The Road to Health

Anyone who desires to be healthy must become familiar with the top five rules of the road to health:

1. The body’s sewer system, i.e. the intestinal tract, must be kept clean and working at all times.

The colon is about two inches wide but can balloon up to six times its width. If this organ becomes more of a holding tank for un-eliminated waste and less of a pipe that moves waste out, then you are very likely to eventually experience some sort of serious discomfort or disease not to mention gain stubborn weight, feel depleted and heavy, and look old before your time. 

Please pay close attention to what The Rambam says: “One should always strive to have healthy movements throughout his life, and should always be close to [having] a slight diarrhea. This is a cardinal rule in health – whenever constipation sets in, illness will follow” (Hilchos Deos 4.13). 

Here are some steps can you take to adhere to this rule and put an to end to constipation, reclaim your figure, energy, and looks as well as prevent future disease:

Drink about ½ liter of water before you eat anything in the morning,

Get moving in the morning even if it’s just walking to work or climbing the stairs for five minutes

Eat only fruit in the morning – a most powerful natural laxative.

Add lots of raw vegetables, especially leafy greens to all of your meals – all that roughage will stirr up stuff in there that should not be inside you to begin with.

Take probiotics or make your own (email me for recipe).

Get an herbal tincture that moves the bowels.

2. Avoid processed factory food: The human body needs real food and living food in order to thrive

Processed food is a burden on the body. The body accumulates metabolic waste when we eat processed food, which it can’t digest and metabolize properly. This is a large contributor to today’s obesity epidemic.

Add a rainbow of fresh fruits and vegetables to every one of your meals! Raw fruits and vegetables are the only foods that contain enzymes. These are crucial because the body uses them in order to break food and accumulated metabolic waste down and flush them out. Here are some real food choices: maple syrup, honey, quinoa, buckwheat, brown rice, wild rice, legumes, nuts, seeds, cold pressed olive oil, flax oil, coconut oil, wild-caught fish, and chicken, meat and dairy all preferably organic and in a non-processed form.

3. The human body must be kept hydrated.

Your body is mostly water (75%). So, if you think about it for a minute, what problem isn’t going to be influenced by adequate hydration? Trust me – most issues will. So this one’s a must – 2 liters per day. Staying dehydrated is not an option. I know, It’s not so convenient lugging water around and having to find a bathroom while out and about. You will have to do some planning. But wrinkles, constipation and kidney disease aren’t very convenient either. So stick with me here.


4. The human body needs to move and exert itself every day.

Regular exercise not only lowers the risk of developing or dying from heart disease, stroke and diabetes, it also prevents certain cancers, improves mood, builds bones, strengthens muscles, expands lung capacity, reduces the risk of falls and fractures, helps to keep excess weight in check, boosts the immune system and increases brain power. And those are just some of the better-known effects.

5. Attitude Impacts Human Health: Avoid Stress and Stay Positive.


Stress, i.e. lack of emuna, in whatever form – anxiety, anger, fear, overwhelm, sadness, guilt, loneliness, etc. has been proven to be directly linked to a lowered immune system and compromised health.

Reading the Garden of Gratitude, listening to Rav Arush’s cd’s as well as personal experience have showed me over and over that your attitude of emuna – faith, is a wellspring of blessing that launches you into whatever relationship you’re going to have with G-d and the world. Do you or do you believe that G-d runs the world to the last detail and that everything He does is good? Because anything can happen at any time and it won’t always be pleasant, however if you know, feel and are connected to the reality of Ein Od Milvado – that there is nothing other than Hashem and that Hashem is in charge, and is doing everything for your individual very best, and is steering you to the path you are meant to be on, then things not only can genuinely work out for you but are genuinely being worked out for you at this very moment. When you’re connected to this reality, you experience a drastic decline in anxiety, anger, fear and other negative emotions, which equals better immune system functioning and improved health.

Now, how do we actually stick to these rules?

