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Q2: What can I do to improve my overall health?
A: Some easy changes in your lifestyle and dietary adjustments can bring dramatic results.
The following is a basic “Watch List” of things that are detrimental to good health. Can you eliminate them all? Probably not, it just wouldn’t be practical. Our advice is to pick and choose the things that are the easiest to change for your specific circumstances, and just do the best you can with the rest. Tackle something new each week, or each month … whatever works for you.
Of course, there are some things that, without question, should be totally eliminated. These are: MSG, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Vegetable Oils, Processed Soy, and all Artificial Sweeteners. If you are consuming substantial amounts of any of these, you will see dramatic changes in your health just by eliminating these substances alone. Try it! We have in-depth articles on each one explaining exactly why they are so damaging to your health.
Consider this:Do you have access to organic produce? Can you filter all your drinking water? Can you switch from plastic containers to glass? Can you buy paper products without dioxins? Ideally, the more changes you can make to your food, and the way you do things, the stronger your body will be when it comes to dealing with the toxins that are harder to avoid, such as chemicals in carpeting and furniture, the harmful plastics that so many common items are made from, and the various fumes we unknowingly breathe daily.
Control the things you can, to make your body stronger in dealing with the things you cannot control.
Dietary changes:
- Clean up your diet:
- Whenever possible choose organic produce over conventionally raised produce.
- At every meal, try to have at least 1 portion of raw and uncooked food: salads, raw vegetables, fresh fruit
- Exchange your starches, such as pasta and bread, with the “sprouted” grain versions (available in most health food stores)
- Add more raw nuts into your diet
- Add coconut oil and coconut milk to your daily diet
- Eliminate all MSG and the many MSG derivatives
- Eliminate Corn Syrup / High fructose corn syrup
- Change from highly processed salt to natural sea salt
- Cut down on all products made from white sugar and white flour; switch to whole grain and naturally sweetened baked goods and snacks that use evaporated cane juice, honey, agave syrup, rice syrup, etc.
- Eliminate all Vegetable Oils processed with high heat, all foods containing trans fat / hydrogenated oil: these bad oils are found most heavily in baked goods, snack items, crackers, chips, and anything fried
- Switch from margarine to organic butter
- Choose all-natural meat such as grass fed beef and free range chicken; No hormones / anti-biotics
- Don’t eat processed meats that contain nitrates /sodium nitrite (cured bacon, most lunchmeats) Read Labels
- Limit fish known to have high contamination levels to no more than once a month; no farm fed fish / no large fish
- Absolutely NO artificial sweeteners Can you find a source of raw milk?
- Limit consumption of Homogenized / Pasteurized Milk or switch to almond milk or coconut milk
- Genetically modified foods (virtually impossible to avoid)… choose non-GMO foods when possible Irradiated foods (not well labeled, and hard to identify…do the best you can to avoid them)
- Do not consume processed Soy products Drink non-chlorinated and non-fluoridated water
Lifestyle / Environmental Changes:
- Limit your use of plastics that contain BPA, and plasticizers Use paper products processed without dioxins
- Change to non-toxic cleaning products
- Change to natural body care products that are free of parabins, petroleum, and more
- Don’t use chemical air deodorizers
General changes to improve overall health:
If a natural solution has been proven to work and you believe it is not working for you, please consider: You may need to give it more time – natural solutions are creating actual and beneficial changes in your body’s healing processes – this can take time (in many cases up to 3 months to see results) You may need to increase the dosage – If you start out more deficient, then you may need a bigger dose to see results Explore whether your digestion, or imbalances in your diet, are preventing absorption
One of the best things you can do for every aspect of your health is to seek out valid sources of information. This means you must stop getting your vital health info from 2 or 3 minute segments on morning TV shows! Many of us here at Vital Earth literally groan out loud when we hear some of the advice given in those brief segments.
There are many hidden agendas behind marketing campaigns. Even the information that is presented as impartial on many talk shows is actually controlled by sponsors who have a financial interest in manipulating the viewer toward a specific buying decision.
It’s crucial to educate yourself, to read, and learn what’s true and what isn’t. When you are more informed about a subject you can better decide how to make beneficial changes that fit your particular lifestyle.
It’s hard to know who to trust. We strive to provide the most straightforward information we can about our products. We list everything on our labels, even when the ingredient is in amounts so small it is not required by law, and we are completely forthright about all our ingredients.
Call us if you have any questions. We’ll tell you exactly why we use one ingredient over another, how our products are processed, who our lab is, and anything else you may be wondering about. Smart consumers are healthy consumers! Let’s all get healthy to improve our lives and the lives of those around us.
Read this complete article with links added for more indepth information. | 
