The Four Pillars For Your Health Good Looks And Longevity

By Getty Ambau

It takes a conscious effort to love and care for yourself. It takes deliberate work to know what is good for your body and to choose foods and drinks that will keep you fit and healthy for years to come. This also means becoming knowledgeable about the many risk factors (cigarettes, fatty foods, drugs, excessive use of alcohol and salts) and minimizing or eliminating them from your life.
The Four Pillars–referring to vitamins, minerals, herbs and phytonutrients–is written to empower you with nutritional knowledge and help you make appropriate choices, whether it’s buying groceries or looking at a menu in a restaurant. The food and drink recipes have been created to simplify your choices and ensure proper and complete nourishment. Historically, spices and herbs have been used for enhancing flavor and aroma. As you will find in this book, these can have tremendous nutritional and health benefits as well.
The author is originally from Ethiopia and has included information on foods and spices as well as recipes to many delicious Ethiopian foods—both meat and vegetarian dishes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Getty Ambau
• Release date: Jul 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781884459054

Getty Ambau

Getty Ambau is the author the DESTA series. Desta, the lead character in the story, is on an epic adventure to find a three-thousand year-old magic coin and unite it with the one his family owns. Prophesied since ancient time, this union is believed to benefit all mankind. . . Like Harry Potter or The Book Thief, these books can be read by all ages.The first volume, DESTA AND KING SOLOMON'S COIN OF MAGIC AND FORTUNE, was a winner of Moonbeam's Young Adult Book award and Independent Publishers Children Book award. The second volume, DESTA AND WINDS OF WAHSAA UMERA, was featured in the February 2014 issue of Kirkus Reviews magazine and their digital copy. The third volume, DESTA: TO WHOM LIONS BOW, was a winner of Moonbeam's 2014 Young Adult Book Award.

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Preface

The idea of eating good food to nourish and keep our body healthy is not novel. Nearly 2,500 years ago, Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, advised us to make food our medicine; our medicine our food. But the practice of choosing and organizing our foods according to their maximum nutritional benefits and disease-preventing properties may be new, because most of us eat merely to kill an appetite or satisfy hunger. Most of us don’t even have a rudimentary knowledge of nutrition. The subject was neither a part of our academic training nor our family upbringing. Our doctors don’t receive more than one semester of training on diet and food in medical school, hardly enough education to expect them to be our purveyors of good health through proper nutrition. They are trained mainly to prescribe drugs. For most of us, good health or wellness means taking pills when we get sick or going under the knife when we have a cancer, blocked artery or any other ailments to remove or fix the disease.

But these diseases happen largely because we have abused our bodies by engaging in risky behavior and overeating. Smoking, using drugs, consuming excessive alcohol and sexual promiscuity are risky behaviors. A life-long consumption of foods rich in fats, sweets, and salts are the other causes. Some of us may live or work in a polluted or stressful environment.

Proper nourishment of our bodies, so they can heal themselves when they get sick or prevent diseases, should be in our everyday, conscious thoughts. Our bodies are made to take care of themselves if we avail them the right nutrients. The fundamental law of nature for most life is to live out its genetically programmed lifespan. No life is created to self-destruct or die prematurely. As you will see in this book, most diseases and premature deaths happen because of the suboptimal quality of our foods, our poor nutritional habits, our sedentary lifestyle and as it is the case for some of us, our engagement in activities that are both disease inducing and life-shortening.

From all of my years of reading, researching and writing, I have concluded that our health and wellness rests on what I call The Four Pillars. These are vitamins, minerals, fiber and phytonutrients. These four components of health are involved in nearly all of the processes that take place in our bodies. These range from the building and repairing of our tissues and organs, to protecting and healing them, and to the proper processing and elimination of waste from our system. It’s therefore important for every human being to understand the basic functions of the foods and their contribution to his or her health and wellness.

To help all those who may be in the same position as I once was, I have given a detailed account of the vitamins, minerals, fibers and phytonutrients (which include herbs and spices) and the various roles they play in our well-being. In this book, you will also find recipes for making drinks, soups, stews and breads based on these four pillars of health.

I am originally from Ethiopia and knowing how popular Ethiopian foods are becoming in the United States and other countries, I have researched and written several chapters on Ethiopian food ingredients. These foods are nutritious and healthy and I thought people would appreciate and enjoy them even more, after they learn about the benefits of all the spices and other ingredients that go into the creation of the Ethiopian cuisine. These food ingredients maybe one of the reasons why degenerative diseases, such as cancer, heart diseases, diabetes and others, are rare in that country.

