When I lived in Costa Rica, the pineapple, picked so ripe and served, was like candy. Cotton candy! Unbelievable flavor. Unbelievably smooth and sweet. I guess I’ll have to go back if I ever want a good pineapple again.

But I bought a Del Monte Costa Rican pineapple at Sams Wholesale club the other day. I only bought it because it had a strong sweet scent – a good sign. And I though I’d take a chance. It actually was pretty good. Not as sweet and smooth as picked fresh and ripe, but it was ripe enough not to burn my tongue. I looked at the label and it said “Product of Costa Rica.” I realized it had been living and growing in the Costa Rican sun. And I thought that was nice since I too had lived in the Costa Rican sun.

So I cut it up and juiced almost the entire pineapple, with 1 head of romaine, and about 6 stalks of celery.

Juiced it, strained it in a nut milk bag – it made a whole quart. It was a beautiful bright yellow green and it tasted amazing, smooth and slightly sweet!

Costa Rican Sun Juice

3/4 pineapple with core
1 head romaine
6 stalks of celery
Cut top and sides off pineapple, juice, strain, enjoy.

PS: Masticating juicers like my Omega 8005 (with an auger) don’t do well with apples and pineapples. It gets too think and I have to keep cleaning the screen. But they juice great with a centrifugal juicer like a Breville or Jack LaLanne type juicer.

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And it is the only organ that can regenerate itself – as little as 25% of a liver can regenerate into a whole liver. Amazing. (I had a tonsil grow back after removal when I was a kid, what’s up with that?)

It detoxifys our body, everything we eat, every nutrient and every bit of toxic junk we eat passes through the liver. Then the liver changes it into whatever it changes into and moves it onto where ever it needs to go. I’m sure there is a more scientific way to phrase that – but that’s how I see the liver working. It’s like a big bouncer at the door of the fancy nightclub – directing traffic here and there. And it does it all the time without any admiration and love and notice.

So this bouncer helps digest what we consume, it directs the bad stuff away and it makes proteins and stores glucose (and stores iron too). Proteins that help rebuild and grow and heal. It also makes bile – which is sent to the small intestine and the gall bladder – (the gall bladder stores the bile for times when it’s needed in the small intestine to help with the breakdown of  fats.)

So with our SAD (standard american diet) diets, our poor liver is overworked and desperately needs a vacation. If it doesn’t get a vacation soon, it’s going to protest and go on strike. And if it doesn’t go on strike, at the very least it’s not going to doing a very good job. Part of the not doing a good job is what it does with the bile. The liver also uses bile to clean up our blood. Our blood has all kinds of stuff floating around in it most of the time. Undigested food, yeast, parasites (“if you eat meat, you don’t eat alone”), dead red blood cells and such. All this stuff makes the blood thick. That’s why doctors often ask you to “not eat after midnight” before a procedure – they want the blood clean and free of undigested food.

Before I got into raw food, I had a live blood cell analysis done. This is where they stick your finger and put a drop of blood on a glass slide and put it under a microscope which is projected on a monitor (dark-field microscope). At the time, the lady had to jab my finger several times before it would bleed and then the blood was so sticky it barely came out. SO, on the screen, my blood cells were stacked up like checkers. She showed me parasites and undigested food. This was even after fasting since the night before, showing that I was not digesting effectively or efficiently.

She sent me away to spend a week eating lots of salad, drinking lots of water, taking lots of digestive enzymes.

I returned to do the procedure once again. What a difference the week made. She only had to jab me once and the blood flowed freely out. The red blood cells were floating freely around instead of being stacked up. There were no undigested food particles. I don’t recall about the parasites. I had not done a parasite cleanse, so chances were I still had them. The live visual evidence is a powerful tool.

