Vibrant viewers, on this week’s Healthy Living, in part one of a two-part series, we’ll learn some of the key principles of diet and nutrition from Dr. Jay Sutliffe of Chadron State College, Nebraska, USA. Dr. Sutliffe is a registered dietician with a background in health education and public health. He is a popular speaker at health expos and conferences and is an advocate of the vegan lifestyle.

Given the seemingly endless array of food choices, some feel it is a challenge to know which are truly the foods that can keep our bodies strong and full of energy. Dr. Sutliffe first discusses the C Reactive Protein level as an indicator of health status and why this measure shows that always selecting natural, plant-based foods is vital to keeping healthy and active.

The C Reactive Protein is a protein made in the liver in response to inflammatory conditions in the body. It’s a better indicator than even cholesterol to see the likelihood or the possibility of us having a cardiovascular event, and so the C Reactive Protein is measuring how much inflammation we have actually within the arteries. And so when we have this check, what we see is if there’s an elevated condition.

What we can do is we can change lifestyle factors to actually bring the C Reactive Protein level down and bring our inflammation down. Now inflammation is also synonymous with cancer, diabetes, and any of the arthritic conditions, because when we become inflamed internally it starts narrowing off the blood flow in the body.

In some of the clinical studies that we’re currently doing with some colleagues of mine, we’re actually looking at using a plant-based lifestyle to lower the C Reactive Protein. In our preliminary findings right now we’re finding that the plant-based lifestyle is a major benefit in bringing the C Reactive Protein down in the short-term, even as little as two to three weeks.

When we take in an animal- based protein diet, we’re finding that a lot of the sulfur containing amino acids are causing an inflammatory response in the body. When you eat foods of plant origin, that have plant proteins, they’re typically very low in sulfur-containing amino acids, and so automatically that’s starting to help reduce the amount of inflammation within the arteries.

Dr. Sutliffe now describes the importance of keeping steady blood glucose or sugar levels, our body’s primary source of energy. An improper diet often pushes the amount of blood sugar out of normal range possibly leading to serious chronic conditions like diabetes, a disease that can cause kidney failure, blindness and necessitate limb amputations.

Now the key, is how we can get it to stabilize until it’s not bouncing up and down. The best way to do it is to eat unrefined, plant-based products called carbohydrates. And so what we find is that when we eat plenty of fiber, and we eat the food in its natural state, that we’ll have smooth blood sugar levels, and not spiking and bottoming out.

The other thing we want to do is we want to make sure that every day that we’re stimulating the muscles. We’re stimulating the muscles because the muscles will then be able to absorb or regulate our blood sugar levels at a more even pace. And so we find that diabetics a lot of times are inactive, and they tend to gain weight, and we all tend to seem to be less active as we age.

So the diabetics especially need to make sure that they’re including not only aerobic exercise, but they’re also doing resistance training where they’re actually stimulating the muscles to actually take up more of the glucose, so that the muscles become like sponges after they’ve been the exercised, so that they actually take up the glucose more readily and metabolize the glucose in the cells.

Many who suffer from mood swings seldom think of their possible link to dietary intake and blood glucose levels.

A lot of times when people are eating a lot of refined foods, especially processed carbohydrates, a lot of packaged foods, we’re finding is that really raises havoc with blood sugar levels, and a lot of times it starts out right away in the morning.

If we eat a rushed breakfast that’s very low in fiber, our blood sugar may rise up dramatically with a corresponding response where it starts coming down dramatically when insulin is released, and the glucose levels start to drop in the blood, and then the body says, “Eat something, eat something.”

So if we eat some more processed foods, low in fiber, and we start this process all day long, that directly affects our moods, and a lot of times we have mood swings, depending upon where our blood sugars are at. It’s really taking us more on a roller coaster ride throughout the day, and it’s based upon that we’re eating too many processed foods, especially when we start out that way in the morning.

So what I recommend people do is they start off the day eating some good fruit, and just eating fresh fruit. And if they can’t have that, then maybe some frozen fruit, maybe putting it in the blender, and using some bananas and some different things, maybe making a smoothie of that nature. Eating some whole grain cereals, or I’ve even seen in some situations where we’ve been working with patients that are diabetics, we’ll actually put them on a diet where we include legumes, like some beans right away in the morning.

