48 Hours to a Healthier Life - Softcover

Suzi Grant works as a health journalist and is a qualified nutritional therapist with a practice in West London. As well as running workshops and giving lectures, Suzi also writes for a wide range of publications including the Daily Mirror and Woman's Own. She is a member of the British Association of Nutritional Therapists.

A programme in a very well-known gardening series on British TV recently started with these words: 'Plants need very little to grow healthy — just water, sunlight and nutrients, just like human beings.' Yet, how many of us treat ourselves as well as the plants we cultivate so lovingly? 'Water, sunlight and nutrients' just about sum up what Natural Nutrition is all about — looking after yourself by getting as close to nature as possible.
 
Natural Nutrition has nothing to do with dieting — we know diets do not work in the long term. But it has everything to do with giving your body the very best nutrition you can — four-star petrol and high-grade oil so that the body just runs and runs! So for the Weekend Plan, and hopefully the rest of your life, you're going to give yourself a gold-star service. You're going to nurture your body, mind, spirit and, most importantly, your cells. For without healthy cells you can't have a healthy body or a happy mind. They're the very basis of your well-being and determine how efficiently you function, so we need to understand how they work, and why you need to give them the very best nutrition, fluids and treats!

Cells
We have trillions of these - anything from 30 to 100 trillion, no one is absolutely sure! Each of us is just a huge bunch of cells, and every single one of them carries out a valuable job. They protect us from invading bacteria and viruses, cleanse us of toxins and debris using the lymph, and continually regenerate, some at a frightening rate. Eye cells are completely replaced by new ones within 48 hours; but liver cells take six weeks to replicate.

Body cells are very similar in structure to the cells in a gaol! A cell is surrounded by a wall - a fatty membrane that allows in nutrients and substances small enough to filter through its narrow bars. But not everything gets through. And, much like prisoners in a gaol, cells communicate with each other and pass on information about stress, pain, toxicity or even happiness. If they can't communicate with each other dis-ease (not disease, but un-ease) sets in, and they become dark, cold and rigid, and nothing works quite as it should. At the very least we may experience constipation, bloating, skin problems or headaches. And, at worst, real disease may set in.
 
But we're about to change all that this Weekend and make our cells sing and vibrate with energy and happiness!

What we are going to give our cells this weekend for optimum health!

1. Electrolyte Balance 
2. Better Nutrition       
3. Cleansing   
4. More Water   
5. The Good Fats
6. Lots of Natural Light
7. Better Breathing
8. Freedom from Stress
9. Relaxation

1.Electrolyte Balance
Electrolytes are the mineral salts that transport electrical currents in and out of each cell. Think of all those trillions of cells carrying electrical charges constantly, much like a car battery every time the engine is turned over. Except all your cells are turning over 24 hours a day! So if you want to feel like a 'live wire', the electrolyte balance in your body has to be as finely tuned as you can get it.

Very simply put, the four main minerals that will ensure optimum cell health and therefore homeostasis — the perfect balance of fluid and electrolytes throughout the body — are sodium, calcium, potassium and magnesium. An upset in equilibrium causes stress and poor functioning at a cellular level. If you've ever read the packet of a rehydration medicine when you've had a bad tummy bug you'll have seen much made of the electrolyte balance.

In everyday rude health, sodium, calcium, potassium and magnesium travel in and out of all the cells, in perfect harmony, day and night. Or they should do! Magnesium and potassium are primarily intracellular nutrients — they should mostly stay inside the cell — while calcium and sodium are mostly extra-cellular - they should be outside the cells.

Calcium and magnesium work together to regulate the blood, nerves, muscles and tissues in your body. Sodium and potassium help create the electrical charge that makes your muscles and nerves fire on all cylinders. To promote all of this, the four minerals need to move through the cell membranes easily and effortlessly. That movement ensures that the body is always cleansing and finding its own balance.

The trouble is, our 21st-century diet is abundant in calcium and sodium but seriously lacking in magnesium and potassium, so most of the time that perfect flow and balance doesn't exist. The cells become unhappy and don't function or cleanse properly. And every single cell in the body needs to cleanse properly if we are to lose weight, get over illness, and have a healthy, symptom-free body. A 1994 report from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food included statistics that 72 per cent of women in the UK are seriously deficient in magnesium and as many as 94 per cent are seriously deficient in potassium.

During the 48-Hour Plan we're going to make sure the cells' electrolyte balance is improved by giving them magnesium- and potassium-rich foods but cutting right down on sodium- and calcium-rich foods. Don't worry: you'll get quite enough of both sodium and calcium, in their natural form, from the suggested menus, and it's worth bearing in mind that our hunter-gatherer forefathers managed to get more than 1,000 milligrams of calcium a day — without drinking any milk!

