Caryn Hartglass, Opening Show

Share

caryn1bThis is the premiere episode of It’s All About Food.

TRANSCRIPTION:

Hi, I’m Caryn Hartglass, and what this show is about, is vegetarianism, and I will be talking about many aspects of the plant-based diet, and how it affects not only our health, but the health of our home planet Earth. So thanks for joining me today.

I want to tell you a little bit about myself. I’d been a vegetarian for more than three decades now. And originally I was a teenager, and I decided I really didn’t want to harm animals. And since that time, I’ve learned a great deal about a plant-based diet. And one of the things that I’ve discovered in the more than thirty years that I’ve been a vegetarian is so much has changed for the positive. For example, when I first started, there were very little things that I could purchase in a store. People didn’t know very much about it, and know most of our supermarkets are filled with lots of healthy plant based foods and alternatives. Certainly, you can go to the produce section, but the frozen foods section, there’s lots of alternative foods to take the place of animal foods, meat, dairy, fish, eggs. So let’s start with “What is a vegetarian?” A vegetarian is someone who abstains from the eating of flesh, it’s a diet. And, I can’t help but think of the movie “My Greek Wedding” where Andrea Martin says, “ What! You don’t eat meat? That’s okay, I’ll serve lamb.” Many people aren’t totally familiar with what a vegetarian is, so when you tell them you want to adopt a vegetarian diet or you’re eating vegetarian, they think they can serve you chicken or fish, but vegetarians do not eat any flesh, and that includes chicken, fish, red meat, lamb. Vegetarian is a diet. Now there’s something else called vegan or veganism. That’s more of a philosophy. It’s not just a diet. What vegans try to do is avoid at all possible ways animal products, and to reduce the animal suffering that goes on in the world. So, vegans don’t eat any animals foods at all, not just animals that have been killed, but food that comes from animals. So that includes meat, chicken, fish, but also, eggs, dairy, honey. And vegans will not wear animals products on their bodies. So that means vegans don’t wear wool or leather, silk. And vegans try to, at all possible; use their personal products that don’t contain animal products. You’d be really surprised at what is in your soaps, shampoos, dishwashing products. Animals are used in so many of the different products that we used today. But we’re going to talk about the plant based diet, and how it affects everything in life. Our food choices affect not only our health, but the health of the planet, and it’s really a powerful thing. At every meal, if you’re doing something, that is not only good for your own health, the health of your family, but the health of the planet. One of the things I want to do is inspire you to do the best things you can for yourself. You know many people expect the government to make changes for us. They expect the government to pretty much decide what’s going to be in our supermarkets and schools. And we depend on the USDA and the FDA to make decisions for us, but the government isn’t really the one who’s making our decisions. It’s ourselves, and if we want to live a healthier, happier lifestyle it’s up to use to make the changes and to incorporate the things that are important to our lives, and that includes a healthy diet. One of the things I wanted to talk about today is protein. So when somebody become a vegetarian, one of the first things we always hear, and I’ve heard it for over thirty years now, it’s “Where do you get your protein?” We all seem to be very obsessed of the idea of protein. And what’s interesting about it that most of us know, really, very little about nutrition. But we do know about this thing called “protein” and that we have to get enough of it. What happens is that we’ve all kind of been a bit programmed over the years. Through government, through the media, through some of the scientific studies that have been done, that we have to get enough protein. The fact is, that in America, most Americans get too much protein, and it is detrimental to our health when we get too much. You know too much of a good thing is not always a good thing. So I want to talk a little about protein. The interesting thing is that you can get protein, certainly from meat and dairy, but you can also get it from all plant foods. I’m going to say that again there is protein in all plant foods. And it’s a very high-quality protein. The difference is that in animal protein you’re getting a lot of things that you don’t want. You’re going to get saturated fat, cholesterol. And there are things that you don’t get. You don’t get fiber and you don’t get vital chemicals, antioxidants. A whole host of nutrients that are necessary for life, and a healthy life. In plant-based proteins, you’re going to get a wide variety of nutrients, not just protein. And it’s a higher quality protein and why do I say that? The animal protein tends to create an acidic environment in your body. And if you know anything about acidity and alkalinity, our bodies are mostly water, and we maintain what’s called a neutral pH. Not too acidic and not too alkaline. And the animal protein tends to make things more acidic, and so the body, which is brilliant and does a lot of wonderful things on its own, will balance that and try to neutralize the acidity, and it does that with calcium. And if it doesn’t get enough calcium from your blood it will go to the bones. And so what happens with a diet that is high in animal based protein, is that you lose a lot of calcium. And what does that lead to? Well, the weakening of the bones, osteoporosis. And plant-based protein is not acidic like animal based protein, so you don’t really see that problem. In addition, plant-based proteins don’t come with the