There are many ways to aid and support the body for optimum health. Eating simply, more natural food. Fasting and cleansing when you can. Colonics and enemas when needed. And there is also the coffee enema – one of the cornerstones of the Gerson Institutes Cancer Healing program (coffee helps to open the bile ducts so that the liver may dump its toxins, in case you wondered.) And going the extra mile by supporting our bouncer with a much needed vacation – do a Liver and Gallbladder Cleanse.

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Get some nutrition in you! It’s easy to add a raw green smoothie to your daily diet for a month  - see how you feel! It seems to be easier for people to be cut on, to take a pill, to get a shot. I’ve heard that people would change their religion and anything else before they change their diet. Be courageous, get emotional support. Just try.

If you would like to learn more about the facinating Gerson Institute and their program, here are some videos featuring the vibrant Charlotte Gerson, daughter of Dr. Max Gerson. I have put the time length of each of the videos as well as a little description of the content.

“The Gerson Therapy is a safe, natural treatment developed by Dr. Max Gerson in the 1920’s that uses organic foods, juicing, coffee enemas, detoxification and natural supplements to activate the body’s ability to heal itself. Over the past 60 years, thousands of people have used the Gerson Therapy to recover from so-called “incurable” diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease and arthritis.”

This site has some interesting pages and here is a link to a page on the  Gerson Protocol that gives an overview of the program.

TAPE ONE

Tape 1
1 hour 55 min.
Healing and Preventing Incurable Diseases

TAPE TWO

Tape 2
1 hour 45 min.

Workshop: Doing the Gerson Therapy at Home Part 1
- not drinking water on the program
- pure water for enemas, soups and other external uses
- thyroid function, immune system and cancer
- thyroid function, cholesterol and heart disease
- fats, oils and tumor growth
- the importance of flax seed oil (not flax seed)
- organic food and composting
- forbidden items on therapy
- seeds, legumes and enzyme inhibitors
- spices, juicing and cooked foods on the program

TAPE THREE

Tape 3

1 hour 57 min.

Doing the Gerson Therapy at Home Part 2

- Why do the coffee enemas
- chemotherapy and Gerson therapy
- info on a diabetes, gout, obesity treatment success
- why you can feel bad while detoxing (the healing crisis is a good thing!)
- medications, vitamins Gerson treatment uses
- prevention
- what radiation does
- detoxify and rebuild (toxins in the home, personal products, fluoride, makeup etc)
- stress, addictions
- helping the body heal itself

TAPE FOUR

Tape 4

1 hour 40 min.

Charlotte Gerson demonstrates food preparation
_________________________________________

_________________________________________

Here are 1 more inspiring videos about Gerson, the medical community, nutrition, our health etc.

THE GERSON MIRACLE – View “The Gerson Miracle” on Hulu.com!

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Once a month I meet with a group for Insight Meditation – meditating in a group always seems more intense, so that, combined with the fast was incredible. I mentioned it at the meeting and another guy there said he had not eaten all day and found that the evening meditation was particularly clear as well.

Many use fasting as a means of allowing the body to heal itself (see Joel Fuhrmans book below). It is awesome what our body does when not encumbered with the effort of digestion – it makes way for healing and mental clarity.

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I’ll start posting some of my natural recipes (lotions, facial scrubs, soap, toothpaste, household cleansers…) but for now, here is a book recommendation for soap making. This was my first soap making book – I’ve purchased more complicated ones after this, but always came back to this because its so simple and I have never ruined a batch of soap using their base recipes. I purchase pure essential oils in bulk online (mostly from Snowdriftfarm.com - nice site, lots to learn).

The Soap Book: Simple Herbal Recipes by Sandy Maine. I was amazed at the bad reviews of the book on Amazon. The bad ones all sounded like they critiqued the book without making any of the recipes. They complained that it didn’t go into lye calculations and superfatting and that the amounts of essential oil was too high and too expensive and that there was only one recipe.