When it comes to making the life style changes needed in order to adhere to the rules that govern our health, it can be daunting.  We’ve all got the work obligations, the house, the kids, the mortgage, the car payments.  It’s going to be a challenge that’s for sure.  You’re going to be tested numerous times in this area, it won’t be handed to you on a silver platter. But personally, I can tell you this – feeling good, light and high energy with no fungus from antibiotics, no mucus from processed dairy, no heaviness from the wheat and too much meat, not to mention a much lowered risk of catastrophic disease, is really worth it. So keep trudging along.  Whatever it is you ARE doing is great. Keep doing it.

The physical food cravings are can be a hefty obstacle course. Comfort food, especially if it’s processed can be highly addictive. The excessive amounts of salt, sugar and MSG over-stimulate the production of dopamine, the feel good neurotransmitter, which leads to more and more cravings, which leads to overeating, which leads to weight gain and health issues. Even if it is chemical free, we get habituated to whatever it is we’re used to eating. So if you’re eating a lot of heavier type of food such as bread, dairy, meat, that’s what you’re going to keep craving. Here’s what I recommend doing: start ADDING nourishing, lighter food to every one of your meals. Eat fruit first thing in the morning. Add salads, leafy greens and sprouts to every one of your meals. Transition slowly from heavier, more depleting foods to the lighter more nourishing foods.

Our emotional attachment to food is probably most challenging of all. We need to be aware and conscious of this fact: Instead of using food as a source of nourishment, we often use it as a kind of a drug to suppress our feelings and numb down our emotions.  Throughout the day as those internal worries, fears and disappointments bubble up to the conscious surface, making us feel uneasy and in need of comfort, we automatically reach for the sugar, the chips or the heavy processed comfort food, even when we are not actually hungry. Food quiets down that nagging need for comfort.

What’s wrong with this? Well, it’s not very conducive to the process of going inward and looking at what is calling for our attention and work. In other words, doing self-assessment and teshuva.

Part of moving forward in our connection with ourselves and Hashem is I think about staying awake and conscious of those feelings and emotions arising and tempting us to reach for the food.  When that happens, if you stay with the uncomfortable feeling, which may feel like hunger but is not, it can bring you some pretty loud wake up calls and deep insights. You could suddenly wake up to a certain reality in your life that you’ve been shying away from dealing with that really need your attention. Or sometimes just staying with the feeling and coming face to face with it actually provides relief and comfort.

Going inward and finding the unique light of your soul and connecting with it in ways that are satisfying can bring you a lot of genuine simcha. It’s a different kind of “feel good” than the food trip but it really gets you somewhere. Appointing Hashem, rather than your food, as your number one source of comfort can be very helpful in this process.  Remind yourself that you are never alone. Hashem is in charge and He is with you and therefore there is always an answer, a solution, and a yeshua. In other words, the pain we’re all holding on to and suppressing would be better dealt with by opening our hearts to Hashem instead of our mouths for more food.

Next time you feel the need to eat something even though you’re not hungry and it’s not meal time, ride it out by drinking some water or eating a fresh fruit or vegetable. Push yourself to avoid the tempting comfort food for as much as the day as you can. Have the heavier more comforting food as an early 5pm dinner. At mealtimes, keep your food simple and nourishing: lots of vegetables, leafy greens and sprouts along with simple, real food – clean, whole, unprocessed, and chemical-free, not engineered in a lab, not made to last for the next 50 years.

We have to develop the courage to turn away from the numbing comfort foods, and while we’re on the topic the superficial therapies and downright harmful pharmaceuticals, and face whatever it is we have to fix within at this point in time.  It may not be instantaneously alleviating like the comfort food, but over the long run there’s nothing like the emotional and spiritual benefits acquired through living a in line with the laws of health in a clean, regenerated, energized, vibrant body.

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Check out Yardena’s new website: www.holyhealthiness.com or email her at holyhealthiness@gmail.com.