saturated fat and cholesterol that animal based proteins do. And what is saturated fat do? It coats your arteries. And over time as your arteries become more and more coated with saturated fat, it gets harder for you blood to move around your body. And what happens? You develop heart disease, high blood pressure, strokes. A whole host of chronic ailments. And this isn’t necessary. Heart disease? Most cases of heart disease are reversible and preventable. And people don’t realize that. The plant-based protein doesn’t come with all of that saturated fat and cholesterol. It comes with fiber, and fiber, of course, acts like a toothbrush in some ways. And it brings out the toxins and unnecessary things that your body doesn’t use. And there are also many many vital chemicals, antioxidants, all kind of things that help boost your immune system. So plant-based protein is really the way to go. Now, I know some people are saying “But can I get enough protein? How do I get enough protein from vegetables?” And the interesting thing is that it’s so easy. You really don’t even have to think about it. If you surround your diet with healthy, fresh fruit, vegetable, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds; the variety of your plate should consist of colorful vegetables. You’re going to get enough protein without even thinking about it. For example, one of my favorite doctors and favorite experts on nutrition is Doctor Joe Fuhrman. And he wrote a book called “Eat to Live,” and I refer to it all the time. And if anyone wants to pick up a great book on nutrition, this is my recommendation. Eat to Live. And I’m looking at a table of protein content of common foods. And it shows here that one cup of frozen broccoli gives you almost six grams of protein for fifty-two calories. And a burger king cheeseburger gives you eighteen grams for three hundred and fifty calories. So let me even that out. So if I have three cups of frozen broccoli that will give about the same amount of protein. But the broccoli will give me a hundred and fifty-six calories, and the Burger King is three hundred and fifty calories. So I’m getting a lot more bang, nutritional bang, for my calorie buck when I’m eating the broccoli versus the burger. I get less than half of the calories give me the protein that I need. Okay, so you’re saying “Well I don’t want to eat three cups of broccoli.” No, you don’t have to. You can, certainly. I love broccoli, I eat a lot of it. But you can vary the vegetable. There are many vegetables that are high in protein and low in calories to give you a wide variety of taste and flavor and nutrition with fewer calories, but you’re getting the protein that you need. Men and women need somewhere between, it really varies between maybe forty and fifty grams of protein per day, and it’s really not hard to do that on a vegetarian or vegetable plant-based diet. Nutrition, nutrition is really a very complex subject. I’m looking at a book here called Staying Healthy with Nutrition: The Complete Guide to Diet and Nutritional Medicine and this book is a large book. And it’s over, it’s almost a thousand pages, and it’s in fine print. There’s a lot of information here. A lot of us are confused about nutrition because we hear so many different things on television, radio, and newspaper. We’re always hearing these different sound bites, and we’re never getting the complete picture. I recognize that it can be very very overwhelming. And often we go to our doctors for help, and our doctors, unfortunately, they’ve been educated to know a lot of things, but one thing most of them don’t know much about is nutrition. But here’s the good news, nutrition is complicated, but healthy eating is not. Eating healthfully is easy you don’t have to think about much. You don’t have to think about counting grams of protein. You don’t have to think about how much calcium I’m getting. Do I need to supplement this and that? It’s really very simple. So, here’s what you need to do. Your diet should consist of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds. The best place to get most of your food is from the produce section of the supermarket, or even better the local farmer’s market. But, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds. Fresh, locally grown, organic, those are great things. And what you want to stay away from, I always think of Jack Lalaine when I say this, he says, “If man made it, don’t eat it.” It’s very simple. The stuff that comes in boxes, you really need to pay attention to them because a lot of them contain all kinds of things we don’t need. And they’re lacking in a lot of essential nutrients, but they’re filled with calories. So you get what’s called “empty calories” or near empty calories. The things you want to really look out for that you never want to consume are high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils; certainly, you want to avoid, artificial colors, flavors, preservatives. We don’t need any of those things. And if you’re reading a label, and you don’t understand what it is, I don’t think you want to put it in your body. Now, you might think that a vegetarian diet or eating more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds and not getting it from a box is difficult. Because we’ve been made to believe through commercials, the media that we need more convenience in our life. Things need to be fast. Things need to be quick and easy, and what needs to happen, if you really want to do the best thing for you, the best thing for your family, the best thing for your planet, is to shift the priorities and to recognize what’s really important. And to take joy from doing the things that are going to make you thrive, make you well, keep you well, keep you and your family strong and full of energy. And so it’s really not about how I can save time or I don’t want to get involved with making a meal that takes a lot of time. Even still