I think they want soap making to be complicated and it doesn’t have to be! I have read lots of info about what to do with ruined soap batches (shave it and use it in your laundry) – With this book, I have never ruined a batch of soap. I make lovely bars and have sold them at gift shops and made a profit – yes using only pure essential oils, extra virgin olive oils, coconut oil etc. The good stuff – that costs a bit more. That’s the point of making your own products so you don’t have to buy the processed stuff that has cheap ingredients. I age the bars, they are hard and they last a long time in the shower – the coconut oil makes them lather very nicely!

So keep it simple, try the recipes in the book – make them for your friends and family and coworkers. They make great gifts.

Pay attention to what you put on your body – it adds up. Your body has to continuously clean up those toxins – give it a break.

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I myself have been gearing up to do another fast. Preparing the body by eating less, eating light and eating raw. I felt called to do another extended fast for some deep physical and emotional healing. I’ll start in a day or so and listen to the intelligence of the body to see how long I should fast.
I realized that without consciously planning it, I have engaged in an annual cleansing or fast once a year for a few years. Most experts agree that an annual cleanse is beneficial to your health and longevity.

• I enjoyed a 35 day juice feast with the Global Juice Feasters in March this year. It was a blast meeting people from all over the world. I recommend it even if you only do it for a week. The site is a social network site so you can create your own blog, participate in discussions, upload photos and learn from each other.

• Last year I did a 21 day internal cleansing program that included eating very light, juicing, raw foods using the Blessed Herbs Internal Cleansing Program. This is a good “kit” to order if you need direction and dicipline for a lengthy cleanse. (As a designer, I thought the package design was outstanding) Everything is spelled out for you with the included how-guides. It was pretty cool, people noticed saying things like my skin looked so great.

• The year before that I attended the 2 week raw food fast and detox program at Creative Health Institute – (based on Dr. Ann Wigmores program)

• The year before that I did a week long juice fast.

I first learned of fasting in high school when I began the first of many years of yoga classes. It wasn’t until my 20s that I tried 3 and 5 day water fasts. I learned that for me, anything less than 5 days was cutting short the healing opportunity. 3 days is right when things start going easy, your energy returns, you aren’t hungry, you quit thinking about food every hour of the day.

Fast – True fasting is taking nothing by mouth except water. This stops the continual overloaded work of our digestive tract. When eating a SAD diet (standard American Diet) the poor overworked digestion never gets a break and often works into the night. This work diverts the energy from what it should be doing – healing, cleaning and repairing the body. Our amazing bodies are designed to heal themselves – we just never give it a chance.

Feast – When juice feasting, you are drinking only fresh juices and lots of them. Drinking 4-5 or more quarts a day you are receiving all the calories needed and there is no deprivation. Being total liquid (juices preferably strained through nut milk bags to remove all pulp) the digestion is given a rest. In the Global Juice Feast logo it says “Cleanse, Rebuild, Rehydrate, Alkalize.”

I had an interesting side benefit – I wonder if it had to do with being more cleansed and alkalized: I used to be plagued by mosquitoes – during mosquito season, I walk outside and will get 10 bites right away. They loved me. During the feast, I noticed that they would fly around me, but not light on my skin! I never wanted to spray toxic repellant on myself, so walking the dog was a real pain – I would get so many bites sometimes that I would have a histamine reaction. They would swell, my whole body would itch and it would hurt under the skin so bad. It was something I just lived with. So this benefit of the Feast was a real miracle to me! And it has continued. I no longer get swarmed by mosquitoes. When I do get an occasional bite, it doesn’t swell and itch and hurt all over.

Recommended reading for fasting info – Fasting and Eating for Health: A Medical Doctor’s Program for Conquering Disease by Joel Fuhrman, MD. Interesting overall good health info book – not just about fasting.
Recommended sites for Juice Feasting info – JuiceFeasting.com lots of info, but if you choose to do the paid membership (I did it for a month) you will have access to an unbelievable quantity of information you can download. And GlobalJuiceFeast.com – both hosted by David and Katrina Rainoshek.

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