Rainbows and Unicorns.

You know what this blog needs?  More happy.  It needs pretty photos and uplifting sentiment.  It needs rainbows and unicorns.  

But I just haven't been feeling very colorful or perky lately.  Or even this year.  What up with that?  As healthy and happy as I am (when I'm not giving myself rashes), I should be having more fun. Right?  I think so.  So why so serious?  Why am I not having as much fun as I should?

Well, I don't know.  Maybe because the price of healthy has been deliciously decadent foods like, say, pizza.  Or cookies.  Or burgers.  Maybe I'm bummin' because I miss me some cheesy orange deliciousness in a certain blue box?  Maybe I'm resentin' the heck out of spinach, kale, and lentils?  (BTW, I think I'ma have to share my latest healthy culinary effort -- a spicy lentil soup recipe that I stole from another blogger.  Surprisingly hearty and tasty.  "LENTILS!  They're what's for dinner!"  Not to mention breakfast and lunch for the next 3-4 days.)  Maybe I'm just pissed that I'm a social pariah at every happy hour cheese-and-cracker-fest, and every dessert-dominated holiday party.  No one wants to hang with the biggest buzz killer of all time.  They want to stuff that piece of pizza and then have a cookie or three without my judgment.  Yeah, I get it.  But I judge because I CARE people!!!

I had been feeling bad about feelin' blue, and then I came across a prescription for happy.  Yes, Reader's Digest was apparently ON to something -- laughter really is the best medicine, whether you're in uniform or not.  (What happened to RD?  They need to start publishing again, if only for those crappy holiday trees and angels crafted from their pudgy little pages.)  Anyway, I found a prescription for happy in a surprising location: a book.  No, the book part's not a big stretch.  But a book on dermatology by a dermatologist.  WTH is a real doctor doing telling people to have fun?  This is thought provoking.  Or at least blog provoking for me.  Lucky you.  (I love that I think someone other than myself actually reads my crap.  There's my belly laugh for the day!  I am crackin' myself up.)

I continue to read lots and lots of boring stuff on health and nutrition.  (Hmmm, maybe THAT's what's bringin me down?)  I just finished Linus Pauling's book "How to Live Longer and Feel Better," which has been on my bedside reading pile for more than a year now.  I highly recommend it to anyone interested in health and nutrition.  Linus Pauling was a brilliant Nobel Prize-winning chemist.  But when he DARED to suggest that vitamins, especially vitamin C, should be used to treat disease instead of drugs/chemicals with side effects, he was not only marginalized, he was flat out ridiculed and maligned by the medical establishment.  Sadly, that continues to this day, as doctors who have never read his work, refer to this two-time Nobel Laureate as a "wacko."  True story.  His book on the use of naturally-occurring vitamins instead of dangerous drugs to treat disease is fascinating and well-worth a read.  But that was last week.

I transitioned this week right into the dermatologist's book, Stop Aging, Start Living.  (Yes, it's a crappy idiot mass-appeal kind of name, but I guess that's what you have to do to sell books.  Or at least that's what book publishers THINK you have to do.)  I needed to get my face back after the aloe vera debacle and my continuing inability to get rid of the permanent allergic bumps that I tend to get.  Jeanette Graf is a dermatologist who started out as a research fellow with the National Institutes of Health (one of the stodgy medical establishments that refuses to give credence or funding to ANYTHING remotely new, because they believe they already know everything medical there is to know and only want to fund research that proves they're right) and now has a thriving private practice in NYC.  I don't recall exactly how I wound up with her book -- I was searching for something on Amazon and found this.  Why not?

Dr. Graf says that pH controls your health, or at least reflects your health.  Your average human bear is slightly alkaline, and that is where you need to be for optimum health.  Your internal pH is based on what you consume.  Since I'm a big believer in diet as a cause of disease or health, I was willing to look at this whole pH thing.  Apparently this is not new and she's not the only believer.  I'm told by my friend Lori, that if you go to any seminar on health, they talk about pH.  Well, this is new to my little world.  Or maybe not.  Because it turns out that things like vegetables are good for your pH and things like sugar are bad for your pH.  Okay, you had me at no sugar.  So basically, once again, the author says to stay away from sugar and baked goods and processed foods and factory-farmed meats and non-organic fruits and vegetables, and eat organic fruits and vegetables.  This is consistent with everything else I've read in all my many books on nutrition.  And I'm already doing most of that.  Sign me up.