it’s not difficult that take a short amount of preparation. The idea is that it’s so important to get fresh fruits and vegetables into your meals and to stop relying on all of the highly processed foods. And it’s really not that much more expensive to eat well. In fact, it may not be more expensive if you take your grocery book and stop buying the things that give you empty nutrition, empty calories. The chips, the soft drinks, and move that over to organic locally grown fruits and vegetables, you can have a wide variety of very wonderful tasty foods. I was reading the other day in the New York Times; I’m not sure how many of you caught this article. It’s called “Is a food revolution now in season.” And I enjoyed this article. There are a lot of positive things here. So you many have heard of how the White House now is going to be growing an organic garden, and Michelle Obama was responsible for getting this started. The Obama administration is certainly very inspiring and we’re all very hopeful of all the changes that are going to be made in order to improve our economy and our lifestyle. But again, I’m going to say that your life is only going to change by the changes you make. You can’t depend on anyone else to improve your own life and your lifestyle. It’s really up to you. But what I wanted to talk about in this article, a number of things. It’s certainly really important to be growing organically produced food and it’s good that our government is becoming more aware of it. And hopefully, some of the policies will be changed to support organically grown food. And have less support or remove the support for the conventionally grown food with pesticides. But there’s something that was missed in this article. Some, I’m looking for it here. Someone mentioned that it’s not possible for all of us to eat organically. That it’s not possible for us to, here it is. “We think there’s a place for organic, but don’t think we can feed ourselves and the world with organic” says Rick Tolman, Chief executive of the National Corn Growers Association. “It’s not as productive, more labor intensive, and tends to be more expensive.” And I really disagree with that on so many levels. What’s happening now with agribusiness today is most of the cereal products we grow, corn, soy, alfalfa, are used to feed animals. They’re used to feed animals to feed people. So much of the agriculture today used to feed animals to feed people is very inefficient. We could grow a lot less of a lot more diverse, healthy, organic fruits and vegetables. Use a lot less land and feed the same amount of people. And feed them better. And then we would have some leftover land to either do some rotation of growing. Which is really important to keep the soil healthy is to rotate the land and not stress it out year after year after year. And we can also have some wildlife reserve, some parks. So we’re really not using our land efficiently or effectively. And this affects us in so many ways. The soil is being so depleted that at some point, people say in a matter of a decade or so, the soil is just going to blow away, and there’s not going to be any topsoil to grow in. And so what we’re doing now in order to get food to grow it to add a lot of petrochemical based fertilizers, and herbicides and pesticides. And a lot of this is concentrated in you conventional foods. In the food that are grown conventionally and also the animals eat some of those foods, and then you get a concentrated dose of those pesticides and toxic materials that you may eat. And so saying that organic agriculture is more expensive or not as productive, there are a lot of studies now that show that organic agriculture will yield as good or better. Because one thing you need to take into consideration is the yield of food over time. And food that’s been heavily treated with pesticides and fertilizers and are growing the same thing year after year after year. They’re going to be unusable. But with organic agriculture, the idea is to work with nature, and keep the soil rich, keep the soil alive. By putting pesticides and herbicides into the soil, the soil is dead. We need the bacteria and bugs and birds and everything surrounding the food that we eat in order for it to be rich with nutrients and healthy. And so it is possible for us to have more sustainable agriculture grow a more diverse range of food, but it’s really up to you. Certainly, the government is going to be doing some things. Changing the laws that are involved with subsidies. But it’s really up to you. You need to speak with your dollar. And by supporting organic foods, and buying more fresh fruits and vegetables, supporting your local farmer, that’s your statement. That’s your support of moving toward a healthier lifestyle for you, your family, and all around us. If we stop buying the foods that aren’t healthy for us, if we stop buying the foods that aren’t healthy for this planet, they won’t be made anymore. So really the responsibility is on your shoulder. And you may say “Oh no, I would eat more vegetables or I would be a vegetarian if it was easier, if it was more available.” It’s really up to you and it will become easier and more available as more people get involved and do what’s best for you what’s best for the family, what’s best for the planet. So you don’t have to buy everything organic. I know that there are some foods that are really a lot more expensive. What you want to look for is food that is locally grown, fresh, and if it’s reasonable, certainly, buy it organic. One thing that you’ll notice, organic foods taste better. There is nothing like an organic apple with no wax on it. That’s fresh and juicy and crunchy. I find that, well I rarely eat an apple that isn’t organic, but when I do, they tend to be pasty, pithy, and they have that horrible wax on the outside. Eating should be such a joyful, enjoyable experience. And we need to eat quality food.

