cleanse and rejuvenate with a delicious difference

We are in the middle of an amazingly easy and pleasurable 14 day cleanse. Basically it's sticking to blended raw foods such as delicious vegetable and seaweed soups, chocolate smoothies, blended desserts, rich lemonades and in my case kefir. Then several times a day it's taking oxymag and citrus to get the digestion moving and also cider vinegar to break up any stones in the liver and gallbladder.

Liver and gallbladder stones accumulate over time with all of us and eliminating them allows the liver and gallbladder to function more effectively, making it easier to digest fats. Afterwards people generally feel wonderful.  In fact people have even avoided gallbladder surgery by cleansing in this way.

Yesterday evening we drank olive oil and orange juice to flush the liver. The gallbladder is stimulated to put out a lot of bile and so any stones or any other unwanted materials or toxins can be eliminated.   The next day its a good idea to have an enema of colonic to flush this material out of the colon.

This is a very gentle cleanse and we were able to carry on as usual except for a slightly but very mild queasyish feeling when lying down at the end of yesterday evening after the oil. The wonderful thing about doing all the blended foods is that you are wonderfully nourished through the whole process so you don't need to be hungry.  It's as much a rejuvenation as a cleanse in my experience.

Now for recipes!

Live probiotic liver cleansing raw soup:



In this recipe I personally leave the beetroot out or replace with raw sweet potato because it is an oestrogen mimicker which is not generally a problem in this case but can cause overheating for some women including me.

Seaweed soup:



I made this with a couple of red bell peppers added  and miso the other day and it was so delicious. It's incredibly easy to make and more delicious than you can imagine on first sight!  Really nourishing too so you feel satisfied but still light.

Chocolate smoothies!
http://foodforconsciousness.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/how-to-make-delicious-tonic-herbal.html

I'm getting organised for the year ahead with great excitement and want to feel as energised as I can for what is to come.

We can offer coaching in this process, more details coming soon.

kefir, magic elixir, champagne of raw dairy

Kefir is an incredible magic food which comes into being through the symbiotic activities of three living groups: humans, grazing animals and beneficial micro-organisms. The culture which, with human help, transforms animal milks into a supremely nourishing drink is actually a mixture of numerous kinds of friendly bacteria and yeasts. Our bodies are really a whole ecosystem and ideally our digestive tracts contain ten times more friendly micro-organisms than we have cells in our bodies; these support a healthy immune system and brain function. Kefir is the most powerfully probiotic food or supplement that we know of. It actively repopulates the gut, laying down a healthy mucus layer that micro-flora can flourish in, supporting the digestive and immune system.

The kefir culture itself is potentially immortal – if properly looked after and fed with milk, it can live indefinitely. The liquid kefir that it makes is a preserved living food and can keep for months. The particular nutritive properties of kefir are numerous. The culture rebalances the amino acids in animal milk making them more suitable for humans. In particular it increases the amount of tryptophan which is the raw material from which serotonin, the well-being biochemical, is made. Tryptophan tends to be lacking in modern diets as it is easily damaged by cooking. Kefir contains ample amounts of B vitamins including B12. Acetylcholine in it improves sleep and is good for memory, intelligence, learning, enthusiasm and general mood. It contains lecithin which helps in the assimilation of fats. It contains 'right-rotating' lactic acid (as opposed to 'left-rotating' lactic acid found in other yoghurts) which revives cells.

One of the great aspects of kefir is that it allows us to take advantage or the nutrition in dairy milk, for example the fat soluble vitamins A (retinol), D and K2 whilst avoiding some of the potential allergenic problems of dairy products. The culture breaks down the lactose into lactic acid and the casein into beneficial peptides.

Added to all this, kefir has an unusual, delicious and acquired taste. When bottled,  it undergoes a secondary fermentation and becomes slightly fizzy - the 'champagne of raw dairy'. 

wonders of kefir

Milk kefir is one the major staples of our diet.  There are many wonderful things about it.  Not least is that it enables us to benefit, with digestive ease, from the goodness in raw dairy milk, including the crucial fat soluble vitamins D and K2 and also various B vitamins which are otherwise difficult to obtain in sufficient quantities from a plant sourced diet.  In high latitude countries such as Britain it is not possible to obtain vitamin D from sunlight for about half of the year due to the low altitude of the sun. 

Kefir transforms the milk of another mammal, for example a cow, so that the ratios of the amino acids are more suitable for humans.  In particular in increases the amount of tryptophan which it is very easy to be deficient in and is the precursor to serotonin.  The kefir culture also breaks down difficult to digest casein proteins into peptides and lactose, which is  a problem for many, into lactic acid.  Kefir is  the most powerful probiotic substance we know of, actively repopulating the gut with friendly bacteria. 

If you make your kefir with the milk from traditional A2 type cows such as Jersey cows, then all the better. This milk does not release a particular beta-casomorphine called BCM 7 which is responsible for some milk intolerance.  Jersey milk also contains more cream therefore more fat soluble vitamins.(more below).

We integrate noni powder into some of our kefir meals.  The xeronine in noni helps the tryptophan get through the intestinal walls more effectively.

Demonstrating kefir at Dutch Raw Food Festival:



at our workshop:



addendum on A1 and A2 milk:

"All proteins are long chains of amino acids. Beta casein is a chain 229 amino acids in length. Cows who produce this protein in their milk with a proline at number 67 are called A2 cows, and are the older breeds of cows (e.g. Jerseys, Asian and African cows). But some 5,000 years ago, a mutation occurred in this proline amino acid, converting it to histidine. Cows that have this mutated beta casein are called A1 cows, and include breeds like Holstein.

Proline has a strong bond to a small protein called BCM 7, which helps keep it from getting into the milk, so that essentially no BCM 7 is found in the urine, blood or GI tract of old-fashioned A2 cows. On the other hand, histidine, the mutated protein, only weakly holds on to BCM 7, so it is liberated in the GI tract of animals and humans who drink A1 cow milk."
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/07/09/the-devil-in-the-milk.aspx