Wisdom Wednesday

Tip
Turmeric and Black Pepper is a cancer-fighting dynamic duo. Turmeric is naturally high in a powerful anti-inflammatory compound called curcumin. Black Pepper contains an alkaloid called piperine that significantly enhances the bioavailability of curcumin. Spice up your food with these two power house health condiments, which is found in curries and thus many recipes in Indian cuisine.

(Source: foodmatters.tv)

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Raw Chocolate Raspberry Bark

For that occasional time you want a sweet treat, this raw chocolate raspberry bark is very easy to put together. And quilt-free to eat.

I buy organic cacao nibs and grind them to make the cacao powder using a coffee grinder I dedicate to making nut and seed flours. Coffee beans leave too much oil and residue behind. So it's best to have another grinder you use for grinding anything but coffee.

A square glass pyrex pan works great to freeze the chocolate mixture into a bark. Rubbing the bottom and sides with coconut oil before pouring the mixture will make removing the frozen cut squares easier.

Enjoy this delicious dessert anytime and get the heart healthy benefits of antioxidants, magnesium and healthy saturated fats.

Raw Chocolate Raspberry Bark

from Food Matters

yield 24 pieces

category Dessert

cuisine Vegan, Vegetarian

ingredients

1/2 C raw cacao powder

1/4 C maple syrup

1/2 C coconut oil, melted

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 C almond butter

1/2 C raspberries

3 Tbsp chopped rolled oats, or steel-cut oats

Optional: add ingredients you have on hand like shredded coconut, nuts, chia seeds

directions

1. In a mixing bowl, add cacao, maple syrup, melted coconut oil, vanilla and almond butter. Whisk ingredients until combined well.

2. Carefully mix in raspberries and chopped oats and any optional ingredients.

3. Pour chocolate mixture into a square pan greased with coconut oil.

4. Place pan in freezer for 30 minutes or until set.

5. Remove from freezer and cut into pieces to enjoy.

Give this one a try. Bring it to your next gathering and wow your friends and family. They'll think you fell off your health-nut wagon. Don't tell them it's healthy, they may not try it. I guarantee they will love it!

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Health Sites You Should Subscribe To

In a March post Learn How to Heal Cancer Naturally, I outlined what you can expect in the future from this blog to help you be more knowledgable about your health—how you can achieve it and maintain it. Become your own advocate for health. All while feeling amazing and loving the food you eat.

Truly! There's nothing more delicious than REAL food—plant-based (fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, intact grains, spices and herbs).

...But I digress.

The following are sites that I subscribe to and I recommend you do too:

The Truth About Cancer
I hope you had a chance to view the 9-part video series The Truth About Cancer: A Global Quest. If you did, you were likely blown away with all the non-harmful treatments and protocols out there that can heal cancer (and BTW often heal any other health issues you might have).

Ty Bollinger and his team continue to bring you health articles, doctor interviews and occasional recipes. Subscribe to their email newsletter at The Truth About Cancer at the top (a premium newsletter with monthly fee) or bottom (free newsletter) of the page.


Dr. Mercola
Mercola.com is the world's #1 natural health website. Doctor Mercola's motivation is to "make you as healthy as you can possibly be" by providing the most up-to-date natural health information and resources. He also exposes corporate, government, and mass media hype that diverts you from what is best for your health and often leads straight into an early grave. The New York Times best-selling author states his passion is to transform the traditional medical paradigm in the United States.

Subscribe to his site by entering your email at the top of the page

Food Matters
I love the health tips and recipes from the Food Matters folks. You may know them from the wildly popular documentary films Food Matters and Hungry for Change. If you have not seen them, you must as part of your education. These documentaries are available to watch on a subscription basis. Check their online streaming channel FMTV.

Subscribe to the Food Matters email newsletter. Check the side bar under Springtime Cleanse and enter your name and email to subscribe. You'll get a FREE ebook of 10 juice recipes. Yum!

Also I must tell you about their 3-Day Summer Detox program going on June 24th - 26th. You'll receive a daily recipe video as your guide each day. Join me and tons of others detoxing to start the summer!

