What is required of us to achieve longevity? Through my experience and research on this topic it appears to be the exact opposite to what most people believe. If I told you what I think is required of us to achieve longevity and a healthy life, you may say that I am crazy! Good thing that I am not bothered by the never-ending differences in opinions. Im just going to share my thoughts here and if nothing else, you may find this to be thought provoking. Health, healing & longevity are all one of the same. Meaning that the same type of diet that allows the body to heal, is the same type of diet that will keep us in good health long term and in turn, build longevity. Of course, we all have our individual expiry date so to speak that is completely unknown to anyone – this is our genetic potential which is dependant on many factors over the course of ones lifetime and throughout our lives we can either shorten our genetic potential or live up to it (pardon the pun) as we go along. Here are my longevity thoughts.
A simplified diet is #1 in my opinion. The more complicated, or dressed up that our food is, the more digestive energy / life force energy is required to digest that food. From what I’ve seen though, we are addicted to complicated food mixtures, if there is not a million spices, salts, oils, and a lot of different food types all eaten together at once, who’s going to want to eat it? That’s not how we do things these days, plain food is boring food!! I wonder if anyone, aside from myself, has ever sat down and eaten almost a whole lightly steamed cauliflower without anything on it and enjoyed it? I know a raw foodist would be absolutely horrified for what I just mentioned, yet I will point out that a lightly steamed cauliflower is a lot easier to digest than raw cauliflower or any fatty/nut based foods. I truly think that our overcomplicated meals are a big part of the reason why we are so sick en mass. For myself, it took many years of slowly simplifying my diet to the point where I am eating just a couple of food types with each meal (raw or lightly steamed), or if I am eating cooked fruits or vegetables, I do not require, or use any condiments whatsoever. I actually enjoy the taste of the food I am eating (or I wouldn’t eat it) where I realize that before, in the past, I was enjoying the taste of the food mixtures added to the foods that were not health promoting and really it didn’t matter what I was eating at all! It wasn’t an easy task to revert my taste buds over to enjoy foods as they are. Condiments are often highly addictive or stimulating such as nutritional yeast, salts, various spices, etc. so when we no longer include them on our food, our food doesn’t taste as “tasty”. Im here to tell you that the longer you spend on a high fruit, healthy vegan diet, overtime, the taste buds change to appreciate the taste of the food by itself. I eat my lettuce plain and I never noticed until I began doing that – that lettuce tastes so sweet and delicious on its own. So, # 1 I feel is that we overcomplicate our foods which doesn’t serve to elevate or to improve our health.
#2 is that we overeat. I am guilty of this, probably we all are, yet it’s something that I’ve been working on, and figuring out how to overcome because I think that this is so important to not overeat if we desire a long, healthy, disease free life. Overeating is similar to overfilling the gas tank on a continual basis, or overfilling your oil, it’s not good for the car, an engine requires just the right amounts of most fuels/fluids for optimal performance and humans are similar in the sense that when we overeat, it taxes the digestive system and sets us up for health issues if we keep doing this day after day for years. Overeating is stomach abuse! When the body is digesting, it is not putting any energy towards healing or repairing and the absolute worst thing we can do is to overeat a large meal before going to bed! That food will just sit there and ferment and decay because the digestive is almost inoperative during our nighttime resting period which sets us up for other issues. We do not want to overeat, yet most of us seek that full feeling because it’s comfortable in a sense and it often suppresses our other issues that we do not want to face.
#3 (and ill leave it here even though I have many others to list) is that we are living in such a stressful world that there’s hardly a non-stressed person out there. Unless you live quite rural, without any dependence on society, and you avoid the television, internet and do not own a cell phone, I can almost guarantee that you are stressed, and stress messes with the entire body. If we eat while stressed, our food will not have the same impact on our health as it would when eating completely stress free and happy. Stress is a killer, it harms us on levels that we can not even begin to fathom. There are plenty of ways to minimize stress in our modern lives, but for the most part, stress is a normal aspect of everyday life and that is not helping us to live longer, healthier lives. I’ve found several ways to minimize stress such as taking an hour each day for stretching and breathing while listening to calming music, not owning a TV, never listening to the fear mongering stations on the internet such as mainstream news, being mindful of what I digest through my mouth, eyes, ears, etc. and walking near trees often. Earthing also helps (walking barefoot on the ground or plugging a blanket for example into the groundwire for an earthing experience) and so does learning to recognize when you are in a stress state so that you can take the necessary steps to fix the issue. We can reduce how we handle stress through a health promoting diet – that is good news, I notice that I can handle stressful situations a lot easier than I did in the past when my body was in poor health.
At the end of the day, we must take care of ourselves to the best of our ability so that we can live our best life. Without health, life isn’t all that it can be, and we miss out on so much when we are living in poor health and that is a tragedy in itself. That is precisely what motivated me to find out how to heal my own health issues and to take the necessary steps to do so. If you desire health, all that it takes is the desire to create new, healthier habits and in time, you will reap the rewards such as a longer, healthier, disease free, less stressful life!
Happy Healing Everyone
Mariah Heal ThySelf