When you move toward a vegetarian diet, eating more healthy fruits and vegetables. It really should be an enjoyable experience. I love eating. I love talking about food. That’s all I do, and I love the food that I eat. There’s so much variety. I think I eat a more varied diet than most people. There’s always some new thing that’s coming in season. If it seems challenging, like a shift too difficult to make, there are so many resources that are available today.

It’s really not difficult, it just requires the desire. Now, another thing about animal agriculture. I keep saying you want to do the best for your health, the health of your family, the health of the planet. What does the planet have to do with eating vegetables? As I mentioned before, animal agriculture requires the growing of a lot of plant foods: corn, soy, alfalfa, and we use a lot of pesticides. We use a lot of water to grow those foods. A lot of that water has to be pumped in from aquifers underground. Some of them were created in the Ice Age and we’re pumping and draining those aquifers very quickly now to irrigate. So, we’re using a lot of water. Some of that water is getting polluted from the pesticides and herbicides that are in the soil. So, we’re doing a considerable amount of using up resources and polluting our space. In addition, there’s been a lot of talk about global warming, and the methane gas that is emitted by our agricultural livestock, such as, cows. Cows emit a tremendous amount of methane gas. It may not seem like a lot from one cow, but when you have millions of them, they put out an awful lot. Methane gas is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and has a tremendous effect on climate change. So, if we want to help make a significant difference in our environment, the easiest thing we can do, and have a tremendous impact today is to reduce or eliminate the meat that we eat. Certainly, to have an effect on global warming, we are going to need to improve our technology. We are going to need to improve the efficiency of our cars, modes of transportation, and factories. That’s all happening, and we will come up with different technologies that are more efficient and gentler on the planet, but it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of money. It’s not going to happen today. But what can happen today and have a significant effect on reducing climate change or reducing global warming is if all of us reduce the animal products, meat and dairy, that we eat. If you don’t want to become a vegetarian, what we can all do is at least reduce our consumption by 20%. If we reduced the amount of meat we ate by 20% that would make an enormous, enormous difference.

