30 Day Juice Fast Journey -- Day Seven by Dazzle

My little brother, Joe, has had one foot in the grave for probably the last decade, maybe longer. He has severe sleep apnea. He has actually fallen asleep while standing in a doorway waiting for a friend and then fallen out the door. He has COPD. He has what his docs call chronic, uncontrollable high blood pressure (it's the chronic, uncontrollable part I am raising an eyebrow to), kidney problems, liver problems, severe edema where his legs and ankles are so swollen up there is no leg definition, they look like water logged tree stumps (ewwwww). He suffered with chronic constipation, and Joe was 65 pounds overweight. The weight distributed primarily in his torso area and his belly was as hard as a rock.

All these dis-eases (dis-eases equals dissing your ease!) come from his poor lifestyle choices and habits of living. He smokes cigarettes, a couple packs a day (and I thought I was terrible with one pack a day), and wacky tobacky and indulges in other recreational drugs now and then when they're accessable, he drinks alcohol regularly, he keeps very late nights, he eats very bad food (I've seen him wolf down in one sitting, three sausage-egg McMuffins with cheese. (gaaaag) He confessed he eats nearly no fresh vegetables or fruits. The ones he does eat are out of a can. He drinks little to no water, he quenches his thirst with sodas and downs several pots of coffee (sugared up) a day. For at least a decade he's popped many prescriiption drugs for all his various ailments. His tally equalled a handful twice a day. And he's never done damage control or detoxed his overly poisoned body. Ever.

He came to me two years ago asking me to help him heal... actually I think he was trying to finangle a free sleep study from my husband who runs a lab for sleep disorders, primarily sleep apnea, because Joe has no insurance. So, Joe came to stay with us for three weeks. First I researched what kind of diet I could put him on without sending him to his grave because of all the toxins that would be released in his blood stream, on a pure juice fast, thereby possibly triggering a coronary. He was that bad. Then I planned out various gentle activites to rev his blood up, get his juices flowing, move those stubborn bowels (oh please... yeck!).

Good thing Joe liked beans because that's the main thing I decided to use for him to eat in between the juices. Eating the beans (dry beans cooked, not canned beans) would serve a few purposes, one was to slow the detox process so he could handle it better, another was to bring up his HDL cholesteral because by doing that, his LDL cholesterol would be lowered, which would also help to lower his chronic, uncontrollable high blood pressure. In addition, the beans would be great fiber for his constipation. Another reason I chose beans was because it gave me a good way to have him eat raw garlic and onions a few times a day, everyday. The raw garlic and onions are so beneficial to the body, they are just far too powerful to ignore. They would play a huge role in lowering his blood pressure. Joe needed to eat these and cayenne pepper (another great herb for the heart and blood) took the place of his usual Louisana hot sauce and gave the beans a nice bite (Joe likes those spicy bites as much as I do.)

After a week or so, we added lightly steamed veggies (retained the crunch), such as brocolli, asparagus, brussel sprouts, green beans marinated with olive oil, garlic and lemon (sometimes ginger), in addition to raw spinach salads dressed with Bragg's liquid aminos, herbed oil and vinegar (Bragg's vinegar) to go with his beans during dinner. We went from one lap around the lake to two laps three times a day, everyday. He drank water not only with the meals, but in between them as well. Any time I had a glass, Joe had a glass. His cigarettes were first limited to 10 a day, then down to 5 a day, down to 2 a day. Then to none. This from 40plus a day. He imbibed in no alcohol nor did he indulge in any recreational drugs. No coffee or sodas. He ate no processed foods, had no meats, no cow milk or other dairy products.

The second day he was here, we took him to the sleep lab and wired him up to the computers and put him down for the night and watched him stop breathing all night long. I found myself many times, holding my breath as I watched the flat line on the computer screen (signifying no breathing from Joe) and then convulsively inhale as I watched the flat lines leaping and lurching all over the screen as my brother gasped for his own breath. All this was happening while he slept. No wonder the quality of his sleep was so bad he'd fall asleep standing up and fall out a door or out of a chair. But it was during his sleep study, that we noticed we could see some leg definition, his ankle bone on his left leg could be seen. The swelling had gone down that much in two days of juicing. Joe said he'd not seen his ankle bones in years! And this with all the prescriiption medications he'd been taking to correct that very problem.

