“OUR BODY IS NATURALLY DESIGNED TO BE IN BALANCE. WE ARE DESIGNED TO BE HEALTHY, FULL OF ENERGY AND VITALITY. SADLY ENOUGH, THIS IS FAR FROM REALITY FOR EVERYONE. I BELIEVE THAT A HEALTHY BODY IS A RESULT OF A LIFE LIVED IN ACCORDANCE WITH A NATURAL AND PLANT-BASED DIET ON THE TRAY.”
These words come from health coach Jeannel Dalgaard, who on a daily advises people on how to live a healthier lifestyle from the Copenhagen clinic BodyCheck. Jeannel Dalgaard is one of several specialists I’ve chosen to interview here on the To Human blog. Jeannel is a specialist in human nutrition and shares my passion for increased quality of life and health.
Jeannel Dalgaard’s focal point is raw food and living food. She combines this with her knowledge of the LifeWave phototherapy patches. See Jeannels answers to my questions, and read some more in the comments below.
Jeannel also offers 3 tips on how to create lasting changes and get a healthy, balanced body with more energy in your everyday life.
Interview with Jeannel Dalgaard, BodyCheck:
What constitutes living food and raw food?
The definition of raw food is food that is NOT heated to over 42 degrees (or frozen). It’s raw, unprocessed food. Raw food is plant-based foods. This means that you only eat vegetables, fruits, seaweed, nuts, seeds and grains. With raw food you say goodbye to animal products – i.e. meat, fish, eggs, milk, butter, cheese, etc. Boiled potatoes, pasta, bread and the like will no longer be on your plate. It may sound a bit limited, but the plant kingdom is diverse if you think about it.
Living food is, as you might be able to guess, living food. That is plant-based food, still containing life energy. In this category we find all kinds of sprouts. This is for example a carrot that has been pulled out of the ground and eaten immediately. The life energy and nutritional value of a carrot that has just pulled out of the ground can not be compared to the carrots you buy in the supermarket, even though they look identical.
Raw food and living food are the best sources of enzymes, chlorophyll, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fiber, and phytochemicals. Living foods will especially give your body more nutrients from less food.
Why do you prefer living food and raw food instead of the classic food pyramid?
The short answer is because it makes more sense to me. I have always been interested in healthy eating. I’ve read and subscribed to various health magazines for years, but I become more confused the more I read. I used to eat by the good old food pyramid but it was’t optimal for me. Luckily I have always enriched my diet with lots of energy, but I definitely felt like I felt much better when I ate only fruits and vegetables.
When I finally came across Hippocrates Health Institute in the United States and was introduced to raw food and living food, all the puzzle pieces fell into place. My search and confusion was over. It makes so muchmore sense to me that the food we should primarily eat should come from the wild, unspoiled and in its natural form. When you first look at health, you’ll find that the supermarket contains many foods that don’t really have anything to do with “natural foods”.
I know that we are used to thinking: “No proteins without meat,” “We need to drink milk to get calcium” and “We must eat bread for the fiber and a healthy stomach”. We do this because we learned about the diet pyramid in school. However, I see trends and specialists from abroad who challenges this basic assumption. I also see a big difference in my own clients in terms of their energy and health benefits. For me it’s about finding the most optimal source of the nutrients that the body needs – without burdening it more than necessary. My basic position is that our body doesn’t need meat, lean dairy products or whole grains. It does very well without it. Well, it actually does better when it gets nourishment from a good plant based source instead.
What can we achieve by changing our diet?
It always amazes me how amazing our bodies are. Under the right conditions, our body can do so much more than we’d ever imagine. It all starts with the food we eat. For me it is obvious that there is a correlation between the state of our health and the food we eat. Disease is often directly related to our lifestyle.
The cornerstone of my education comes from the father of medicine, Hippocrates, who said “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food”. A healthy and long life free of disease depends on the correct diet, but the fact is that we unfortunately often forget this when we’re lost in the supermarket jungle of processed foods and unnecessary labeling. When we return to a natural diet, there are almost no limits of what we can achieve.
What food do you think we should eat less of?
Sugar! You’ve probably heard it before, but sugar is the classic bad boy. Sugar creates so much trouble. Intake of sugar – direct and indirect – is a major challenge for the body. Our body is not designed to handle large amounts of sugar, at least not sugar every day.
Originally, only limited amounts of sugar present in nature, including berries, are good for you. Therefore, the brain is evolved to recognize sugar as something special that our ancestors were treated with when it was available. Today we extract sugar from beet and cane and add it in virtually all of our food. Even our fruit is grown so that the sugar content is greater. This is a development that damages the body.
What food should we eat more of?
If I have to point out only one thing, then it’d be sprouts. I love sprouts. Sprouts are fresh and living food. It is easy to grow, cheap and better than the vegetables in the supermarket. Eating sprouts gives your body better nutrition!
How does the body react to such a big dietary change?