The Food Revolution Network
John and Ocean Robbins are the force behind The Food Revolution Network. The recent 5th Annual Food Revolution Summit featured interviews with 24 of the top food experts on the planet. I always learn by listening to these series. John and Ocean talk much about how food politics, manufactured foods and factory farms have taken food hostage and made our food supply anything but food. In fact it's making us sick.

Check out the video of John Robbins making an impassioned plea for the cause of taking back food so we can be a healthy planet and culture.

Chris Beat Cancer
Chris Wark is the young man behind this powerful website: chrisbeatcancer.com Chris found himself
with stage 3 colon cancer at the age of 26. This self-described junk-food eater turned himself around after they removed a third of his colon. He shunned the recommended chemo and radiation and embarked on a healing journey using real food.

I urge you to spend some time exploring Chris' site. There are lots of great resources and truth there to help you on your journey. His videos of natural cancer survivor stories are legend. Have a look.

Subscribe to his email newsletter at the top or sidebar of his site. Also be sure to get his FREE guide 20 Questions for Your Oncologist.

Nutrition Facts by Dr. Greger M.D.
Internationally-recognized lecturer, physician and New York Times bestselling author doctor Michael Greger scours the world's nutrition research to bring you free daily videos and articles. Dr Greger promotes a plant-based diet which he enjoys for his own health.

Doctor Greger's bestselling book How Not to Die examines the fifteen top causes of death in America—heart disease, various cancers, diabetes, Parkinson’s, high blood pressure, and more—and explains how nutritional and lifestyle interventions can sometimes trump prescription pills and other pharmaceutical and surgical approaches, freeing us to live healthier lives.

Subscribe to Nutrition Facts on the sidebar below Dr. Greger's profile. I promise you'll enjoy his brief articles and videos, often sprinkled with a dose of humor, which highlight studies that support his title question or statement. Plus you'll learn so much.

——————————————

Okay, you now have your assignment. Subscribe to these websites and prepare to be educated. I'd love to hear from you on things you are learning. Comment or send me an email chris[dot]pedersen[at]healthyjourneycafe[dot]com

Please feel free to share this with others especially those who have cancer. They need help.

Onward to Optimum Wellness!

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What You Should Know About the New Cancer Drugs

If you watch any TV, you are continually bombarded with ads for drugs. Did you catch the ad for Opdivo in the barrage? This immunotherapy drug for lung cancer is the first of many to hit the market. It promises to significantly increase the chance of living longer versus chemotherapy. But if you pay attention to the ad, you'll learn that the drug could cause severe organ damage and death. If the patient survives all that, they may only live three months longer. What? Only THREE months? And at what quality of life?

Watch the commercial, but don't be distracted by the older folks that look so hopeful, happy and even healthy. Instead read the fine print that appears on the bottom and then listen as they rattle off the side effects.

This stuff makes me crazy. I do not understand how anyone would find this good! The commercial finishes with a sick (IMO) tribute to the patients who participated in the trial for approval—some of whom died while others experienced serious reactions or damage. Read for yourself what patients in the trial went through.

Immunotherapy Drugs are the Next Big Thing
This class of drugs is the darling of Big Pharma. Companies developing these new drugs have enjoyed nice profits for Wall Street investors.

Have you heard of Cancer Moonshot 2020? As stated on its website, it is "the nation’s most comprehensive cancer collaborative initiative seeking to accelerate the potential of combination immunotherapy as the next generation standard of care in cancer patients."

At What Cost?
Folks, they are going all out for this immunotherapy drug approach. It's big! But again at what expense (dollars and health) to the patient?

It's all about finding a drug to cure cancer because drug companies can't make money off of telling people they can boost their immune system (the ultimate fighter of disease in the body) by eating a mostly plant-based diet that builds your body with the nutrients it needs to control and subdue cancer.

This whole immunotherapy drug approach is a huge deal to the drug companies who have been making money off of expensive chemotherapy drugs that have been around for a long time.  Now they feel they can assault the immune system and make it respond with drugs to quell the cancer.