In the appendices, I have given a brief account of free radicals, antioxidants and enzymes for those who may wish to know the role they play in our health. Exercising regularly and drinking purified water are important components to our health and longevity. I have covered these topics as well. Nearly 68% of the population in the United States is either obese or overweight. For those for whom weight maybe an issue, I have a long article on how one can lose or manage weight through normal means—without dieting or being on a weight-loss program.

Finally, having all the healthy foods at our table means nothing unless their nutrients are properly processed and absorbed by our digestive system. For those who may wish to know about this system, I’ve addressed the significance of keeping our digestive tract healthy and properly functioning so we fully realize the role foods can play in our health, good looks and longevity.

-GTA

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Introduction

I feared my fingers and toes would char and shrivel as if singed with fire, my skin would be covered with blisters and lesions and my feet and hands would become numb and tingle with pain. My kidneys would fail, my eyes would become blurry and my blood vessels would get damaged, leading to many complications, including wounds and cuts that are slow to heal. These were some of the symptoms my diabetic sister-in-law experienced in the late stages of her disease. But I was not diabetic, although I had the early symptoms of a diabetic person. As discussed on Page 13, mine appears to be a result of poor circulation, which can be caused by a number of things—not getting enough exercise, eating too many fat-filled foods, and chronic smoking. Although I’m guilty of the first reason because of the sedentary aspect of my work, I had neither of the other potential problems. Yet, if unchecked, I still had a potentially life-threatening situation on my hands. Having nutritional knowledge can help.

I had never valued or consciously connected the food I eat to my own health and well-being, until about twenty years ago. To me, as is probably true with a lot of people, food was there merely to satisfy my hunger or to kill an appetite. I consumed just about anything I was accustomed to eating. That meant meats, white bread, white rice, pasta, alcohol and soft drinks. In general, foods that were rich in fat, sweets and salt were my favorite. I was overweight. I had problems with my lower back (because of the added pounds in the front), and I never felt quite up to par mentally. Some afternoons I was drowsy or I felt out of sorts. But I never connected all these problems to the types of foods I was eating.

Then I joined a company that manufactured and sold nutritional supplements. In my academic background I have studied molecular biophysics and biochemistry and economics in college. At meetings, distributors used to come up and ask me what benefit the ingredients had to the human body. I didn’t know the answers to their questions other than the commons ones, like Vitamin A helps with night vision, Vitamin C wards off scurvy and Vitamin D prevents children’s bones from bowing and that calcium and magnesium are good for the growth of bones and teeth.

Most of the distributors knew these answers, and my responses were not adequate enough for them. The shortcomings of my own knowledge about these food components inspired me to study the benefit of all of the ingredients found in the company’s products—vitamins, minerals, and herbal extracts. Then I focused on nutrition in general. I read just about any book and journal article I could find on the value of proper nutrition to human health.

I discovered that

1. there is a high level of malnutrition in this country—not the classical type but the modern type. (See Chapter 2). Because the foods we eat are highly processed— white rice and white flour, all forms of pasta—which have little of their vitamins and mineral content.

2. stress and pollution increase our need for the key nutrients: vitamins, minerals and large doses of anti-oxidants compounds.

3. every chemical reaction, including the conversion of proteins into amino acids, and the synthesis of these amino acids into tissues, such as hair, skin, nails and thousands of other proteins, are helped by vitamins and minerals. These nutrients are critical to life.

4. the colors in fruits and vegetables are not solely for our visual enjoyment. They have many health benefits, from serving as antioxidants to boosting the immune system and preventing degenerative diseases.

5. the agricultural soils in this country have been depleted of their mineral reserves. The nutrient content of the fruits and vegetables may vary depending where they are grown. Certain parts of the country are rich in certain minerals more than others.

6. our body is constantly challenged by chemical fragments called free radicals that are produced in our bodies or come from outside sources. These are found to be one of the major causes of the degenerative diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and macular degeneration that affect us as we get older. Free radicals may be made harmless if we eat the right foods.

7. as we get older our nutritional needs are higher because nutrients are no longer processed and absorbed efficiently.

