Just do it – that’s the real secret to life, that’s the holy grail. Detoxing and cleansing the body a minimum of four times a year. That’s it.

Welcome, beautiful viewers, to Vegetarian Elite. Today, we’ll visit the exciting city of Chicago, Illinois, USA to meet vegan raw food pioneer and the forever young Karyn Calabrese.

Ms. Calabrese has been featured on many national popular television programs such as The Oprah Winfrey Show, CBS Sunday Morning News and NBC’s The Today Show, plus featured in Chicago’s two largest newspapers the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times. She has also been honored with the First Annual Raw and Living Foods Golden Branch Award in 2002 for introducing the idea of raw and living foods to the greatest number of people in mainstream society.

Her positive attitude and boundless energy have helped her maintain the longest operating raw food restaurant in the United States. Karyn’s passion for clean living and her love of life are her greatest motivations. Thirty years ago, she used raw foods and detoxification to heal herself of allergies, skin problems, fatigue, and many other physical ailments and has since been a radiant example of the incredible benefits of plant-based living.

Let’s head now to Karyn’s Inner Beauty Center in Chicago, Illinois to meet the vibrant and inspirational Ms. Karen Calabrese. She begins our conversation by talking about her motto: “If you don’t take care of your body, where are you going to live?”

People have so many excuses why they can’t be healthy: “It costs too much,” “It’s too far away,” “It’s too difficult,” “It’s too hard,” “I don’t have the time.” You have a myriad of excuses why you can’t take care of the most magnificent and the best thing you’ll ever be given in your life, right? So, my statement is helping people to remember that if you don’t take care of the most magnificent thing you’ll ever be given, you’ll have no place to live.

It doesn’t matter how much money you have. It doesn’t matter how great your job, your children, your home, your spouse. It doesn’t matter. If you don’t have your health – you have nothing. So, why not make that the number one focus in your life, and then it’s like a domino effect. Everything else falls into place.

I haven’t always had this lifestyle. I mean, I’ve had a very difficult childhood. But because I saved my money, worked three jobs, and bought a wheatgrass machine and started growing it hydroponically, I believe that’s why I am where I am today. I put my money into me. The best thing that I could invest in and I’ve got everything I want now.

With the unfortunate passing of her mother at age 48, grandmother at 50, and great-grandmother at 60 due to health problems, Ms. Calabrese became determined not to repeat this sad family history, but to create a healthful future for herself.

All the women in my family died overweight, and very young. I was just 64, two days ago, and I don’t know what illness is; I don’t know of being tired, it just isn’t a part of my world or my vocabulary. And I directly relate that to the lifestyle that I have evolved into. So because I was a very sickly child and a sick young adult – I had every allergy known to man, I had terrible skin, I had PMS, I was constipated all the time – my mother had introduced to me to vegetable juicing.

So I kind of started the vegetable juicing. And the more I did, the more I wanted to learn, because I believe that we intuitively know what’s right for ourselves; we’re born knowing from God telling us how to take care of our bodies. We’ve just forgotten because the world is so bizarre, and there’re so many bizarre things out there to attract your attention. So, as I started cleansing my body with the vegetable juices, I developed a natural repulsion to red meat.

And once again, I don’t believe it’s a natural human instinct to eat dead flesh. I think it’s a learned experience, and I think everybody does it so it feels comfortable. But I don’t think it’s natural to human beings. And so, my body evolved into being a vegan. I haven’t had meat, fish, chicken or dairy 42 years now, and it has served me very well. I don’t get sick, I don’t get tired, I went through menopause with no symptoms, I’ve got the same body I had at 16, and I work 16 hours a day, 6 days a week at 64.

What secrets has Karyn Calabrese discovered along her incredible path of self-healing? Let’s hear her thoughts on the body’s amazing ability to regenerate itself to make new cells and new tissues.

You know the beauty of it is, the way we were created, we are self-regenerating organism. We get new cells every 7 years, we get new tissue every 3 months – so the body is in an ongoing process of regenerating itself. The reason that it doesn’t, is it gets too much of the wrong stuff.

I mean even if you’re eating perfectly, we are living in a world where the oxygen levels are in the teens. When God created us, the oxygen levels were at 38%. After the industrial revolution, they were down to 22%. We are living in the teens in the oxygen levels in our atmosphere. All cancer cells, all viruses are anaerobic; they can’t live in an oxygenated environment.