We’ll soon be back to learn about how our arteries deteriorate over time when we consume animal products. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to Healthy Living on Supreme Master Television featuring our talk about important principles of diet and nutrition with Dr. Jay Sutliffe, who is a vegan public health and nutrition expert. Arteriosclerosis or the hardening of the arteries is a global public health crisis, with many people suffering from this condition. As we’ll hear in a moment, arteriosclerosis develops as we consume animal products over time and thus is a preventable disease.

As we look at the leading causes of death in the United States, we see not only the United States, but worldwide, heart disease is the number one cause of death. And when we look at heart disease, it’s very low in the countries that are relying more upon plant-based diets that are unrefined.

When we start adding in more and more animal protein, what we’re finding is that we are taking in more saturated fat and more cholesterol. And when we take in excess amounts it seems to spill over into the blood and start clogging up the arteries and developing a condition which we call arteriosclerosis.

As time goes along, and as we age, we start depositing more and more fat, more and more triglycerides, more cholesterol along the arteries, and it makes the vascular system, in a sense, coated with arteriosclerosis, making the arteries stiffer and less pliable. And so the first sign that we typically see is that the person’s heart rate may start to go up a little bit, and also we see that the blood pressure rate starts to go up, because it’s forcing the blood through stiffer arteries.

We start seeing elevated triglyceride levels, elevated cholesterol levels, elevated LDL or low density lipoproteins, are elevated in the blood stream. And so these are signs that arteriosclerosis is developing. This is something that starts up very young, but may not really show up in a person, and they may not be aware of it until late in life, and the first warning may be that they may have a heart attack or a stroke.

So the first thing we want to look at again is how much saturated fat, how much cholesterol we’re taking in, and how much trans fats. Saturated fat is typically any fat that is solid at room temperature, and when we look at trans fats, we look at fats that have what we call hydrogen added to them, and then we have to look at what cholesterol is; cholesterol is a waxy substance that’s basically found in all animals, because it’s made by the liver.

So when we have the combination of trans fats, saturated fats and cholesterol, and we’re taking those in large amounts, we have a higher risk of arteriosclerosis developing. Even if we exercise, we’re still having extra fat in the blood, depositing in the arteries and causing this condition we call arteriosclerosis.

So the best way to deal with this is really when we start looking at basically plant-based diets, we start seeing that immediately most of the saturated fat is minimized, and then we also see that cholesterol’s only found in animal products. So if you cut the animal products out of your diet, you automatically will be reducing all your cholesterol that you’re taking in.

And then thirdly the trans fats, basically they are processed foods with hydrogenated oils, and so when we minimize those together, when we eat an unrefined, plant-based diet, we see that the risk of cardiovascular disease dramatically drops in all human beings.

What happens to the food we eat when it undergoes digestion and absorption in our gastrointestinal tracts? Dr. Sutliffe explains how fiber is our friend in making sure our cholesterol levels are minimized.

When we start eating fiber, especially soluble fiber, the fiber that we find in legumes, the fiber that we find in some of the grains, when it’s eaten in our diet, it goes through and it actually starts absorbing in the intestinal tract any cholesterol and bile acids that we have in there during the digestive process, preventing the cholesterol from going from our digestive tract into our blood stream.

And so the fiber will take it and bind it and actually take it out and dump it into our stools. So we actually take the cholesterol out of the body with the use of fiber-containing foods, especially the soluble fibers that act like sponges in the digestive tract.

Our sincere thanks Dr. Sutliffe for your wonderful health advice such as explaining the advantages of the vegan diet and why avoiding animal products and processed foods maximizes our wellbeing. Next Monday on Healthy Living we’ll hear more of Dr. Sutliffe’s nutritional recommendations and learn how he advocates healthy lifestyle changes in a community outreach program.

My name is Jay Sutliffe, and I’m assistant professor at Chadron State College Be Veg, Go Green 2 Save the Planet!