I realized that I was not just a skin-bound bundle of blood, muscle and bones. Within each of my 60 trillion cells, amazing chemical processes take place, all without my conscious control. Nature had given them intelligence to act on their own. It is my responsibility to give these cells proper foods so that those processes can work smoothly and keep my body healthy.

Those biological processes involve the conversion of foods into the energy, that is keeping us moving, talking, thinking and doing a great number of things every day. They also use certain nutrients to build tissue and organs. A great many chemicals help to run our bodies as smoothly as possible. All of these processes are made possible by the foods that we eat. If we want our bodies to do their job efficiently and to function optimally, not just any food is acceptable.

Our bodies are also equipped with a defense system that tries to ward off harmful viruses from the outside and thwart the formation of diseases like cancer from within. This system functions to full capacity if the body is supplied with the quality nutrients it needs. In normal circumstances our sleep pattern and mental state can be greatly influenced by the types of foods or drinks we consume.

As a result of all these findings, I began treat my body with respect and responsibility. I changed my eating habits completely, cutting out all fats, sweets and soft drinks and replaced them with fruits and vegetables. I drank distilled or filtered water and fresh juices.

I wrote my first book about the company’s products as well as the value of good nutrition in general. This book became a world-wide bestseller among the distributors. Later, I followed it with a more comprehensive general nutrition book called, The Importance of Good Nutrition Herbs and Phytochemicals for Your Health, Good Looks and Longevity. This, too, became popular with the distributors as well with the general public, including the physicians.

I have detailed how my learning and writing experience in nutrition and health issues that my wife and I were having, led to the creation of the recipes for the Four Pillars drinks that appear in Part IV. Before I begin, let me first give you a background about our health and nutritional status in this country.

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The grass hopper is the Chinese symbol of longevity, good health,

happiness, good luck, abundance, fertility and virtue.

PART I

The Current Health Status in United States

CHAPTER 1

Current Health Issues in the United States

Increasingly, people are living longer today. This is particularly so when you realize that two-thirds of the people who have ever lived past 65 years of age are alive today. This piece of information is astounding in another way. Over a hundred years ago, people did not expect to live past 40 years of age. As of 2014, the average man can expect to live to 76.4 years of age and the average woman to 81.2 years of age or a combined average age of 78.8 years.

These figures are far less when compared to the life expectancies of other nations. From the top three ranking countries, Monaco has a life expectancy of 89.57 years, Macau 84.48, and Japan 84.46. United States is 42nd. Guinea-Bissau with 49.87 years, South Africa with 49.56 and Chad with 49.44 are the bottom three in the list.

The future of human life is even more impressive. According to experts on aging, not only will there be a greater number of people living past 100 years, but some may even live as long as 120 years, the current maximum biological age for humans. How you care for yourself is what will determine how many years you can expect to live. See Figure 1.1 for past, present and future survival curves.

Nowadays, venereal diseases, influenza and tuberculosis are not the main killers in the United States and other industrialized societies. Instead, the main killers are cardiovascular diseases and cancer. These two diseases account for over 50% of the top ten causes of death in this country. These diseases were relatively unknown in the early part of the previous century and a great percentage of them are preventable.

For example, in 2014, thirty percent or 176,000 of the 585,720 estimated cancer deaths were tobacco related. The other thirty-three percent are caused from being obese or over weight. Of the remaining thirty-seven percent, infectious diseases, such as the hepatitis B and C virus, HIV or human immunodeficiency virus and skin cancers are the causes of these deaths. These, and those caused by tobacco, are preventable, if people did not smoke or took precaution in their sexual encounters.

Cancers, derived by heredity, are small. It’s believed that even these cancers happen when people, who are genetically predisposed, subject themselves to unhealthy lifestyle such as smoking, an excessive use of alcohol and drugs, and environmental risks, such as polluted air or water, radiation or hazardous waste.

Relatively speaking, smokers are 23 times more likely to get cancer than those who do not smoke. A woman who has a mother with a history of breast cancer is twice as likely as the woman who doesn’t have the familial connection to the disease. Interestingly, seventy-seven percent of all diagnosed cancer occurs in persons 55 years and older.

Most of the cardiovascular diseases are caused by fatty deposits or are due to sedimentation of cholesterol-bound calcium along the arterial walls. When these fats collect there, they block the flow of blood, and this can lead to heart attack. Calcium and cholesterol deposits, on the other hand, cause the blood vessels to become rigid and brittle. This condition can result in a breakage or rupture of the blood vessels as well as a stroke if the blood vessels are in the brain. Both these outcomes are largely caused by fatty, sweet foods and our sedentary lifestyle.

