The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. and Thomas M. Campbell, II

You are what you eat. This is today’s topic. I am not a physician, not a nurse (even though I entered that course of study in trepidation and departed almost as quickly in greater trepidation. But I can practice what I preach and this is the sermon):

We Americans don’t eat right. We eat too many of the wrong kinds of calories. We eat too much meat. Meat is an acidic food. Too much acidic food creates a chain of events that looks a little like this: eat some part of a cow, say, while out to lunch with the kids at a burger joint, and during the course of its digestion (the cow), it is absorbed into the bloodstream which makes our blood and tissues more acidic. The body then attempts to neutralize the acid by pulling calcium from the bones, the bones have thus lost calcium. Over time, dem bones from head to (“the leg bone connected to the foot bone . . .Oh, hear the word of the Lord (you know the song)” to toe might just get weaker and weaker, leading to easier fracturing and osteopenia or osteoporosis.

Of course, if we exercise and eat right and have a positive outlook, then perhaps that won’t happen. Bear in mind that the bare bone facts about this weighty subject suggest that the exercise we do to strengthen our framework, must be weight bearing. That means you must do something standing up and moving forward (or backwards, if you prefer) on your weight bearing bones (all those that hold up something above them) while following your feet until they have moved you somewhere for an hour. Or you can garden on your knees and stand up to prune a tree then lean over to swat a mosquito while holding your gardening shears in your other hand and repeat these activities for an hour, at least. Swimming and biking are nice for your circulation and your muscles ( you probably won’t do either anyway, unless you look just fab in a bikini or biking shorts) but don’t count it as weight bearing.

If you eat right (and we haven’t gotten to RIGHT yet, but I’m saving that for another sermon. I’ll give a little hint: plant-based diet), you just may get to move forward into that most desired state of a happy, healthy life well into old age. Of course, remember the bare bones facts in paragraph 2–you must exercise. The China Study goes on to say that even though many of us may have genetic dispositions toward certain maladies, a plant based diet as opposed to a meat based diet can go a long way in preventing those genetic markers to materialize. And that’s great news for all of us. And if you have been confused about proper nutrition as we all have, then it is NOT TOO LATE. The body is a remarkable thing. Feed it right and it will give you high fives till those cows that we will no longer eat, come in.

To find out more about why this is true, read this book. Several smart, forward thinking, down to earth, bare bones doctors in metropolitan Jackson have been sending their patients into get this book, The China Study, from which this info was extrapolated and poured into this mustard seed blog. The exercise part (though covered in depth in the book, also) came from my longtime OB-GYN who has challenged me to reverse my lifelong bone loss through some vitamin D-3 supplementation while eating a spinach salad a day and walking for at least an hour while removing the gentle but sacred cow from my diet.

-Pat

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