For more details on Dr. Sutliffe, please visit www.CSC.edu or www.FullCircleofWellness.com

Joyful viewers, thank you for being with us on today’s Healthy Living. Next is Science and Spirituality, following Noteworthy News. May we all forever enjoy lives filled with vitality and happiness.

Energetic viewers welcome to Healthy Living on Supreme Master Television. Last week Dr. Jay Sutliffe who is an assistant professor at Chadron State College in Nebraska, USA advised us about how to avoid increasingly common chronic illnesses through a plant-based diet. Dr. Sutliffe is a vegan registered dietician who teaches classes on topics ranging from general nutrition to international food policy. His research interests include disease prevention and veganism.

Today, in the second and final part of our interview with Dr. Sutliffe, we’ll learn more about how simple lifestyle changes can reduce a common digestive disorder, lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and prevent cancer. But first Dr. Sutliffe talks about why preventive medicine is so important and why starting life with healthy habits is best.

So many times we’re running to and fro. We’re running fast, we’re trying to get here, and we’re sacrificing health for convenience foods and a convenience lifestyle. So I think if we could work together with schools, colleges and workplaces, that comprehensively we can help reduce the risk of diseases later in life, but also if we could get these children started out.

Because we find that a lot of children when they’re born they have an aversion to eating a lot of animal based protein, and a lot of times they have to acquire those habits.

So if we could start helping out families, substitute a lot of their animal based proteins with plant based proteins earlier on and actually giving them cooking classes and cooking skills and recipes and community supported types of programs, I think that we’d have greater longevity, and I think that’s where we have to go with our health care today. We have to start looking at a prevention model, rather than a treatment model.

Let us now learn about a condition commonly known as heartburn and what Dr. Sutliffe recommends to relieve this condition.

I’ve been running into for about the last 10 years on an increasing rate, what is known as GERD, Gastro Esophageal Reflux Disease or commonly what we’d call heartburn. So, when somebody has heartburn, the first thing I look at is their meal patterns. So what we find is that people are no longer eating three meals a day, and not eating between meals.

We find people possibly eating all day long and are doing something we call grazing, as similar to what cattle do. In fact, Ninety-seven percent of Americans snack on a daily basis. I tell people that the first thing they want to start doing is when they eat their food they want to make sure they’re chewing it very, very thoroughly so that you don’t need liquids to get the food down.

The second thing I tell people to do is minimize the amount of liquid that they’re using with their meals. Because it’s diluting the stomach acids in the stomach. And then the third thing you want to do is you want to make sure that you’re spreading your meals out four to five hours apart. We find that when we crowd those meals together, the food sits in there and the undigested food gets mixed in with the food that’s partially digested.

A lot of times the food starts to ferment and it’ll start to regurgitate back up into the esophagus and start burning that lining. And then the last thing we want to do is we want to make sure that we’re not lying down after we’re eating our meals. Because when we lie down, that delays digestion and the food tends to pool and actually in the upper portion of the stomach it has more of a chance of actually regurgitating.

If you start eating your fruit in the middle of your meal, at the end of the meal, fruit digests so quickly, that if you eat it on top of the meal, that it’s basically delayed in its digestion and it could ferment and actually cause an acid reflux condition.

So I tell people, if they really want to fine tune their system, they probably need to eat fruit alone or at the beginning of the meal and waiting 10 or 15 minutes before they eat the rest of their meal, because the fruit digests so quickly.

Each year over 12 million people across the globe are diagnosed with cancer and 7.6 million succumb to the disease. How does a plant-based diet help prevent cancer?

The number two cause of death in the United States is cancer. We’re seeing a lot of work being done with antioxidants, and anti-aging medicine. And when you start looking at anti-aging compounds that have a lot of anti-oxidants, phytochemicals and other nutrients that have been shown to reduce your risk of cancer, you find that the majority of them are found in plant-based products.

And I think the best thing that we can do is that, we found this from the nurses’ study, where they surveyed over 80,000 nurses and they found those that ate at least one serving of green leafy vegetables, and a good vitamin C source every day, had a dramatic reduction in cancer rates.

Fresh fruits, tomatoes, strawberries, even potatoes have a lot of vitamin C, and of course, the whole citrus family. So, green leafy vegetables, and a good vitamin C source every day are some of the best things you can do to reduce your cancer risk.