The next day, we saw his chronical (my term) high blood pressure, for the first time (according to Joe) in more than ten years, drop to normal. There goes the chronic uncontrollable high blood pressure for which he'd been taking decade long prescriiption meds and had been hospitalized several times for! (Bye bye! Come back when you can't stay so long! Don't let the door hit you on your ass on your way out! Good riddance! One can never over-do celebrating the disappearance of bad health!) Three days on fresh raw veggie juices and semi-raw, wholesome foods (fresh, homecooked beans, lightly steamed veggies and raw garlic, onion, etc.) is all it took to break the chronic and uncontrollable down to quite controllable.

Trust me, Joe was learning alot during those days. Not only about what kind of foods could help specific ailments, but also, and more importantly, he learned that there is nothing about his health that he cannot be responsible for, or take control of. His bad health had been in his hands all along. This was both an enlightening and horrifying revelation for Joe, because with this knowledge he realized that not only could he, and he alone, improve his health, it was him, and him alone, who put his bad health where it was, no one else was responsible, including fickle Fate. It wasn't genetics either, it was bad choices based on immediate self-gratification (drugs and drinking), lack of education about his body, health and nutrition (consistently eating bad foods) and lack of self-discipline (over-indulgence).

By the time Joe was ready to leave after three weeks on the juices, he'd been fitted with a Cpap machine for the apnea and for the first time in many years he'd been able to sleep well during the night, wake feeling rested and stay awake and alert all day long. His blood pressure stayed normal the entire time after it's initial drop. He wanted to stop taking his meds then and there, but I talked him out of it and told him his doctor needs to be the one to allow him to do that, because I did not want to be responsible for Joe having a coronary on my watch. He lost 20 pounds and the edema completely disappeared and he had his legs back. They looked like legs, too. Not waterlogged tree stumps. When he went home he said he had not felt that good in twenty years. That would mean, he had not felt good since he was in his twenties! That is truly sad.

Three weeks was not nearly long enough, but it was a great start. Unfortunately and very sadly, Joe went right back to his old lifestyle habits, when he went home. The only thing he consistently kept up with was using the Cpap machine my husband gave and tailored to him and his apnea needs. But he went right back to his old ways of eating, drinking, drugging, smoking, late nights and inactivity. Joe is just 18 months younger than I am but looks ten years older and that's a shame. Especially when he now knows it's all in his hands. It's almost like he has a death wish and his lifestyle is like a slow suicide. Heartbreaking.

I know a few people whose health is as precarious as Joe's and people who make terrible health choices like Joe and people who refuse to change their lifestyles just like Joe. Some of these people will be reading this blog and I am hoping this story about my little brother Joe (I used to call him Jody when we were small) will give them hope when they realize that the power is in their hands and has been always. I hope they take this power and begin to make good decisions about their bodies, health and lifestyle habits. The effects of good decisions don't take long to reveal themselves as Joe found out the second and third day on the juices when the swelling in his legs began to recede and his chronical high blood pressure dropped to normal. Just as the effects of good decisions show up quickly in the body, so do bad decisions. The difference is good lifestyle decisions lead to physical rejuvenation and potentially long, healthy lives and bad lifestyle decisions lead towards physical destruction and to early and,often times, bad deaths.

Moderation is the key in all things (except love and kindness), especially with foods and activities that are not good for us. Once in a while a sausage-egg McMuffin with cheese is okay. <buuurp> But regularly eating three at a single sitting is just plain stupid. What is this kind of behavior? Is it greed? Is it selfish narcissism? The love of self is so vast, indulgence is a must, no matter what it is? Is it self hatred? I don't understand this. I know Joe and I had a poor childhood, remember I didn't even have a Barbie! But, we did live in a paradise.