2.Better Nutrition
Our diet has altered more in the last 50 years than in the last 2,000 years. Since industrialization, our food has changed beyond recognition — and at an accelerated pace over the last two generations. Technology, today means that processed foods can be refined, made much tastier by the addition of large quantities of salt, sugar or fat, and stored for months.
And although this high-fat, high-protein diet has made us taller, bigger and generally more 'Amazonian' than ever before, it has not necessarily made us any healthier. In the Western world, we may not suffer from malnutrition and diseases like rickets, but according to the World Health Organization the rates of diabetes, obesity and heart disease are now doubling every decade. Professor Graham MacGregor of St George's Hospital, Tooting, highlights the impact 21st-century living is having on us: 'The commonest cause of death and disability is from heart disease, and the second commonest is from cancer. These diseases are mainly caused by our appalling diet and lifestyle; and if we changed these we would live longer, and also have an enhanced quality of life as we grow older by avoiding unnecessary suffering and enjoying a healthier life.'

Historically, humans started off as nomads and hunter-gatherers — not couch potatoes slumped in front of the TV with a takeaway. Forty thousand years ago we roamed around the land, moving with the seasons, much like some wildlife still does today. We ate the food that was available close by, wherever we were. We were always ready for action with energy on-tap to fight off an attack or kill our next meal. Small meals or snacks were eaten every two to three hours throughout the day. A handful of nuts and seeds gave us our healthy oils, a couple of pieces of fruit or some berries gave us a quick sugar fix, and raw plants and vegetables were as complex a carbohydrate as we ever ate. We caught wild animals such as boar, deer or fish. But we didn't catch them every day. Archaeologists have discovered that we were healthy then, with strong bones and lean, muscular bodies. Yes, we died from simple infections, in childbirth or from accidents. But we didn't die of heart disease or cancer!

For just three days we're going to become more 'gatherers' than 'hunters' with a diet high in raw, fresh food, a few grains and without any animal products. As much as possible, the food we'll be eating will be in season and will have been grown in the country that we live in. After the Weekend, we can revert to being hunter-gatherers, with a lot more protein thrown in. But for 48 hours we are going to concentrate on the foods and techniques that help us cleanse and heal: naturally.

3.Cleansing
Detoxing is like 'taking time off work'; it gives the body a chance to cleanse and is a bit like cleaning and oiling a piece of machinery, inside and out, so it will work better and last longer! Resting the digestion allows energy that would usually be used to break down food to be redirected to the cells and tissues, so they can repair themselves by cleansing. Cleansing allows the lymph, blood and organs to clear out old, defective or diseased cells and unneeded chemicals. As the new healthy cells grow, the organs start regenerating and our level of immunity, vitality and disease resistance just soars! Over the Weekend, you're going to try some techniques to boost your body's cleansing capacity.

4.More Water
Cells need water - they are 75 per cent water. So water is going to figure as one of the most important requirements of the Weekend Plan. You're probably sick to death of hearing how important water is for your body, but even scientists are now telling us we are dehydrated and need to drink more water.

Dr Susan Shirreffs is an expert on rehydration and a research scientist and lecturer at the Biomedical Sciences Department at Aberdeen University. 'Even small levels of dehydration can create headaches, lethargy or just an overall lack of alertness,' she says. And at a cellular level being dehydrated can be far more serious, claims Dr Shirreffs. 'In the long term it can create problems with the renal system (kidneys) and our mental functioning, as well as our cardiovascular system.'

5.The Good Fats
Essential fatty acids (EFAs) make up the membranes of every single cell in your body and so influence the state of your health. They control how well your cells cope with what is flowing in and out of them — oxygen, fluid, waste and viruses.

Within each cell are receptor sites where vital hormones, such as insulin, and essential neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, communicate. If the cell membranes are too rigid because of a lack of EFAs, the chemicals can't dock and deliver their messages. The result can be dramatic. With these two examples, you could get blood-sugar blues from an insulin imbalance, and depression because of a shortage of serotonin.
 
The two essential fatty acids that our bodies need are: linolenic (Omega 3) and linoleic (Omega 6) acids. All EFAs must come from our food— our bodies can't manufacture them. But because of our modern eating habits, most of us are seriously deprived of them — especially Omega 3, which is needed in highly concentrated amounts for our brain cells, eyes, adrenal glands and nerves. Without EFAs, we can't produce prostaglandins, the hormone-like group of molecules vital to our well-being. Prostaglandins affect blood pressure, metabolism, nerve impulses and immunity, and control inflammation.

So the Weekend diet will ensure that you're boosting your intake of EFAs. You won't want to live without them once you feel the benefits — it's that instant!