We will now pause for a brief message and soon return with more of Dr. Sutliffe’s thoughts on cancer prevention. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to Healthy Living on Supreme Master Television featuring our talk about important principles of diet and nutrition with Dr. Jay Sutliffe, who is a vegan public health and nutrition expert. Another simple lifestyle adjustment that Dr. Sutliffe recommends to keep cancer away is monitoring our emotional state and taking steps to release stress.

Another area that we start looking at when we’re talking about cancer prevention, we see that there’re so many chemicals in our body, and the connection between our body and our mind is a real intimate connection.

When we start looking at situations where people are in a very stressful situation or their emotional health is being compromised, we see that it also affects the physiological make-up of the body, creating hormone imbalances, and actually may be even setting the stage for different conditions such as depression and cancer, and even possibly some of the dementia that we’re starting to see. So we see that a lot of times people will stuff different emotions in their body. They will not allow themselves to have an outlet.

And I really encourage people to try to create an inner circle of friends, where you have different people that you can share different situations with, and that you actually have like-minded people that you surround yourself with, that have similar beliefs and health habits. It can restore your health and your mind and be greater emotional health and tie in with your physical health as well.

Dr. Sutliffe has some advice on food preparation with an eye on maximizing the nourishment we get from plant-based foods.

Microwave ovens have a tendency to cook foods very, very quickly and it’s a very volatile cooking method where the molecules in the food are vibrating against each other. When we cook on high heat, and we in a sense “zap” our food with high heat like that, the nutrient content really starts to drop.

And so minimize the amount of heat that we’re applying to our food, only lightly steam our foods, and make sure that, especially the fruits and vegetables, if we are cooking the fruits, we want to minimize that. If we are going to cook the vegetables, just lightly steam them and consume them as soon as possible after they’re cooked.

How about nutritional supplements? What is Dr. Sutliffe’s opinion on these items?

Okay, now a lot of times people ask me about what vitamins or what mineral supplements or different dietary supplements they should be taking. I say that we should always be looking at trying the best that we can do with our dietary intake.

If we can minimize the amount of supplementation that we’re using, and look primarily to our food and getting the best food we have available, possibly even organic foods or foods grown without chemicals that are good for the Earth, and also good for the nutrients and good for the soil, we would be eating our foods straight from nature and trying to get most of our nutrients from our foods. Nature makes our vitamins best in the right distribution.

Dr. Sutliffe shares this concluding message to remind us of the intimate connections between physical health, the power of life-promoting vegan foods, our overall mental outlook and inner peace.

The last thing I’d like to say is a lot of people think that nutrition is important, but being a nutritionist I think very few people really understand the power of what we put into our bodies on a daily basis. And when we look at what we’re doing every day, what are the habits that we’re practicing every day, we need to put in foods that are really life-forming, life-generating.

And when we look at processed, dead food, that really doesn’t give us any vitality. When we look at our relationships, when we’re not honest with people, we’re not honest with ourselves, if we could deal with our anger issues, and we can deal with our failures, we could celebrate our victory more.

When we look at our holistic life, when we actually address the spiritual nature in our lives, I feel like we all have a God-shaped void in our lives. Until we bring God into our lives and we have peace with God, then we have a difficult time being at peace with our fellow man.

But when we look at what we’re eating, how we’re living, how we’re looking at people, when we look at the way we’re thinking, I’ll just challenge you to start evaluating your life, to celebrate your victories, to deal with you failures, to be at harmony with God and your fellow man. And I think you’ll have greater longevity and you’re going to have greater peace of mind and you’ll have a greater existence here while we’re on this Earth.

Our appreciation Dr. Sutlffe, for sharing your deep knowledge on how we can keep fit, feel great, and have tremendous vitality through a vegan diet and by remembering to make spirituality and emotional stability a part of our lives.

For more details on Dr. Sutliffe, please visit www.CSC.edu or www.FullCircleofWellness.com

Splendid viewers, thank you for being with us on today’s Healthy Living. Next is Science and Spirituality, after Noteworthy News. May we all enjoy life’s magnificent abundance and vigor through Divine blessings.