We make a lot of great recipes using oatmeal. Oatmeal is great. Oatmeal is relatively inexpensive and very easy to use and a lot of people like it. It’s great as a cold cereal; it’s great as a hot cereal. You can even make some more sophisticated dessert-like food. So, the choices are great with a vegetarian diet. For example, let’s talk about the whole grains: brown rice, quinoa, millet, and then there’s rye, barley, oats, and buckwheat- which isn’t exactly a grain, but we treat it like other grains. There’s a wide variety of beans, and beans are a great food. They’re very inexpensive. They make you feel satisfied and full, and they are full of great nutrition. It’s great to eat a small amount of beans every day. They’re great cooked, seasoned, spiced. They’re good on salad. How many different beans do we have? There are red beans, black beans, pink beans, white beans, pinto beans, lentils, split peas, yellow split peas, and green split peas. There are really a tremendous variety. They all have a slightly different tastes. With all kinds of wonderful herbs and spices, you can do amazing things with them.

Fruits, fruits are the perfect dessert and a really wonderful food. We don’t want to eat a lot of fruit; we want to keep our diet varied, but fruit really hits the spot. It’s great in the morning, and it’s great just to take care of that sweet tooth you may have after lunch and dinner. There are so many wonderful fruits, and we’re fortunate now in this global world, where we can have so many different fruits; some of them that aren’t native to our particular region. Apples are always great and pears, oranges (there are so many different kinds of oranges), tangerines, clementines, grapefruits, grapes (my mouth is watering just thinking about them), tropical fruits, mangoes, papaya, bananas. There are so many wonderful foods. Now, some of you that might be considering transitioning to a vegetarian diet will get to know some of what we call the mean analogs, and there’s a lot of interesting foods out there that have a look and feel of some of the meat products. This is actually kind of an ancient process that the Buddhists originated making soy-based and wheat gluten-based foods that have the look and feel of beef, chicken, or pork. Here in New York City, we have access to a lot of things, especially in China Town. There are a number of restaurants that use them. They’re great to help you transition, especially if you are missing the taste of meat or some sort of satisfaction that you would get from them. It’s really great to transition with some of these, but you have to keep in mind that they are processed, and they may contain a lot of salt and sodium and are best to be used sparingly in small amounts. Some of them are really, really tasty and amazing. I can’t stress enough the importance of dark, leafy green vegetables. I mentioned before the amounts of protein that you get in broccoli versus meat. When you think about green vegetables, what are they made of? Actually, all plant foods are of protein, carbohydrate, and fat. Those leafy green vegetables, what are they made of? They’re not made of mostly fat, and they’re not made of mostly carbohydrates. They’re made of mostly protein. People don’t realize. Getting back to protein, a great source, and my favorite source, is dark, leafy, green vegetables. They’re low in calorie and high in so many nutrients. This is where we really want to focus our diet: dark, leafy, green vegetables. That means lots of green salad, and we should start our meals, lunch and dinner, always with a green salad. Some people may say, “I just can’t get full on a salad; it’s just not enough”. Well, eat a big salad. Your salad needs to be huge, not just a few pieces on a small plate. Fill your bowl with a lot of leafy, green vegetables: romaine, (I love arugula) and the mesclun greens are very nice. Sometimes, I use Napa cabbage, great, green, and it’s soft enough so you can eat it raw in a salad. Then you can make your salads more interesting by adding other things to it: carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers. If you have some leftover brown rice from the night before, you could sprinkle some of that onto your salad; some garbanzo beans. If you make your salads varied, interesting, it’s not hard to fill up on salad, but then supplementing the diet, you want to eat some steamed vegetables. It’s really important to limit the amount of vegetable oil that you use. Vegetable oil is just calories. Calories that you don’t need, and it’s not hard to sauté food with a very minimal amount of oil, or even use water. You can sauté in a variety of things that will help impart some flavor. You can use, if you have some leftover beer or wine, it’s really great to use them to sauté, or sherry. You can be creative, sometimes a variety of different black teas made a very nice thing to sauté in. But it’s important to really think about the oil because there’s about 120 calories in a tablespoon of oil. It goes fast, and it’s really better to eat, or to learn, the tongue can be recalibrated almost, in a way. We’re used to eating a lot of foods that are highly salted and full of fat, and this isn’t healthy. So, when we make a transition and reduce the oil and salt in our diet, in addition to a number of other things, the food may not seem as flavorful. It does take a certain amount of time to adjust to the new foods, but you will. For some people it happens right away, it might take three weeks, or it may take a few months. The tongue does adjust, and you’ll find when you reduce the oil and fat in your food, when you have some food at a restaurant or somewhere where it’s been prepared for you and it has your old level of fat and salt, you’ll find that it’s really unpleasant and too much. So, you will adjust. Being a vegetarian certainly is a change in diet, but it also opens you up. It’s sort of like a door opening to the awareness of other things around you. When you start to realize that you don’t need to kill other animals in order to live and to live well, it starts to bring new awareness about life, the planet, spirituality. It opens up all kind of new things. So, it’s more than a diet, it’s really a lifestyle. Diet is not the only thing that will keep you healthy and happy. There are other factors that are involved. Exercise is very important, and it’s important to get regular exercise. So, that means walking every day or doing something that you like. The point is you need to like what you do, you need to like what you eat. If you’re going to be making any of these lifestyle changes, you need to enjoy it, or you need to know that it’s something that you want to do. Because if you do anything begrudgingly, it’s not going to have a very positive effect. Underneath all of this is our amazing body, which contains somewhere between 50 to a 100 trillion cells. There’s a whole world going on within of us. The messages you give your cells is everything; it’s so important to your health and well-being. While you’re eating, if you’re not happy or at peace with what’s on your plate and what you’re eating, that message is going to go to your cells and they will respond. If the message is negative, the cells will respond negatively. If the message is happy and joyous, your cells will do well and thrive. So, you have to be at peace with what you do, any change that you make. We have a caller.