Dr. Graf gives more detail in terms of what you should eat and avoid, and even gives you a very specific 24-hour kick start, or a slower 2-week start up plan, outlining every meal, snack, etc.  It would be really challenging for most people.  Indeed, it is proving difficult even for me.  But I had broccoli for dinner last night and a green juice drink this morning (Yup, it's not pretty.), so I'm mostly compliant, for today anyway.  But my skin already looks a bit better and I got compliments just this morning.  So even 24 hours worth of being good has made a difference, just as she says it will in her book.  The difficulty is actually having the will power to eat so healthily for two weeks, or even 24 hours.  Like I said, even I have difficulty with this, and I'm a no-sugar, no-wheat Nazi.  What?  No Corn Nuts?  You gotta be kiddin me!

In addition to diet advice and recipes, Graf includes specific advice for caring for your skin -- a morning and evening routine with advice re cleansers and moisturizers, etc.  And a few supplements, like a probiotic (already on board with that, baby) and green powdered dehydrated veggies (I will have to do a whole blog on this nasty stuff -- they added stevia to make it taste "good" = sickeningly sweet), because most of us just cannot consume as many veggies as we ought.  So you've got food, supplements, skin care, and...happy.  Yes, her last component for beautiful glowing skin is having fun and relaxing.

This surprised me a bit.  Talk about integrative medicine.  (I think that's what integrative medicine is, right?  O.K., I looked it up.  It's a combination of traditional western med and "alternative" medicine.  I guess this qualifies.  Frankly, I have a problem calling eating healthy and exercising "alternative."  Whatever makes you healthy is what I want my doctor to recommend.  But I digress.)  Integrative or just straight up western med, the happiness prescription surprised me.  The diet and exercise are expected.  The recommendation to have "fun," not so much.  I thought doctors gave you pills for that, right?  "Are you depressed?  Here, take two of these and try not to commit suicide, because that's a side effect we might forget to mention." 

Graf recommends having fun on a regular basis.  Watching funny movies.  Playing games.  Getting out and doing things that you enjoy.  And relaxing -- meditating, getting lots of sleep, deep breathing (that's a whole other blog post), etc.  And I see her point.  Happier = healthier.  That's an established fact.  Just petting an animal can physically lower your blood pressure.  So it makes sense, I've just never seen any doctor recommend it for making your skin glow.  Kudos to Dr. Graf for taking such a comprehensive approach and sharing with the world what she has learned through her own extensive education and research and what she applies on a daily basis in her own life.  Sometimes I wish I was a doctor myself, so that I could share what I have learned about diet and health and not be called a wacko (although I am in good company, thank you Linus Pauling).  I'm glad that there are more and more doctors out there who are recognizing that our health is dependent on what we are exposed to, and that food is our biggest exposure -- that if we consume FrankenFood and things we are not designed to process, our bodies will eventually pay the price.  And that our bodies and our health are so much more complex than we know, even today, when we think we know everything.  That we need to fight the causes of disease, not suppress the symptoms with dangerous drugs and chemicals.  And Graf's book attempts to do that with a comprehensive whole-life approach.

I recommend it, and I'm going to try to implement it in my own life.  Will it work for everyone?  No idea.  But it can't hurt to eat more organic vegetables and relax and have fun.  And you'll make the world a happier place for everyone in the process.  I'm going to try to have more fun while eating nothing but salads!  Well, mostly salads anyway -- I'm sure there'll be some Corn Nuts.  I'ma go watch a comedy.  And I'll let you know how it works out.  :-)

Peace.  Love.  Understanding.  Rainbows.

And, of course, unicorns.

XOXO