Most Recent Health Tips, Health News, and Easy Healthy Recipes

What you eat isn't the only determinant of your overall health status. There are plenty of other facets of your life that play major roles in determining how functional and energetic you are.

Here's how I think about the role that diet plays in contributing to health and disease:

As mentioned in part one of this series, a key principle to healthy eating is to eat nutrient-rich foods. Vegetables, fruits, beans, peas, lentils, nuts, and eggs are good examples of health-promoting, nutrient-rich foods.

Unfortunately, simply wolfing down nutrient-rich foods doesn't guarantee optimal nourishment of your cells. Your digestive system has to be able to extract nutrients out of the foods that you eat - this is why chewing thoroughly is vital to your health.

As mentioned earlier in this series, cooking vegetables and other plant foods can soften naturally occurring fiber, which makes it easier for your digestive system to extract the many micronutrients that are abundant in plant foods.

If you do a Google search for full body cleanse, your web browser will bring up more than 2 million Web sites that offer information on how to experience a full body cleanse. If cleansing and detoxifying for health purposes wasn't a mainstream topic before, it certainly is now with the recent launch of Oprah's 21-Day Cleanse.

Here are some of the most common questions that I receive on a weekly basis from people seeking guidance on how to cleanse and detoxify their bodies:

During an intense, full body cleanse, the goal with your diet is simple: it's to minimize the workload on your digestive organs while supplying your body with enough energy to carry out its everyday activities. Cleansing is performed primarily by your body's self-regulated cleansing mechanisms, not by the nutrients in the foods that you eat.

Vegetables, fruits, and their juices are excellent food choices for an intense, full body cleanse for the following reasons:

During and after an intense, full body cleanse, you can expect to feel refreshed, like your body has become younger and lighter. To experience the greatest possible benefits during your intense cleanse, it's important that you minimize your exposure to endogenous and exogenous toxins.

Minimizing your exposure to endogenous toxins is relatively simple - you just need to follow the full body cleanse diet, chew your foods well, and do your best not to overeat. This combination of actions will minimize production of toxins in your digestive tract and within your cells.

All of the following juice and smoothie recipes are suitable for our Full Body Cleanse program.

If you don't have a juicer and are thinking of getting one, I recommend the Champion Juicer; we've had one since 2003, and it continues to serve us well.

If you prefer a lighter-weight and powerful juicer, I recommend the L'Equip XL Juicer - it's the best wide-mouth centrifugal juicer that I've ever used.

What follows are a series of questions and answers regarding the Full Body Cleanse Program.

If, after reading through this section, you have additional questions about cleansing and detoxification, please feel free to use our Contact Form to send us your question(s).

Well, we're here again. Just a few days away from another new beginning.

I've long felt that every day is a new beginning, a chance to change momentum, experience something new, and get closer to becoming a better person in some way.

Updated on December 23, 2009

Korean pancakes, called bin dae duk, are unique in that they aren't made with flour. Traditionally, bin dae duk includes small amounts of pork, but in the interest of healthy eating, this version is 100% plant-based - nothing but hearty beans, fresh vegetables, and a small amount of rice.