Figure 1.1 Survival Curves for the U.S. Population

These Life Expectancy Curves show past, present and future U.S. population life span profiles. Average life expectancies at a 50% survival rate are shown below:

• 1900: 44 years

• 1950: 60 years

• 1990: 76 years

• 2040: 89 years [1]

The other nutrition-related circulatory disorder is one that comes from electrolyte imbalance. Both the heart muscles and nerves need certain minerals like sodium, calcium, potassium, and magnesium for their normal functioning. Severe shortage of these minerals can lead to spasms and even sudden death.

The best solution to any of these health hazards is to avoid or minimize the consumption of foods that are rich in saturated fats and cholesterol. Foods that are rich in saturated fats, such as red meat, whole milk and coconut and palm oils, can be some of the major culprits. Lowering stress level and exercising regularly can also help you clear up some of these circulatory problems. Making and including the Four Pillars drinks with at least two of your meals can your body to manage and care for itself reliably.

Subclinical (harder to detect)

Marginal (sometimes observable)

Obesity(observable)

Figure 1.2 Malnutrition Examples

Current Nutritional Status

Given the present health problems, Americans are far from getting what would be considered optimal nutrition for good health, vigor and well-being. Malnutrition or some form of nutritional deficiency is common in this country. However, the kind of malnutrition that exists in the United States and most industrialized nations today is not your classical type where children’s stomachs become bloated and people end up with protruding bones and emaciated faces.

More often, the malnutrition that exists in Western countries is of the subtle, undetectable type, referred to (see Figure 1.2) as subclinical. In this type of nutritional deficiency, you may have nourished yourself just enough to meet all your body’s minimum requirements but not sufficiently enough to give you that extra zest in life.

Subclinical malnutrition is not observable, because for all practical reasons you feel OK. The problem with this form of malnutrition, as with the other two discussed below, is that in the long run, your health will be seriously compromised. Like subterranean termites that slowly eat away at the wooden foundation of your home and finally bring the house tumbling down, a subclinical type of malnutrition could do the same to your body. Often, like those hidden termites, you would not notice that something is amiss until it’s too late. Particularly predisposed to this type of nutritional deficiency are pregnant women, infants, teenagers and the elderly.

Marginal deficiency (also shown in Figure 1.2) is another type of malnutrition. With this, your body might be low in one or more nutrients, but you go on living without any outright sign of sickness, except perhaps for slight behavioral changes you might be experiencing from time to time.

People who have the third kind of malnutrition, obesity, can have the marginal or subclinical type in addition to being overweight. The problem with obese people is not that they get enough nutrients, but more often that they get too much of the wrong food. For example, if you gorge on fat-laden meals similar to those you find in fast-food outlets and some restaurants, or drink too much beer and eat too many processed foods, you will be malnourished. The fat, alcohol and sugars in these foods have no nutritional value for your body. They merely make you fat.

In addition, over time, fat begins to clog the arterial walls, alcohol starts to erode the health of your liver and brain cells and sugar undermines the proper function of the pancreas. You now become a strong candidate for cardiovascular diseases, diseases of the liver, diabetes and premature aging and death. At the moment, cancer and cardiovascular diseases account for more than 50% of the deaths or 1.3 million people in this country.

Ironically, in the United States, the above nutrition problems are not necessarily a condition of the poor, the homeless or a particular class or race of people. Several government surveys have shown that they are problems that affect people of all socioeconomic classes. According to one expert, Everyone who has in the past eaten processed sugar, white flour, or canned food has some deficiency disease, the extent of the disease depending on the percentage of such deficient foods in the diet. That means practically everybody.

The chart below and Figure 1.3 show what could happen to the body as a result of chronic malnutrition. As you can see in these illustrations, nutritional deficiency can come about as a result of either inadequate diet or from the body’s inability to process the food properly due to physiological or metabolic disorders. In either case, when this happens, nutrient stores in the body begin to decline. This problem leads first to abnormal function of tissues and organs, then to outwardly expressed symptoms or diseases such as scaly or coarse skin, cracking or ridging nails and thin and weak hair or scurvy, pellagra or rickets. To determine the causes of these symptoms or diseases, a health care professional first assesses a person’s diet and medical history. These assessments are followed by a series of laboratory tests and physical examinations and measurements.