Peter: Hello?

Caryn: Yes? Who am I speaking with?

Peter: This is Peter from Los Angeles.

Caryn: Hi Peter.

Peter: I have two questions for you. One is, I didn’t realize that vegans, which I consider myself one, but I guess according to your definition I am not because I do eat honey.

Caryn: You know that’s a really good point, and let me tell you this: it doesn’t matter. It’s great that you’re doing what you’re doing. If you eat honey, that’s fine. It’s so small in the grand scheme of things. What you’re doing is great for your health and the planet. The point is, there are these definitions, but it’s really not black and white. It’s really gray. None of us are really vegan. That’s because it’s impossible to avoid killing other living beings. We can step on an ant on the sidewalk and not realize it. There are lots of materials that are used in our refrigerators and in our cars. Everything that we touch, unfortunately, has animals in it. So, you’re doing a great thing. I appreciate the question. I wish I had clarified that earlier. You may want to think about it. Some people call honey bee barf.

Peter: That’s all right with me.

Caryn: I tend to use agave, which is from cactus and it has a very similar taste and texture to honey.

Peter: Yeah, I use that too.

Caryn: You’re doing a great thing for yourself and the planet.

Peter: My second question is really way off base, and I don’t know whether it’s proper, but let me throw it at you anyway. I’m trying to help somebody who has Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Caryn: Oh yes, I just lost a friend.

Peter: And I wondered whether there was anything, if you have a recommendation, where I can go for information. That is, I want to use the alternative approach. If you have any idea, it would be helpful.

