch. Once a subluxation has been corrected, how do we keep it corrected? If subluxations are caused by physical, chemical, and emotional stressors, how can we minimize these external influences so that they do not impact us negatively i.e. subluxations, dis-ease, disease, etc.? A specific chiropractic adjustment can address the physical stressor. That's a given. But what about the other two?

This is where eating raw foods come in. Eating whole, uncooked fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds is one of the quickest ways for a body to heal itself from chemical and emotional stressors.

So much of our food today is genetically modified, processed in a plant, or sprayed with such heavy amounts of pesticides that our bodies cannot chemically handle it. Why do you think the amount of people suffering from heart disease is so high in the United States? Cancer? Diabetes? These diseases are the body's way of preserving itself in any way possible. When someone goes into a diabetic shock, it's their body's way of telling them "Stop feeding me sugar! I can't make enough insulin to balance it out! Help!" Unless that person gives his- or herself a quick insulin injection, they are in serious trouble.

I once heard James Chestnut say that "Pathology is just physiology gone wrong." If your physiology can go wrong based on what you eat, then it would seem logical that it can go right, also based on what you eat.

Why Raw Foods?

Raw foods are either uncooked or not cooked beyond 106-117 degrees, based on which book you read. The reason being is that living raw foods contain numerous enzymes and nutrients that our bodies' need. These nutrients are delivered to the digestive system in their true, unaltered form, available for distribution wherever the body sees fit. When we heat foods beyond 117 degrees, the enzymes and nutrients are lost through the process of cooking, and we're left with, in essence, dead food. Sure, cooked foods taste great, but the human body has to work double time to digest it, simply because the food itself has lost the majority, if not all, of its nutrients and enzymes. Because of this, the burden of digesting the cooked food falls solely on the body. The body must provide more of its own enzymes to break the food down. This will then fatigue the body, leading to the tired feeling we get most of the time after eating a cooked meal.

In the documentary Simply Raw, ten diabetic patients volunteered to spend 30 days at a raw food retreat in Arizona. Nine of them were Type II, meaning their bodies used to make insulin, but do not anymore based on bad diet and lifestyle choices. The other subject was Type I, meaning he has never been able to produce insulin. Within five days of eating nothing but living raw foods, all nine Type II patients went completely off their insulin. The single Type I patient was taking 50% less. One man was taking 14 medications when he started. By the end of the 30 days, he was taking zero. Another woman was on 6 medications herself, and was taking nothing by the end as well. Even more miraculous, one of the Type II patients went in for a check-up 60 days later and actually discovered he had always been Type I. His body was not supposed to make insulin, yet it was, all because he ate nothing but live, uncooked foods.

If eating raw foods can literally change someone's physiology in just 30 days, think about what it could do over a longer period of time like six months, a year, two years, etc. The human body is a miraculous creation that knows exactly what it needs, when it needs it, and how much it needs. We see pharmacies on every street corner, but no one ever thinks to look at the pharmacy within themselves. Our society is bombarded by medications for every condition you can think of. As if that wasn't enough, then more medication is prescribed for side effects caused by the original medication, and on and on the vicious cycle goes.

If we make it a point to quit looking for pills, potions, and lotions to solve our health problems and, instead, start making better lifestyle choices, we will once again thrive as a nation.

And it all starts with what you put in your mouth.