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Chapter 1
Green Power From Wheatgrass
The greatest service to any country is to add a useful plant
to its culture. - Thomas Jefferson
Wheatgrass can help you get more from your life—more energy to be active, more
confidence in your ability to stay healthy, and more hours alert and awake each
day to accomplish your goals in life. I am assuming you are reading this book
because you feel there is room for improvement in your health. Maybe you get
worn out easily, wake up tired or in pain, or can't manage to drop those ten
extra pounds by the end of the spring anymore. In any case, you're probably
right: there is room for improvement in your health and wheatgrass juice could
be your route to a healthier, happier life.
MORE ENERGY
Millions of Americans, young and old, are drained of their energy by the end of
a day, despite the fact that most of them walk less than two blocks and sleep
eight to ten hours. Many middle-aged people accept the loss of youthful energy
as an inevitable product of aging. I used to feel that way, but that was before
I discovered wheatgrass and raw foods.
Do we have to settle for less energy at any age? I haven't, and you don't have
to either. Long-lasting fatigue is abnormal and is largely caused by a poor
diet. Modern life demands a great deal of energy which cannot be adequately
replenished by a nutritionally imbalanced diet. While a certain amount of
fatigue after a long day of work is normal, when a night's rest doesn't leave
you perfectly refreshed and recharged, there is a problem. If you wake up
looking and feeling as tired as when you went to bed you are not getting what
your body needs from your diet—or you are getting too many things you don't need
and they are blocking your flow of energy. Wheatgrass can help you restore a
high energy level in two ways. First, by fulfilling nutritional deficiencies,
and second, by removing wastes that clog your cells, blood, tissues, and organs.
Each of us is the keeper of over ten trillion little batteries called cells.
Like flashlight batteries, our cells hold a charge of electricity. In order for
this charge to be strong and steady we need to have a steady supply of the
proper nutrients, especially the high-quality minerals, vitamins, enzymes, and
amino acids contained in wheatgrass juice. With the addition of wheatgrass and
raw foods to your diet, your cells will store a maximum electrical charge, and
you will have plenty of energy. At the same time, wheatgrass will help to
release excess fats, mineral deposits, and proteins that are trapped in the
organs of digestion and elimination, and in the blood, thus saving you energy
that would otherwise be spent in your body's struggle to cleanse itself.
WHEATGRASS CAN LENGTHEN YOUR DAY
One thing you may notice right away after beginning the wheatgrass and raw
(live) foods regimen is that you will need less sleep than you do now. Six hours
of sleep—maybe even less—is adequate as long as it is deep and undisturbed
sleep. Even though many people sleep in excess of eight hours a night, their
sleep is chaotic and broken up by raids on the refrigerator and trips to the
bathroom. These people often wake up feeling and looking exhausted.
During sleep, the body goes on "automatic" and balances and re-energizes its
cells. Ideally, a night's sleep of four to six hours, and an optional afternoon
nap of an hour, will give your body plenty of time to renew and refresh itself.
But when your body is overloaded with food, more than half of it consumed at the
evening meal, your sleep will be more restless and less restful. Whenever your
cells are more out-of-balance, as often occurs during an illness, the more sleep
you will need.
Wheatgrass and other raw foods are light, clean foods that nourish and cleanse
the body, whereas red meats, cheeses, and sugared and processed foods are heavy
and tend to congest and age our cells. After a few days of drinking and applying
several ounces of wheatgrass juice, if you avoid heavy, clogging foods, your
body's housecleaning burden will be reduced and one morning you will awaken from
a short, deep, undisturbed sleep refreshed and renewed. As accumulated wastes
and debris are removed, you will find that your energy and confidence will
return.
REVERSING ILLNESS
Wheatgrass juice is perhaps the most powerful and safest healing aid there is.
Not because it can attack and destroy bacteria or malignant cells, like some
drugs, but because it has the ability to strengthen the whole body by bolstering
its immune system. The exact way in which wheatgrass juice improves the state of
the immune system is not yet known. Rather than there being one or two
"elements" responsible for the healing power of wheatgrass, I feel strongly that
the key factor is a unique combination of nutritional values, chemical values,
and energetic attributes.
The body's ability to fight illness is determined by the immune system. Through
improving the health of the immune system, wheatgrass juice and other raw foods
may increase the odds of your overcoming any kind of health problem. In
contrast, modern drugs are taken to correct one symptom or another without
effectively strengthening the overall state of health. In reality no drug has
ever healed a person. Knowing this full well, Hippocrates, the father of
medicine, stated, "The body heals itself; the physician is only nature's
assistant."
The unique nourishing and cleansing properties of wheat- grass, combined with
the grass juice factor (which I will discuss later on), make it an ideal ally in
the battle against disease, including illnesses like heart disease and certain
forms of cancer, especially those that lead to depressed immune response and the
subsequent attack of the body by microbes or viruses. For anything, including
wheatgrass and other raw foods, that strengthens the body and especially the
immune system, can serve only to increase well-being.
PROTECTION FROM CITY BLUES
Nearly every day one group of scientists exposes another chemical as a dangerous
carcinogen, while another group of specialists creates one. Our air is unfit to
breathe, our water too acid and polluted to drink, and thousands of acres of our
topsoil are eroded each year. Many cities which were once the lifeblood of
culture and the arts are slowly becoming huge concrete and electronic wastelands
where people spend their days before hurrying home to the suburbs at night. But
even in the suburbs, industrial pollution, auto exhaust, and toxic chemicals
have taken their toll. It seems that unless we experience a major
environmentally-based technological revolution, pollution and its attendant
health risks will be here to stay.
Fortunately, there is a sensible way to combat the "city blues." We can protect
ourselves from environmental hazards by strengthening our internal defenses. If
our eliminatory processes work more efficiently, toxins that do enter the lungs
and blood won't stay as long. Poisons that do linger can be more easily
neutralized by a healthier liver. With fewer heavy foods in the diet, we can
increase the amount of oxygen in the blood and ease the burden on the
circulatory system. Then pollution will affect us less severely than it will
strike people who remain heedless of their health. There is even evidence (which
I will discuss in more detail later) that wheatgrass can protect us from both
low- and high-level radiation.
In this age of mass information and telecommunication, few things have been kept
a secret for as long as wheatgrass juice. Things are changing, however. The past
few years have seen the first significant research on chlorophyll and wheat-
grass since the 1940s, and all of the reports I have studied confirm that
wheatgrass is a top-notch cleanser, builder, healer, protector, and rejuvenator
of health. Few foods or medicines contain as many active live ingredients as
wheat- grass. We cannot deny the fact that without wheatgrass and the other
grasses that cover the earth, the human race could never have survived. Nor can
we turn our backs on the amazing potential of wheatgrass as a superfood and
medicine that is completely safe in any amount, and available to everybody for
just pennies a day.
Chapter 2 -
Green For Life
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