Caryn: Sure, that’s a really good question. I had a friend who died recently from that. I tried to do a bit of research and didn’t really come up with anything. So, here’s what I have to say, a number of different things, a low-fat, near-vegan, or vegan diet is going to help and a lot of green juice. I can’t say enough about juicing, and juicing a lot. Some would even say, I get a 16-ounce juice of green juice every day. What is green juice? It’s juice from kale and lots of dark, leafy, green vegetables. You remove the fiber, and you cram all these nutrients into your body. Some would say that they have a gallon of green juice a day, so it’s really important to get high-quality nutrition so that the immune system can work as well as it can. That’s number one. Number two, I was talking about the cells in our body, and the information we send to them, they respond in a certain way. So, meditation and positive affirmations are really critical, especially when we are experiencing a life-threatening illness. That person, if they want to really live, need to be talking to their cells. There’s a lot of information out there. There’s Doctor Bruce Lipton [20:40], who wrote a number of books and has some tapes out there and kind of talks about the science of our cells and how they operate. If we give them the message, every day, that we want to live a long, happy, healthy life, that is going to make a difference. I know because I did it personally. I did not have that particular disease, but a few years ago, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.  There is a very low survival rate with ovarian cancer. I had 3 major surgeries and did some chemotherapy. What I believe really helped me was the green juice and the meditation.

Peter: Thank you so much for taking my call. This line is really bad, so I’m going to hang up now.

Caryn: Sorry about that, and I wish you and your friend the very best. Those were some very great questions, I really appreciate Peter calling in and certainly welcome more of your calls. I can’t tell you enough about meditation, and, as I mentioned, I have a personal experience with it. I wanted to talk, just briefly, about the proof that I have about how meditation works. I was in between some surgeries with my own ovarian cancer, and there’s a blood test, a cancer marker, called CA125. It was after my second surgery, and I was getting ready for my third. I was having these blood tests on a regular basis, and I just started this very intensive meditation program in the morning and in the evenings. Every week, my blood test showed the number of this particular test going down. It went down 30% in one month before my surgery, and the only thing that I was doing differently was meditating. That was the proof to me that my body was getting the message. The message that I wanted to live a long, happy, healthy life, and I wanted to conquer this particular disease challenge. So, meditation is a phenomenal thing, and you really can create your own practice. There are so many different ways to meditate, and you can read about them, you can go on the internet and find out about them. Some people sit quietly and focus on their breathing, and when your mind starts to chatter, as it always will, and it’s okay, you just come back to breathing, focusing on the gentle in and out. Other people, you can buy some CDs and listen to someone who talks you through a variety of images and affirmations. What I like to do, is I created my own affirmations. Things that I wanted to happen that I said over and over and over. You can’t just say it once or twice, you have to say these things hundreds of times so that the chatter in your head finally turns into chatter of things you want to hear, not things you don’t’ want to hear. This is a program on vegetarianism, but as I mentioned, vegetarianism is a lifestyle, not just a diet. It enables you to open up to all the things that are important to your life: health, feeling good, strength, vitality. Being at peace with who you are, what you’re doing, knowing that you’re not contributing to any pain, suffering, pollution, problems, but you’re living a joyful, happy life, and helping the planet and all those around you. So, this has been an hour of vegetarian times, and I’ll be back next Wednesday talking some more about vegetarian lifestyle. I’m looking forward to talking with you again. Thank you.

Transcribed by Alice Jiang, 4/30/2017 and Samantha Webster 5/4/2017.

 

  2 comments for “Caryn Hartglass, Opening Show

  1. So cool to read this Caryn — grateful for the reprint in light of my [still partial] diagnosis. I’m ON IT … the juicing … the affirmations … took out a ton of books and dvds (i.e, The Cure) from the library … Kris Carr … Bruce Lipton … listening to Weil’s Sound Body Sound Mind, Dick Sutphen’s Healing Acceleration self-hypnosis. Even made your Creamy Balsamic Dressing. Feeling more positive. Only thing — the plight of animals is always haunting my psyche.

    • I just posted that show from 2009. It was my first show ever. We started the transcription project about three years ago, getting all the radio shows transcribed. We are caught up with the current shows and I am getting to posting the earliest shows from 2009 now. I am glad to read your message and see that you are on the wellness path.

Leave a Reply to Paula Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *