Food Hygiene

Food Hygiene- Is that how to get your fruits and vegetables extra clean?...well, not really.
Food Hygiene is the way to maximize your digestion.
The process of digestion starts before you even take your first bite!
That's right, it starts with smelling your food. So the first step is to
start cooking your meals. The aromas will prompt digestive secretions,
like HCl and pancreatic enzymes.
Too busy to cook your own meals? The average American eats just
4 of 21 meals at home! Try cooking on weekends and make an event
 out of it, including family and friends.
Next, no liquids 45 minutes before meals and 30 minutes after.
This will dilute stomach acid and digestive enzymes needed for
optimal assimilation of nutrients.
Sit down and turn off the tv! Your digestive system performs at it's
best in a parasympathetic state-this is the division of the nervous
system designed for 'rest and digest'. When you eat on the move
or while you're having a heated argument over the dinner table
your body switches into a sympathetic state or 'fight or flight'
response. Your body shunts the blood supply to the extremities
in preparation to run for your life or fight!
Once you're sitting down and start eating, take time to chew your
food. 31 times, each bite! Yes, 31 times, that's a number you won't
forget. This will make the digestive process that much easier for
your body, making the nutrients readily available for absorption.

Optimal digestion and absorption are key to health!

"The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well. Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food."

Hippocrates
Greek physician (460 BC - 377 BC)

ALTERATIVES

ALTERATIVES:

“[Alteratives] improve the quality of the blood, increase the appetite, promote digestion, and accelerate the process of elimination.”  Harvey Wickes Felter, 1922

The word alterative has variously been defined as something that “alters” the body in a non-specific but broadly beneficial way, a blood purifier, blood cleanser, and detoxifier...

Every physician would agree that individual cells could not be viable at all if they 

could not absorb nutrients and eliminate their cellular wastes.  So too, there could 

be no bodily life at all if an organism could not obtain high quality energy and 

nutrition and rid itself of metabolic waste products.  To any complex multicellular 

organism, the delivery and removal of such vital substances depends on a healthy 

digestive system.  The more one studies physiology, the more obvious it becomes 

that the quality of the fluids in each and every cell, depends on quality of the blood, 

which depends on the efficacy of digestive, absorptive and eliminative processes.  

Whether you are an amoeba, an earthworm, an aardvark, or a human, you are 

what you eat/digest/absorp/don’t eliminate/etc.  Simple though it may sound, 

the use of alterative herbs could indeed alter one for the better.  

Any tool a physician/herbalist has to increase the strength of the digestive 

and eliminative functions, the quality of the blood, and the delivery of nutrients to

 individual cells, could only support health and vitality. For this reason, 

alteratives are the mainstay of herbal and naturopathic medicine.      

some examples of Alteratives:

Taraxicum (Dandelion) , Arctium lappa (Burdock), Rumex (Yellow Dock), 

Mahonia (Oregon Grape), Achillea (Yarrow), Trifolium (Red Clover)

Alterative herbs are those which are capable of improving overall health by balancing 

and tonifying basic bodily processes.  Alteratives stimulate digestive and 

absorptive functions thereby optimizing nutrition.  Alteratives also promote

elimination functions and thereby the removal of wastes, minimizing toxic 

accumulations and enhancing intestinal aerobic flora.  Due to these actions, 

alteratives are considered to be cleansing and general tonics.  Alteratives 

improve the nutritional status, improving the quality of the blood, correcting 

deficient absorption and metabolism, and clearing toxicity.   

Alteratives accomplish all this primarily by stimulating secretory activity of 

the digestive organs and optimizing gastrointestinal health  Alterative herbs 

also contain nutrients, minerals including trace minerals, electrolytes, and 

hormonal precursors that all nourish and stimulate metabolism.   

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”

Toxemia

Some notes from Dr. Stansbury Botanical Medicine II lecture:

TOXEMIA:

Condition produced by accumulation of putrefactive and otherwise toxic 

waste products.

“The basic cause of all so-called diseases… When the body is enervated, elimination 

is checked. This, in turn, results in a retention of toxins in the blood. This state 

produces a crisis which is nothing more than heroic or extraordinary efforts by the 

body to eliminate waste or toxin from the blood. It is this crisis which we term 

disease. ”   Tilden JH. Impaired Health: Its Cause and Cure, 1921

Symptoms of toxemia:

Coated Tongue and Foul Breath

Fatigue and Vague Malaise                            

Flatulence & digestive symptoms

Liver dysfunction

Acne and Skin Blemishes

Chronic infections

PMS and Hormonal Imbalances