Series of events that could take place

in one’s body from chronic malnutrition

Primary deficiency resulting from inadequate diet

or

Secondary deficiency caused by problem inside the body

Declining nutrient stores

Abnormal functions inside the body

Outwardly expressed signs and symptoms.

Expressed symptoms of deficiency

Causes of Malnutrition

Besides having a problem with processed foods, Americans have had a great love affair with dairy and meat products. These foods are rich in saturated fats and protein, which may contribute to cardiovascular diseases, obesity, and a number of other problems. Milk, for example, could interfere with proper absorption of foods, and in infants, it could cause diarrhea and iron deficiency anemia. Furthermore, the high protein content in milk, could, among other things, lead to the depletion of a number of vitamins and minerals from the body, including potassium, calcium, magnesium and B vitamins.

More often than not, the food you eat is naturally nutritionally sparse because of over-farming. The agricultural lands of this country have long been depleted of their minerals, and the fertilizers used today have no more than three or four nutrients in them. A high concentration of these few nutrients may help plants to grow big and attractive, but these plants are far from being nutritionally balanced and complete. This is proven when you realize that plants need as many as 16 essential nutrients to grow well. There is a great variation in the nutritional content of vegetables grown in the United States.

The other major problem of malnutrition is simply a practical one. In these days of working couples and single men, single women and single parents, people don’t seem to have the time, the desire, the discipline or the know-how to prepare well-balanced meals. These folks often opt for TV dinners, fast food or restaurant meals. The food from these sources either is not nutritious or has too much of the wrong things, such as fat, white bread, excess sugar, additives, and a number of other unhealthy substances.

Whatever the causes or the reasons—subclinical, marginal or obesity-malnutrition will definitely shorten the path to your grave. If you are serious about your health and quality of life, you need to take important steps right now! Since nutrition is the basis of it all, one of the first things you can do is to eat a well-balanced meal and incorporate the Four Pillar drinks as part of your everyday meals. As a margin of safety you also may want to take supplements: vitamins, minerals, amino acids and other nutrients. Your goal is not to have just normal nutrition but rather optimal nutrition.

Figure 1.3 Nutrition Continuum

This nutrition continuum illustrates the four possible levels of nutrition and serves as a model that accommodates individual differences and nutritional need variabilities among humans.

Optimal Nutrition—Your Answer to Health and Longevity

As we mentioned earlier, current estimations put the maximum human biological age in the 115-year to 120-year range. Among many factors that influence your chance of reaching this range, nutrition ranks on top. To illustrate this point, we’ll call that nutrition level that may help us reduce the gap between our current life expectancy of 76 years and the biological limit, the optimal nutrition. However, because of the biological, physiological and gender variations among people as their age, stress level, physical conditions or types of work they do, people’s nutritional needs will vary accordingly. This variability will create a problem for us to come up with a single nutritional or optimal standard.

Moreover, researchers have so far shown that we need at least 45 to 50 essential nutrients—nutrients that our bodies are not capable of producing. These include two essential fatty acids, eight essential amino acids, fifteen vitamins, twenty minerals and another five that are not conclusively known to be essential. Researchers have also shown that quantities higher than current RDA values of these nutrients can help us deal with many health-related issues, some of which are described below.

One, since your body depends on the food you eat for practically everything it does, the greater availability of the above nutrients in the tissues, the more effectively and vigorously it accomplishes its tasks or activities. For example, with optimal nutrition, your immune system can marshal its forces (immune cells) quickly and efficiently to defend your body in times of invasion by foreign elements like virus, bacteria or parasites. It can equally quickly suppress or destroy potential dangers (such as the growth of cancer) from within the body.

Two, if you are one of those people with special circumstances—e.g., have a stressful life-style, live or work in a polluted environment, are pregnant, are elderly or have a certain genetic defect—your need for nutrients may consequently be higher than most people’s. Similarly, if you have surgery, are undergoing drug treatment or are having therapy, your need for nutrients may also be higher than most people’s.

Three, certain nutrients when taken in higher doses do things that normal RDA amounts may not do for you. For example, when Vitamin A (as beta carotene) is taken in higher quantities, it protects the body from the destructive side effects of chemotherapy. Higher-than-RDA amounts of Vitamin E improve circulation. In women with premenstrual syndrome, Vitamin E also may help reduce breast tenderness. Similarly, higher amounts of Vitamin C and zinc speed up recovery from wounds and infection.