So not only people, they’re not getting it from their air and the life force that we were meant to be in the breath work. They’re not getting it from their foods. So what I’ve learned, and what I teach is that you can help the body to regenerate itself, and get over anything. People come to my classes with all types of challenges. So for me, the main tenant that I follow, yes, I’m a vegan, yes, I’m a raw foodist, but I cleanse and detoxify my body a minimum of 4 times a year.

Ms. Calabrese has constructed a powerful 4-week detox program called “Nature’s Healing System” that highlights life-changing information such as proper nutrition and holistic therapies. Let’s listen to a few testimonials from her program.

Sometimes during the fast, you get that glimpse of you’re like in a totally different dimension, you feel that you are more than your body, you feel that you are a spiritual being.

The first day of my fast, when everything just kind of came all of a sudden. I got the energy, the skin just really started glowing.

On my fourth day of fasting, I was very intuitive and very peaceful.

Now I haven’t eaten meat in 42 years, I don’t drink, smoke, or do drugs, I pray and meditate every day of my life, and I detox 4 times a year. And people say, “Well, you live that lifestyle, Karyn, why would you detox?”

I drive behind buses, I’m taking in chemicals. I get my clothes dry-cleaned; I’m taking in chemicals through my skin. The skin is the largest eliminative organ on the body, and absorption, so you taking in chemicals. So for me, taking the time to break down those layers of toxicity, taking the time to clean out my body times a year, to help my body regenerate itself, to me, is the answer.

And if you check my website, you’ll see women and men and children. We’ve had people with type II diabetes reverse. We’ve had people with fibromyalgia, with fibroids, with tumors, with cancer, endometriosis; it doesn’t matter the name. Because any challenge you receive, your body is just trying to shake you awake and say, “Excuse me, I’ve got too much of the wrong thing and not enough of the right thing.”

We are created in Divine perfection, but we get these little challenges so that we learn to keep learning and keep moving forward. Because even if you became a vegan today, you’re still a product of all the years that you weren’t You can hold medications and even animal products in your body for years and years and years. So cleaning the body out, taking the time to do that, is to me the most important thing.

Last year PETA’s Sexist Vegetarian over 50 was Mimi Kirk who won at age 71, as a raw vegan. And recently Sunny, the supermodel, shared that what kept her healthy and beautiful at 70 is a raw vegan diet. You are over 60, and look like a supermodel yourself. Why is being a vegan so effective at keeping one young and vivacious? Is this the fountain of youth everyone has been searching for?

Well, you see those cells that I talked about regenerating themselves, if they got too much of the wrong materials – and that’s your animal products and your dairy products, I call them cow secretions and dead flesh – if you’re taking that in, the body has to work so hard to break them down because we weren’t designed to take these things in.

I mean the cow secretions was created for one thing, a baby calf, right, an animal that’s meant to grow a 1,000 pounds the first year of its life, and everybody wonders why they’re getting larger and larger. So being a vegan is definitely, exceptionally, helpful in keeping the clock going back, because the human body’s meant to last several hundred years. This dying off at 50, 60, 70, and 80 is a travesty because our bodies are meant to last almost indefinitely if you’re getting new cells regularly and tissue.

So the vegan diet does support that because your body isn’t breaking down all of that toxicity. So instead of spending all this time to regenerate, it’s spending its time breaking down the toxicity. When you don’t have so much toxicity, it can spend more time regenerating.

I always say I’m not teaching anything special, and I got the best business partner on the planet – God. Because I’m just helping you to step back into His plan and there’s no way it can’t work. Cause and effect, that’s what rules the universe, cause and effect.

And so, if you start feeding your body the way it was meant to, the raw living foods, the vegan foods that was intended to take in, it changes your attitude. It changes everything. It changes your connection, not only with the planet and the universe, but the people around you. I like to make the little joke, that button that says “no war,” if you put it on and stand in the mirror and put it on, it says “on raw.”

Our warmest appreciation, Ms. Karen Calabrese, for your charming presence and valuable information.

For more information on Karen Calabrese and staying healthy and forever young through veganism and detoxing, please visit: www.KarynRaw.com

Enlightened viewers, thank you for spending time with us on this week’s energizing edition of Vegetarian Elite. Please join us next week for part 2 of our fascinating interview with vegan, raw food pioneer Karen Calabrese. Coming up next is Between Master and Disciples. May universal love fill your mind, body, and soul.