Quest for Health
by Robin Armstrong

Throughout my life I had health problems (I accepted this as normal). All my life I ate animals (I accepted this as normal). All my life I just gave in and dug in without query. I did not know that I was slowly digging my own grave. People from many different religions speak of a new birth, they speak of being born again. It was not until I went through a detox program which incorporated fasting and raw foods that I truly understood the true meaning of being born again.

If you eat animals, dairy products, cooked and processed food and violate your body with poisons such as alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, etc. without getting the vital whole food in, your long term health will be compromised.

Odds are that if you eat the SAD diet (Standard American Diet), you have a 50% chance of dying of a heart attack. Every 32 seconds someone dies of a heart attack in America. Heart Attacks are more likely to kill Americans than AIDS, cancer, or an automobile accident. In fact, it is the number one way that people die in affluent countries where animal products and processed foods make up the majority of the diet. Some 1.5 million people suffer heart attacks in America each year and out of that a half million will die.

William C. Roberts, MD, Editor in Chief of the American Journal of Cardiology made the following statement;

"Human beings are not natural carnivores. When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores."

Planting seeds, pulling up weeds
Several times in my childhood I felt that eating animals and killing was wrong. Unfortunately, I would always give in to the patriarchal rule and trust the other's perception without too much introspection. But there were times when the slumber was broken by a glimpse of the truth.

My very first insight came from my own conscience. As with most children, I felt an unspoken foreboding when I would eat the various animal parts offered to me for nourishment. One day when I was about 5 years old I was at a friend's house and the family was having hot dogs for dinner. Something came over me and I refused to eat. My friend's mother was furious as I stood my ground that I did not want to eat animals anymore. She yelled and preached to me that people have to eat meat. She brought me to tears as I ate the hot dog bun with nothing more than a slab of mustard and relish on it. I went outside and sat on the porch and listened to the whole family joke out loudly at my strange behavior. Although I stayed vegetarian for that day, their laughs haunted me quickly back into eating animals.

Babe or bacon?
When I was about 8 years old I went with a friend and his stepfather to a house in the country to pick up some "bacon". What I didn't know is that this "bacon" had not been killed yet. My friend and his stepfather tried to get me to watch the pigs being butchered. I refused and they left me sitting on a wall. The screaming of the pigs kept the animals out of my body for a few weeks until I was told I would not be healthy if I stopped eating meat.

Love finally brought me to the truth
At age 23 a girl I was seeing explained to me that she did not eat animals for reasons of compassion and that she would not get romantically involved with anyone who ate meat and explained to me what happens to animals killed for food. She helped me understand a lot of the ethical reasons for not participating in suffering and killing of animals by getting them off my plate. I feel very fortunate that I had someone so special in my life to help me see the light and that love helped motivate me to make the change.

Going Vegan
When I first became vegetarian I ate a lot of eggs and cheese thinking I was doing the right thing. It was not until sometime later that I met a friend who suggested that I read John Robbins' book Diet For A New America . After reading just the first chapter, I went vegan (no meat, dairy products or eggs). The video, Diet For A New America also had a large impact on cementing my beliefs and eating habits.

The good doctor
I was very impressed by the segment in the Diet For A New America video where Dr. Michael Klaper makes the connection with animal-fat and heart attacks by showing the blood in a test tube from a person who had just eaten a fatty fast-food burger and compared it to one from a person with a clear bloodstream. This had a profound impact on me and I really understood the health implications of the typical fast-food diet from Dr. Klaper's comparison. Not long after I had seen the Diet For A New America video, I met a friend who just happened to work for Dr. Klaper. I offered my video production services to Dr. Klaper and I helped produce A Diet For All Reasons .

Detox!
The next stop of my journey to find nutritional truth was a three week stay at the Optimum Health Institute in San Diego, California. There I learned about the benefits of fasting, detoxification and eating a diet of primarily organic raw fruits and vegetables. It was at this time that I truly felt an increase in my level of health and vitality. I stopped drinking coffee, alcohol, soft drinks and processed foods. I learned about wheatgrass juice and other juices and their healing affects on the body. Although this was probably the best investment in my health next to buying and reading John Robbins' book.

At this time I was also reading a lot of books, attending a lot of vegetarian potlucks and events and constantly searching out any information I could get my hands on about vegetarianism, detoxification and rawfoods. Books can certainly affirm a vegetarian life, but nothing is more convincing than personal life experiences.

As I felt my health improve, I thought back to all the sickness in my toxic carnivorous life. As a child, I was very often sick or should I say my body was having to constantly purge all the toxins that kept coming and coming in. I even had a bleeding ulcer at one time. Since the change to a Vegan diet, I have not been sick once.

Close to home
As I was seeing my own health improve, I was seeing others fail. Many people in my life have been victims of diseases associated with a bad diet. One grandfather died of colon cancer, both grandmothers died of strokes, my uncle died of diabetes, two neighbors and a best friend died of a heart attack.

When my grandmother suffered her first heart attack and stroke she survived but ended up in one of those nasty convalescent homes with a big chunk of cholesterol closing off much of the oxygen to her brain. When I got there, they had her so drugged up along with her brain already suffering from the lack of oxygen, that she had no idea who she was or where she was. Luckily, I remembered to bring along my juicer and I juiced and juiced and juiced for her everyday. In addition we got her off the drugs and I fought to get a healthier diet for her. She immediately started to show signs of improvement and within one week she was home and her mind returned to normal. Unfortunately, she went back to her old eating habits and ultimately died of a stroke/heart attack.

My close friend Mike died of a heart attack at the age of 29. How could someone so young die of a heart attack? Mike was very active and athletic. He took lots of supplements. He was a very happy, loving and positive person. These are very positive and important aspects to a healthy life. On the minus side, he had a fairly stressful job, drank a moderate amount of alcohol, and he ate the Standard American Diet. These are some of the most obvious possibilities that could end a life early, however I am sure there could be more to it. Not long after Michael died, a very athletic, professional Russian skater also died of a heart attack at the age of 28.

Conclusion
It is my personal experience that a primarily organic, vegan diet with plenty of raw foods and fresh juices is the best diet for maintaining long term health. However, any change to eat healthier is good. Here are some stages to help you: