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Fact Sheet 2 : Wheatgrass & The Wheatgrass Starter Kit
Wholistic Research Company |
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(Ed: for Wheatgrass Books see end of this long and thorough article}
Why should I drink wheatgrass juice?
Wheatgrass has the following properties:
* Detoxifies the liver
* Cleanses the colon
* Leads to a tangible energy boost, called Rocket fuel by Steve Meyerowitz
* Boosts the immune system
* Purifies blood as Chlorophyll has similar molecular structure to haemoglobin - a component of blood
* Very rich in chlorophyll
* Contains 97 enzymes, vitamins, phytochemicals and minerals
* Made famous in the US by Dr Ann Wigmore in treatment of cancer
* Experience less colds as your resistance to infection increases
* Available in powder form for convenience e.g. when travelling
* Easy to grow at home
* Juice with a manual or electric juicer
* Have a regular 1oz shot of wheatgrass juice from a juice bar or at home
How Easy is it to grow Wheatgrass?
With a small initial capital outlay and a little on-going effort in tending your crop, you can grow trays of wheatgrass very easily. It is one of those habits that's easy once you know how and you've experimented a few times! There are 2 mediums in which to grow wheatgrass ~ using soil or hydroponically (using water). Traditionally, wheatgrass, like any plant, is best grown in soil. The nutrient levels are slightly reduced by growing in water but this method is convenient for those people who cannot make compost etc in a garden and those who just want to keep the growing really simple. You can try both methods and choose which suits your own circumstances best ~ growing instructions are included with the kits which provide the ingredients for a minimum of 8 trays.
Are We Really so Unhealthy?
Two of the most salutary trends in modern nutrition are the malnutrition of affluent society and mass dehydration - both lead to poor health. We are increasingly dependent on refined foods, low quality, mass produced meat, fruit and vegetables, we are subject to massive media exposure of the high sugar drinks and fast food outlets. There is an increasing need to add fertilisers to improve yields from impoverished soil, and to use growth hormones and antibiotics in the production of meat. Other factors such as the tight margins demanded by supermarket giants all conspire to reduce the nutritional value of our foods. The poor quality of our tap water does little to encourage us to drink the recommended daily quota.
Our reliance on high energy sugar drinks and stimulants such as tea and coffee combine to dehydrate our systems still further. The results can include a reduction in the efficiency of our immune systems, a lowering of reserves through the poor nutrient content of our diet and a propensity to infections?
It's not all doom and gloom however
An increase in the public's awareness of these issues has led to an enormous increase in the consumption of organic foods, a suspicion of GMO foods, the on-going call for adequate food labelling and increased use of water purification.
Alongside the quantum leaps in our understanding of the importance of living foods and the factors that have led to the deterioration in the quality of our food, come the welcome proliferation of the juice bar, the complementary health clinic, and the local wholefood shop. An organic, freshly prepared juice in a gym or juice bar may cost £3 or more, but an increasing number of people are looking for ways to boost their intake of fresh organic nutrients and of pure water AT HOME.
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What is it about wheatgrass that leads it to feature on the menus of fashionable juice bars, to help increasing numbers of people in their fight against cancer, to boost the immune system, and to be an important element in most detox programmes?
~ Steve Meyerowitz, known as "Sproutman" in the US, describes wheatgrass as "a sunshine transfusion"
~ Dr Ann Wigmore healed her gangrenous legs with it in the 1970's and later ran the Boston marathon
~ our own Living Foods expert, Elaine Bruce, who was a student of the late Ann Wigmore, describes it as an essential ingredient of the Living Foods Programme
SO?.. WHY DRINK WHEATGRASS JUICE?
Wheatgrass earned its reputation from people with terminal illnesses who took it at the eleventh hour after conventional medicine left them with no hope. In the 1970s Dr Ann Wigmore opened the Hippocrates Health Institute in Boston, nourishing terminally ill patients back to health with fresh squeezed wheatgrass. (See her story below)
Dr Charles F Schnabel (1895~1974) chemist and agriculturalist, knew from his work with his farm animals and his research in the laboratory that wheatgrass boosts nutrition, builds good blood and strengthens immunity. More recently, there are many studies demonstrating the efficacy and nutrition of grass foods, using both clinical evidence and testimonials.
In the US there are numerous healing centres where wheatgrass plays a key role in the diet. There are courses run in the UK by proponents of wheatgrass and raw, living foods ~ see Resources at the end of this article.
Wheatgrass has long been used like a herbal medicine ~ for its therapeutic and nutritional properties. Although wheat is the most popular, barley, oats and rye are equally potent.
So what's it good for?
blood purification
liver detoxification
colon cleansing
As a food wheatgrass is very nourishing and restorative with a complete range of nutrients.
Therapeutically, the fresh juice can be drunk or applied rectally using an enema implant.
For disease prevention, you can make powdered drinks, take it in tablet or capsule form or drink the fresh juice as part of a long term health maintenance programme.
If you have an intolerance to gluten, do not be put off. The grain metamorphoses completely into a vegetable with none of the allergic proteins common to the glutenous grains.
"our food is our medicine and our medicine is our food" said Hippocrates, the father of medicine.
It has long been established that the best medicine is whole, natural food. All known nutrients were found in concentrated form in wheatgrass including what are now known as phytochemicals; also anti-oxidants, enzymes, 20 amino acids, vitamins including folic acid, calcium, zinc, selenium, magnesium,phosphorous, manganese, potassium, and cellular RNA and DNA. Similar natural superfoods containing a broad spectrum of concentrated nutrients are bee pollen, spirulina, chlorella and blue green algae ~ they all provide the raw materials from which the body manufactures what it needs and balances its own chemistry. Grasses along with alfalfa and these algae are the richest sources of chlorophyll on the planet. Green plant cells are the only cells capable of absorbing the energy of the sun. The famous research scientist E. Bircher called chlorophyll "concentrated sunpower ~ it increases the functions of the heart, improves the vascular system, the intestines, the uterus and the lungs. It raises the basic nitrogen exchange and is therefore a tonic which, considering its stimulating properties cannot be compared with any other."
The amount of juice you drink is totally up to you.
Steve Meyerowitz says "Grass is non-toxic in any dose, but you may react to the results of its detoxifying power. All grass is a powerful purgative for the liver, and too much can release too many poisons too quickly."
Experiment! Start with small quantities. It can be mixed with other juices or taken neat. Notice the effects of a daily 1 ounce shot! Remember - it's concentrated sunpower! Rocket fuel! Greenpower! Living food! Whatever it becomes for you .... have fun! If you have time let us know how you get on.
ANN WIGMORE
Ill health led Ann Wigmore to discover the value of raw foods for herself. Twenty Six Years ago she established the Hippocrates Health Institute in Boston (USA). The oldest wholistic health clinic in America, it takes 25 people at a time on two-week courses to teach them how to be their own doctor ~ and there's a waiting list.
"Man is the only animal", says Dr Ann in her categorical way, "who cooks his food. Primitive people still eat their food mainly raw, and if you watch any animal who is ill or in pain, it will go straight for to what is living and growing ~ grass."
It took years of patient trials on herself, when she was ailing from ills like arthritis and colitis, to establish just which was the best grass. Wheat won the approval first from 2 animals first, a kitten and a cocker spaniel, who ran to it in preference to the others.
Dr Ann Wigmore trusted their intuition. She juiced the grass, which she'd grown herself, and "my shattered health experienced a miraculous recovery. Whereas before I was unable to work more than a few hours a day because of exhaustion and nervousness, the wheatgrass seemed to bring new alertness and energy into my body. No task seemed to be too difficult and work became a pleasure instead of a chore."
"Friends agreed to try it. Without exception they all experienced more alertness, freedom from pain, peaceful sleep and longer working hours spent undisturbed by tired muscles or drowsiness."
Most of the people who have followed in Dr Ann's footsteps and taken the sprout and juice "cure" (the Hippocates Diet programme is its official title) have been as ill as she was. People come from all over the world to stay two weeks at the institute, some having been "given up" by medical science.
Ann Wigmore went further than any naturopath, vegetarian or raw food addict. Cell Toxaemia, due to nutritional deficiency , she believes, is the only disease in western man. All our degenerative illnesses are the result of this process. Warnings such as fever, swellings and frequent colds are usually suppressed until more serious
complications arise.
Basic deficiencies, says Dr Ann, come from from cooked food and from the chemicals that we pile into our system.
So how do wheatgrass sprouts allieviate this situation? At the Hippocrates they assert that it's a question of life force. The sprouts are, says Dr Ann, "a tremendous source of life-giving enzymes."
One cancer patient came to the Hippocrates Health Institute for just a day ti learn how to grow the sprouts for himself. He went away and followed everything they taught him and his cancer disappeared.
For Ann Wigmore the supreme value of eating living foods destroys all other arguments. "It reduces food costs, cooking time and sleep time. Your mental condition improves, you have more energy and it prevents physical problems. You can be completely self-sufficient in food. It's a survival programme, "she stresses.
How do people survive on the Hippocrates two-week programme? Just as the diet is "as unlike a vegetarian diet as eating is to not eating" (in Dr Ann's words), so the Hippocrates Programme is unlike any other clinic or health farm.
It doesn't believe in the fast, the mainstay of natural healing. People eat whenever they like at the Hippocrates. They can help themselves to organic vegetables, juices made from them and (naturally) sprouts. From a special room devoted to the propagation of seed sprouts in a warm basement, trays of fresh green jungles are brought up to the dining room daily.
Instructions for juicing enable people to make their own wheatgrass juice (there are also buckwheat, sunflower and various other sprout variations) and to it they can add celery, broccoli, carrots, beetroot, or whatever seasonal vegetables take their fancy. Dr Ann explains, "Sprouts are easily digested so they nourish while they are cleansing. We don't recommend fasting and staying in bed, because that makes you weak."
One day a week guests live entirely on liquids (sprout and vegetable juices alone) but otherwise they are allowed salads, fruit and Dr Ann's "cosmic soup". This is a juiced mixture of sprouts, vegetables, seed cheese (fermented crushed seeds) and avocado. If sprouts are the answer to all ills, this is the answer to everything.
At the end of the two weeks there's a party treat ~ ice-cream. But it's healthy ice-cream ~ a simple frozen banana, squashed through the juicer. The only cooking that's done at Hippocrates is for the dog.
There is evidence that it works : people who were ill go away better. One man came just to spend time before having heart by-pass surgery. He thought two weeks at the institute would take his mind off the operation, but he got more than bargained for. He went back to the hospital and found that he didn't need the operation after all.
The concept of eating living food ~ food which is in tune with the spiritual life force ~ does not specifically belong to the Hippocrates Institute, she stresses. It is available to everybody. They just teach how to use it.
So the Hippocrates is certainly no health farm. It's back to nature as nature intended, without any of the trappings of supplementation, "health" foods or any kind of "ism". Dr Ann makes it sound even more simple, "Everything is energy, and you can shape it good or bad. If we eat the living foods that are part of this energy system we can make things come right for us."
Ed: The Hippocrates Institute opened in 1963. Ann Wigmore (b.1909) died in 1994, and her groundbreaking work continues atthe Hippocrates Institute, now located in Florida, USA
Books About Wheatgrass (all are available from Wholistic Research Company)
The Wheatgrass Book by Ann Wigmore. Price: £8.95
Wheatgrass - Nature's Finest Medicine by Steve Meyerowitz. Price: £12.95
Wheatgrass Juice - Gift of Nature by Betsy Russell Manning. Price: £4.95
Wheat-Free Recipes and Menus by Carol Fenster Ph.D. Price £19.95
Related books that discuss Wheatgrass in detail (all available from Wholistic: check general health books or search on title)
The Kitchen Garden Cookbook by Steve Meyerowitz. Price: £14.95
Cereal Grass by Ron Seibold. Price: £9.95
Drink Your Troubles Away by John Lust. Price: £4.95
Hippocrates Diet & Health Program by Ann Wigmore. Price: £9.95
Juicing for Life by Cherie Calbom. Price: £12.95
Juice Fasting & Detoxification by Steve Meyerowitz. Price: £10.95
Living with Optimum Health by Brian Clement
Power Juices Super Drinks by Steve Meyerowitz. Price: £14.95
The Earth On Which We Live by Marijke Vogel. Price: £14.99
The Joy of Juicing by Gary Null. Price: £10.95
The Healing Power of Chlorophyll by Bernard Jensen. Price: £9.95
Drink Your Greens by Mark Stengler. Price: £3.95
Juicing Therapy by Dr Bernard Jensen. Price: £14.95
© Copyright Wholistic Research 2005
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