Well... I don't believe for a minute people will be helped by these new drugs any more than chemotherapy drugs have worked. In fact, leaving many who survive with lasting damage. This is not the way to cure cancer, but (consciously or unconsciously) is more about keeping people cycling through the expensive medical system for more treatment.

What Really Heals Cancer?
I am a living example of the cure for cancer. Cancer is a symptom of a sick body and through personal control of lifestyle choices such as diet (plant-based organic), exercise, proper sleep and stress-free living the cancer can be healed. I’ve done it for my genetic cancer and many others I know have healed their cancer (prostate, breast cancer, etc.) with the same (although adjusted for their body needs) protocols.

Bottom line—I understand that cancer is complex, but, to put it simply, I do not believe it happens because we lack the right drugs. Think about it!

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Roasted Beet, Yam & Cabbage Salad Recipe

For Memorial Day weekend we took a road trip up the state (California) to the college town of Chico where my husband Bob earned his finance degree. He always raved about Bidwell Park, which followed Big Chico Creek through a portion of the town. There are miles of paved trails under a shady canopy of large trees and lush greenery bordering the creek. Picnic benches dot the route offering an invitation to stop and enjoy the cool creek.

We brought our mountain bikes for the purpose of riding the trials. So off we went. We rode from Lower Bidwell Park all the way to Upper Bidwell Park where you can opt for more adventurous single-track, dirt trails. We saved the dirt trails for the following day when we spent several hours navigating up and down slightly technical trails (filled with protruding rocks of all sizes) getting a great workout—ending with a stop along the upper creek with a chilly dip for our weary feet.

Since I may not find healthy food to eat on trips, I always plan ahead and make a sizable salad to bring along. I chose a salad from Food Matters and made some changes to suit what I had on hand.

You will find this recipe a pleasing combination of tastes that turns beet red when all mixed together. It comes from Food Matters—a health website based in Australia, which I highly recommend you subscribe to. They offer recipes and health and nutrition information to help in your healing quest or optimum wellness routine.

I used purple cabbage instead of kale called for in the original recipe. The red beets in this recipe bathe the ingredients in a ruby color, however the red cabbage is hardly affected because of its deep purple color.

Since the coconut oil was a paste-like consistency, I used my handy technique of massaging the veggies and coconut oil through a ziplock bag to coat them with the oil. Learn my technique at How to Prepare Roasted Vegetables.

Another thing I changed in the recipe was subbing the dried cranberries for the Made in Nature Super Berry Fusion organic dried fruit from Costco. I also use this same dried fruit blend in my DIY trail mix.

Roasted Beet, Yam & Cabbage Salad

from Inspired by Food Matters

yield 6 - 8 servings

category Salad

cuisine Vegan

ingredients

1 large yam or sweet potato, peeled

2 large red beets, peeled

2 Tbsp of coconut oil

Salt & pepper

1/4 - 1/2 head of purple cabbage, chopped

1/2 C cooked quinoa

1/4 C dried cranberries or mixed berries

1/4 C chopped pecans

Dressing

2 Tbsp apple cidar vinegar

Juice of 1 lime

1/4 C extra virgin olive oil

directions

1. Preheat oven to 400ºF

2. Cut yams and beets into 1/2 inch cubes.

3. Put yams and beets into gallon-size plastic bag and add cocnut oil.  Close bag and massage veggies through bag to distribute oil onto beets and yams. Add salt and pepper.

4. Spread out on baking sheet and roast for 30 minutes, turning occasionally until vegetables are soft, but firm.

5. In a large bowl, toss yams, beets, pecans, berries, cabbage and quinoa. 

6. Whisk the dressing ingredients until blended then pour onto salad mixture. You may not use all the dressing.

7. Toss well and serve.

This salad got two thumbs up from Bob. We just finished up the remainder of this yummy salad two days ago and I'm ready to make another batch. You have all summer to try this recipe. If you make it, I guarantee you'll make it again!

What are your plans for getting away this summer?

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