Need Pain Relief In St. Charles IL? Eat Your Greens!

Vesta, my mother, said eat your vegetables. What was true 50 years ago is true today.

Unfortunately, we are headed the wrong way. Our consumption of healthy food has worsened for decades. 90% of Americans fall short and suffer. The result, more pain and poorer health.

The current Federal Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend 2 cups of fruit and 2.5 cups of vegetables in our daily diet. Sadly, Americans eat fruit once per day and vegetables 1.7 times per day. That is less than half what it takes to be healthy.

All my new patients in St. Charles IL come in with pain. As part of our Rapid Recovery Difference, proper nutrition is essential to heal and become pain free. I discuss their daily intake and recommend they all increase the fruits and vegetables in their diets. When they do, they get better faster and stay better longer.

The Standard American Diet is SAD. Lots of pasta, bread, white potatoes, tortillas, and sugar. These are all classified as carbs (carbohydrates). Carbs are either sugar or things that break down quickly into sugar as we digest them. This type of diet increases swelling all over our bodies and causes an increase in pain and a decrease in health. The result of a high carb diet is pain and disease. Research shows us that all pain, injury, and disease is caused and aggravated by this high carb consumption.

Less Pain, better health in St. Charles IL with vegetables

Eat to live, don't live to eat. Try something new. Check out this article in Blue Zones. The people in the Blue Zones of the world eat more vegetables, around eleven helping each day. They live longer, have substantially less disease, and need far less need for medication than Americans.

Dispelling common misconceptions before we proceed.

• Corn is a grain, not a vegetable.
• Sweet potatoes are healthy, white potatoes are not.
• Fruit juice is full of sugar and lacks most of the fiber benefits from eating the fruit.
• Chew your food. Good digestion starts with enzymes in your saliva. Vesta said chew each bite 25 times.

Make change fun. Try something new. If you do not like that, think of vegetables as your medicine. You do not like the taste but take them anyway.

Baby step it to better health. Start by loading up on the vegetables you already like to eat. Expand this each time you go to the store. Buy something new the next time you are at the grocery store and Google a few recipes you can make. Create something yummy.

Some of my favorite ways to eat my veggies:

Roasted Autumn Vegetable Medley. Change out whatever vegetables you like. Some of my favorites are sweet potatoes, turnips, and parsnips.

https://www.mccormick.com/recipes/salads-sides/roasted-autumn-vegetable-medley

Cauliflower soup, my wife's favorite.

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/food-recipes/easy/a28999653/keto-cauliflower-soup-recipe/

Sweet potato with palm sugar. Easy peasy - bake the potato, split it open, add butter, and palm sugar. Remember, white potatoes are not healthy. Despite their name, sweet potatoes are good for you. If you have not had palm sugar before, give it a try. It is healthier than brown sugar and tastes just like it.