According to recent reports, greater amounts of Vitamin C (300 to 400 mgs per day) can prolong the life of men by six years. The current RDA for Vitamin C is 60 mgs. Similarly, higher-than-RDA amounts of Vitamin E were found to reduce the risk of heart disease..

Thus, to accommodate nutrient needs and quantity variabilities, we have to treat nutrition as a continuum. This means that in Figure 1.3 the two variables can be adequately represented. In this graph, office workers, physically active or sick people, as well as others with special nutritional needs, will also have their places. Let’s see exactly what this graph tells us.

The horizontal axis represents the number of essential daily nutrient intakes. The vertical axis represents the amount of those intakes. The results of combining these two describe the nutritional conditions that we have labeled deficiency, malnutrition, normal and optimum. The figures in the chart represent each one of these conditions, or the z-axis of coordinate geometry.

Thus, as we go from left to right on the continuum, we are moving from nutritionally low foods (such as white bread, candy, pastries and soda pop) to those that are nutritionally dense [2] and balanced (such as The Four Pillars, liver and fish), which may bring you closer and closer to optimal health. How far along and how wide you are in the optimal range will depend on your own individual needs. If you are a person who is concerned about your looks or well-being, or the appearance of your hair and skin, you want to be as far along the continuum and as high up on it as your individual needs dictate. If you are a growing person, elderly, sick, athletic or physically or emotionally stressed, you need nutrients and nutrient levels that can adequately help you meet these conditions. Are you a smoker, heavy drinker or other drug user? If so, your nutritional needs will be equally high and further to the right and higher up on the continuum. In this manner, as you provide your body with all the good nutrients it needs, all the organs (heart, lungs, liver, brain, etc.) should function to their maximum efficiency and capacity. [3]

Good nutrition, simply speaking, means eating a well-balanced diet, rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins, fibers, essential fatty acids and carbohydrates. Such a combination of nutrients and in higher concentrations may bring peace and order to your body. In the end you may feel a heightened sense of well-being, contentment and happiness.

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CHAPTER 2

Causes of Our Health Problems and Nutritional Solutions

As I indicated in the introduction, five years ago I began to experience numbness and tingling sensations in the two little fingers of my left hand. At the same time, my feet began to feel cold at night. So much so that I had to sit before a heater and warm them or bathe them in warm water, dry them and quickly go to bed. If I fell asleep right away, I was good. If I was awake for any length of time, I still could feel the coldness down there. Again I would get up and warm them for a while and then try to go to sleep once more.

When this problem persisted, I bought heavy wool socks and started wearing them shortly after I warmed my feet and right before I went to bed. This was a good temporary solution to my problem.

However, what the symptoms portend was rather alarming. We have heart problems in my family. My father and two of my older brothers died of heart attacks. My sister-in-law, who died of diabetes complications, had similar problems. But I was not diabetic. Mine was a case of poor circulation, because of possibly clogged arteries. What I couldn’t get out of my mind was the image of my sister-in-law.

As mentioned earlier, in the final stage of her disease, my sister-in-law watched her body die by degrees right before her own eyes. Her toes and fingertips became black and shriveled as if they were singed with fire. Blisters appeared all over her body and she became progressively weaker and sicker.

I knew this was going to happen to me if I didn’t take care of the problem immediately. At the time I noticed these troubles I didn’t have a doctor and was away from a hospital where I could go to get checked. To allay my concerns, I called a cardiologist friend in New York City and explained the situation to him. He thought I might have some sort of blockage in my arteries and suggested that I should get checked as soon as I can. I know it’s foolhardy and I won’t suggest to anybody to do this. I more or less guessed what the doctor would recommend as an ad hoc fix to the problem: give me a blood thinning pill.

I have never been a pill taker, not even Tylenol or aspirin. I always prefer to try natural remedies first. I knew ginger is one of the good natural remedies recommended for thinning blood and improving circulation. I began to take ginger tea—two to three times a day. I also began to exercise more often. I went on a longer walk and rode a stationary bike. Doing these things helped me quite a bit. I felt the tingling less often and the coldness in my feet was not as severe. I knew, however, this was only a band aid to a potentially worsening situation. I needed a systemic fix.

I theorized that the main cause of my poor circulation was my slowed metabolism due to my sedentary life. Before the onset of this condition I was writing the first volume of the Desta series where I sat at my computer for long hours at