In our last post, we discussed Free Radicals - those nasty little scavengers that can travel around our bodies disrupting healthy cells and generally causing trouble. So this week, we thought it would be good to give you an 'easy-to-remember' basic plan for healthy eating that can be easily incorporated into our very busy lives. This basic plan will help your body to deal with Free Radicals quickly and efficiently on a daily basis:
1. Eat foods that can provide huge amounts of antioxidants to the body (primarily fresh, raw fruits, sprouts and vegetables) including juices. Superfoods such as Spirulina, cereal grasses (barely, wheat, kamut, etc.), and Chlorella – these foods have so many free radical eliminating antioxidants that the relatively small amount of free radicals created in the digestive process are apprehended, with antioxidants to spare.
2. Eat fresh food - as foods age, they contain more free radicals so the fresher the better.
3. Where possible, consume raw, uncooked foods - as a rule, longer and hotter cooking temperatures result in more free radicals. Steaming is one of the best methods of cooking. Avoid barbequed food and burnt food (such as toast) as a rule!
4. Constantly boost your diet with antioxidant supplements and superfoods: some of the best antioxidants and superfoods include algaes (Spirulina, Chlorella), Cereal Grasses (Barley, Wheat, Kamut, Oat), fresh/raw juices, CoQ10, Ginkgo Biloba, Pycnogenols (grape seed, grape skin, pine bark), Bilberry, Green Tea, Tocotrienols, Rosemary and Milk Thistle Herb (Silymarim), to mention but a few.
The bottom line is that antioxidants are the only way to protect yourself from free radicals once they are formed!