Primo Health Blog

One of my favorite things to show my clients is how I juice my vegetables. Juicing is an excellent way to get more of the five to nine recommended servings of vegetables we should have every day. Juicing helps to clear the skin, improves vitality, cleanses the organs and is preventive of cancer and other disease. I highly recommend everyone to incorporate raw juicing into their health promoting diet.

Why Juice?

• Juicing helps you absorb all of the beneficial nutrients from the vegetables
• Juicing allows you to consume optimal amounts of vegetables in an efficient manner
• Juicing allows you to incorporate a larger variety of vegetables than you would normally eat

Drink Vegetable Juice

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) can be a crippling and painful condition of the joints of the body affecting millions of Americans. It is not just a disease of the elderly, typically appearing in people from age 30 to 50. Understanding the mechanism of this autoimmune condition and known treatment options can help the sufferer cope with and possibly control its disconcerting symptoms.

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic inflammatory condition that affects the entire body, but especially the joints.  There is much evidence that RA is an autoimmune reaction, in which antibodies formed by the immune system attack components of joint tissue. (Murray, 2005, p. 761). 

My mother scattered some seeds in a pot for me a few weeks ago. I had no idea what they were but I proceeded to water the pot diligently hoping it was something I love. Well much to my surprise I now have a large pot full of kale! They are still growing and maturing, but I can easily recognize their curled up deep green leaves.

Crohn’s Disease is one of two diseases considered to be a form of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD).  It is characterized by an inflammation mostly of the ilium, or end of the small intestines. But it can occur anywhere along the digestive tract.   Characterized by intestinal pain, diarrhea and malabsorption of nutrients (Murray, 1996, p. 441).  

For many years I was confused about the guava fruit. My family always ate foods and sweets made from guayaba, which I always thought was a different fruit from guava. Come to find out that they are the same fruit. Guava is the American take on the name guayaba, which is the Spanish way to say it. However, they are the same fruit.

Part of my confusion is that there are different varieties of guava. Pictured above is the red fleshed variety. But like most fruits and vegetables, there are several varities with their own unique colors, shapes and characteristics. I had become accustomed to the red fleshed guava as it is used in many juice drinks. However, if you taste an actual fruit you will notice it's not as sweet as those juice bottles make us think. But it is a tasty fruit nonetheless.

The human genome project, which set out to map the DNA of the human being has led to many great advances in health and science. Scientists set out to identify the approximately 25,000 genes in human DNA. They've been able to pinpoint the genes and patterns responsible for how each one of us will uniquely turn out. The mapping of the genome was completed some time in 2003, years before they had expected to finish.

Cardiovascular disease is a class of diseases that involve the heart and/or blood vessels. It is America's number one killer, taking almost one million American lives every year. It is primarliy a lifestyle disease that is preventable. Therefore, our greatest defense is education about heart health and prevention cardiovascular disease.  This is Part 1 of a two part series.

Coronary Artery Disease

Coronary artery disease is the primary form of cardiovascular disease.  It is considered a societal and lifestyle disease and it is the leading cause of death for women in the United States.  It can be expressed as acute myocardial infraction, angina, angiographic coronary stenosis and sudden cardiac death (Rakel, 2007, p. 295).  

I just came in from tending to my heirloom tomato plants in my garden. They've grown as tall as me (5ft 6in) and are filling up with their tasty sweet fruit. These tomatoes nutritional value and health benefits are numerous. So before tomato season is heavy upon us, let's discuss these benefits and even potential problems with consuming this fruit.

In the botanical sense, a tomato is considered a fruit. Because the tomato is not as sweet as other fruit, it is most often considered a vegetable. In fact the United States Supreme Court ruled in 1893 that the tomato is officially a vegetable. You say tomato, I say to-mah-tow... it doesn't really matter how you classify it when we are looking at the nutritional value of this roundish bright colored fleshy food. I can't even specify the color or the size because there are so many different varieties of tomatoes with varying colors, shapes and sizes that I would be misleading you. The most common color, of course, is the red tomato.

“The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.” Thomas Edison