The body doesn’t react violently when you start eating raw food, but rather reacts to the fact that you stop eating the foods you normally do. What you feel in the beginning of changing your diet are symptoms of detoxification. When you no longer eat bad food, you give your body a chance to get rid of accumulated waste products.
It is worth remembering that when the body is overloaded, this isn’t very good from the first day. If you need to get rid of large amounts of waste substances such as heavy metals, medicine residues and other toxins, you’ll experience symptoms of your body detoxifying. It can be strenuous and you may feel tired. Afterwards is when all the fun happens – you’ll get a lot more energy than before. Most people find that they have high energy throughout the day and don’t need to get eat any sugar due to blood sugar drops.
How big of a difference can you can feel?
This is up to each and every person. We are all different as people, and our starting point is different. Generally, the more we do, the easier and faster we’ll see results. So little effort, little benefit – great effort, great benefits. That said, your body will be grateful. It beings to heal as soon as we give it the right conditions. Although we have a much heavier body, then healing (albeit slowly) will start as soon as it is no longer subjected to the stressful elements.
On a raw food diet you also don’t also need to feel heavy and tired after a meal. Many people experience improvement in their digestive and intestinal system. The intestinal system is the basis for a healthy and strong body, since 70-80 percent of our immune system is connected to the intestine.
What’s the reason behind you using LifeWave products for dietary changes?
For me it makes sense to support and work with the body on as many levels as possible. When I was first introduced to LifeWave products, I loved the idea of being able to support the body’s processes through passive effort.
Creating a healthy life can be overwhelming. There are many things you can do, and most would like to see and feel the results immediately. When we try to change everything at once, it is often too much and our new good habits doesn’t stick around. This is where LifeWave is a great tool because all you need to do is put on small patches in the morning and they’ll do the work throughout the day, without you having to worry about it. The only thing you should remember is to drink plenty of water, but do so well in advance.
I recommend the LifeWave patches that helps to cleanse the body to everyone.
What can LifeWave give that diet and exercise cannot?
Without going into too much details of the individual patches, LifeWave is something completely unique. I can talk specifically about the LifeWave Glutathione patch. Glutathione is our body’s main antioxidant and is produced naturally by the body’s cells. We want a high level of antioxidants in the body to effectively neutralize free radicals. Glutathione is important for the body in order for it to be detoxified optimally and we can, among other things, detoxify heavy metals.
The production of glutathione decreases with age but we can stimulate the body to increase the production of glutathione. In part this may be done via a diet rich in vegetables. Unfortunately, our diet is not what it has been. The content of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants in our diet is not optimal, and we need subsidies. The LifeWave Glutathione patch raises the body’s level of glutathione in an easy, efficient and fast way without any side effects. With the patches you’ll give the body a helping hand. So you shouldn’t have to eat a ton of broccoli to try to achieve the same results as you would with the patches.
How do you use LifeWave with your dietary guidelines?
Most clients come to me because they want to lose weight. For this purpose, I recommend using the LifeWave patches to cleanse your body (detox). Cleansing using the patches is a gentle and easy way to jump-start your body to the new lifestyle. The patches helps, among other things, the body get rid of waste products that cause sugar cravings and also help you get more energy. So it’s a great way to start when we start changing our diet.
Other times, there may be situations where the client has a specific problem where I use the patches to help. I’ve for example used the patches to help a client in menopause who experienced such profuse sweating that her sleep was very disturbed. This affected her work and overall mood. She was so desperate that she was, against her principles, considering hormone therapy. Fortunately enough, this wasn’t necessary as the LifeWave patches stopped her sweating quickly and efficiently. She started sleeping well again, and the other problems disappeared. All of this without any side effects!
3 tips for lasting and healthy dietary changes
1. Drink green juice
If you want to get started with a healthier lifestyle, my best advice to you is to get yourself a juicer and start drinking 0.5-1 liters of freshly squeezed vegetable juice every day. Drinking vegetable juice every day will add an abundance of nutrients to your body. The amount of vegetables you need to make 0.5-1 liters of juice is something that usually won’t be able to eat throughout the day. Our cells cry for nourishment and a stick of celery just won’t do the trick. It’s important that you mainly use green vegetables and no fruit when you make your juice. Since a juicer removes fibers, it’s easier to consume large quantities of vegetables. We don’t want fruit juice, since it’ll just leave you with a shot of concentrated fruit sugars.
2. Replace one meal with raw food
if you want to eat more raw food, then start by making one of your daily meals a 100 percent raw food meal. We eat an average of three main meals a day (i.e. 21 meals a week), so making just one meal a day consistently raw food you’ll have seven raw food meals a week in total. It’ll do your health a lot of good – almost without you noticing.
3. Eat sprouts daily
Living food is the way of the future. So my third advice is that you eat sprouts every day. Don’t worry if you’ve never grown sprouts before – it’s not that hard. I regularly teach small evening classes on how to get started growing sprouts. So drop by and get inspired into eating more living foods!