Joe and I grew up deep in the country in Indiana. Our nearest neighbor was a tree. My mother grew most of our food. We had a huge garden every year, of which we ate freely on fresh vegetables (we carried those miniature Morton salt shakers in our pockets for when we ate the tomatoes, warm from the sun, in the garden) and she canned and froze the surplus for our winters. We had cornfields growing on almost all sides of us and so we ate lots of baby corn to the consternation of the farmers. There were apple trees, peach trees, mulberry trees, apricot trees, plum trees, black walnut trees, concord grape vines, wild strawberry patches, blackberries, raspberries and gooseberries galore. And we ate it right off the trees, the vines, the ground, wiped the dirt off and ate as much as we wanted, any time we wanted.

Nearly, everything my mother cooked was made from scratch or fresh foods. Almost nothing was processed. We did not eat Hamburger Helper, nor did we eat cakes from a box, or gravy from a packet, or mashed potatoes from dried flakes... Having hamburgers from White Castle or a pizza from Pizza Hut were such rare occasions that it was an actual treat instead of a way of life. This, during the 70's and 80s!

We got our milk still warm with three inches of golden cream on the top, along with fresh eggs, from the Wilsons who lived up the road. My mother would make butter from the cream. Many of the eggs were double yolks, a deep rich orange color. I never realized how many chickens are actually twins! Yet, inspite of this cornucopia of glorious foods in their most organic and delightful and enriching forms during our youth and formative years, Joe still chose a different and dark road to take in his adult years and it's leading him to a dark end, because even though he now knows through personal experience and has been educated through personal experience when he came to my home to heal, he still finds changing destructive lifestyle habits much too difficult for his character to initiate. I will console myself, when I am looking down at him in his casket at his funeral (probably with the Rolling Stones playing in the background), I will know I did my best to show Joe how he didn't have to end up in a casket before his time.

Bad cholesterol: Think of LDL cholesterol as “bad” cholesterol that makes your arteries dirty and clogged with plaque, leading to all kinds of physical complications, effecting primarily the heart and veins.

Good cholesterol: Think of HDL cholesterol as “good” cholesterol that cleans your arteries by carrying away excess cholesterol, including the bad cholesterol. So, by raising the HDL you will lower the LDL. It's that simple. And it can be done through a good nutritional diet thereby eliminating the brainwashed need for toxic prescriiption meds.

Today is Day 7 on my 30 day juice fast journey. One week and 8 pounds of fugly fat and toxins gone. That means I have 3 weeks and 22 pounds left on this fast. Tomorrow I will be on the threshold of week 2. So far, everything is moving along smoothly. I have a few headaches that come and go. That nasty ugly thing on my arm has been gone completely for a couple of days now. My sleep is deep and restful and the energy is beginning to spike. I feel good. Strong, Vital. And it's only going to get better with each passing day. I've not had any dreams of foods, but I can tell you now, I miss my salmon! And as soon as I can eat solid foods, I am having salmon. It's especially fabulous baked in honey. But then it's just as terrific with hot wasabi sauce. Okay, I am salivating here, I need to stop. Come to think about it, I write about foods in this blog and that could be why I don't dream about them. But speaking of foods...

This morning I fixed a hot fruit broth (with cherries so it was a gorgeous ruby red) laced with cloves and cinnamon sticks and ginger, after my morning juice and lemon-pepper tea, to sip for a change from spicy veggie broths. It really hit the spot and that's what I sipped while I prepared breakfast of cheese and tomato omelets, fresh hashbrowns (with grated onion) and nutty-bread toast with cantaloupe melon on the side, for my husband and his uncle. (Gawd, the details I put into writing about these foods I have to prepare for others to eat...) I wonder what his uncle thought about me not sitting down with them to eat last night and this morning, because neither my husband nor I mentioned my juice fast to him. I didn't want to share with him because he comes from the mind set that not eating means having a disorder or that I will sicken myself and so on and so forth... and frankly, my dear, I didn't want to deal with it. Fortunately, he didn't ask.

So far there have been no set backs or delayed reactions with my daughter after her car accident, thank the gods of love and light! I want to extend my gratitude and appreciation for those of you who cared enough to wish us well. It does mean much and the kind words are like ripples in a pond where the ripples go on and on...