A little less than a year ago I was a 52 year old, hypertensive, type II diabetic. Although my high blood pressure was well controlled with two antihypertensive medications, my blood sugar had been creeping higher and higher. Despite taking another two medications for my diabetes, my fasting blood sugars were averaging in the 130′s and 140′s. I thought the dreaded insulin syringe, my father’s scourge, was in my future.

I’m a Nurse Practitioner. I knew my life expectancy was seven years less because of my diabetes than it would otherwise be. Just because of diabetes I had the same risk of having a heart attack as someone who had already had one heart attack. As a male, 5’8″ and 170 lbs I didn’t really look fat. My BMI just made it into the overweight range. I almost never ate concentrated sweets. I jogged about five miles, three times a week. It seemed kind of unfair.

On the other hand, I pigged out on pizza, steaks and pasta. More and more I would find myself eating until I was so full I was uncomfortable. I was starting to realize I was not in control of my diet and, in a sense, my life.

I never even tried to go on a diet because I simply could not tolerate being hungry. If losing weight meant being hungry, it just would never happen. I was stuck. But there was a bright spot. My daughter Nicole is vegan. She introduced me to excellent vegan food, allowing me to experience the complexity and variety of plant based foods, which just blows away anything that comes from an animal. Hmm… Then she introduced me to my first green smoothie. That did it! I knew right away that I could enjoy that taste every day. And since that day that’s exactly what I’ve done, every day.

Interestingly, the green smoothies made it possible for me to become vegan. I simply didn’t need the starches and the fat to feel satisfied! I found GetRealGetRaw and other web sites and books. I started doing the research and learning the things that we medical professionals don’t learn in school. I came to realize that carbohydrates in the form of bread and pasta are addictive-the more you eat, the more you want. They are so nutrient poor that you have to get stuffed to feel satisfied.

The fruits, and especially the leafy greens in my smoothie satisfied my body’s nutrient needs, eliminating my carb craving. Also, my tastes changed. Instead of craving animal fat and pasta, now it’s freshness that turns me on. It’s hard to describe the sensation of freshness. You know it when you experience it.

At first I was skeptical when I began to hear claims that diabetes could be reversed by a raw diet, although I saw the logic of a raw diet for diabetes. One of the most important keys to reversing diabetes is to eliminate anything made from flour from your diet. My research showed that a raw diet is probably the best one for diabetes.

But I also adopted this diet because it tasted good and made me feel good. And I started to lose weight without trying. As a vegan, approximately 50% raw, I lost about 1-2 pounds per week. I never experienced any of the detox symptoms that some people have described.

I decided to set a weight goal of 145 lbs. I reached that goal after about five months. But well before that I was able to get off all four of my medications for the first time in the six years since my diagnosis. Losing 25 pounds was great, but reversing diabetes and hypertension, that’s priceless.

With fasting blood sugars in the 90′s and a systolic blood pressure around 110 I’m doing far better than I ever did on medications. I haven’t been at this weight since my early twenties.

I’m amazed when I think how I created my own illness over a period of thirty years, over the course of my whole life, really. Despite my training, or perhaps because of it, I blamed my illness on my genes. I wasn’t that fat, I didn’t eat sweets and I exercised vigorously. What else could it be? Yeah, right.

Now I like to think I’m earning back at least a few years of healthy life expectancy. It feels good, really good!

Keep it up Lisa. Spread the word. You and Nicole helped me change my life, and I thank you both with all my heart.

My goodness, what a difference a year can make. Oh, I am the same Bob Miller, still Daddy of the same daughters etc., but I have now gained (or loss) a year. At age 90, I have now lost an additional 26 pounds-that’s right, a total of 35 overweight pounds. But there is lots more to tell, besides the significant, and very welcome, downsizing. I am getting used to the “You look Wonderful” remarks. Fact is-they are right. What can I say? But that is not what I want to Crow about.

In the Spring, my doctor took me off (after countless years) my Metamucil. Said I didn’t need it. A few months later, he stopped my Purple Pill, after taking many years following Tums by the box full (Alleluia, never another heartburn). He cut one of my blood pressure pills in half, and then shortly thereafter, cut that half in half again. Bottom-line, I am down to my Celebrex for arthritis and the remaining blood pressure medicine. Almost forgot one baby aspirin.

You’ll note that my letter a year ago, understandably talked about me being somewhat cynical. Not anymore. My cholesterol is 116, my blood pressure, heart beat, lungs, thyroid, liver,: and the rest of those goodies, every one of them, within their target limits. Dr. says I am the healthiest ninety-year-old patient he has. I was so elated, I forgot to ask him if I was the only one he had. I told him I had a smoothie for breakfast, one for lunch with part of a sandwich, and my regular meal with a glass of wine in the evening. I asked him if that was the formula that was making me so healthy. He said he did not know, and frankly did not too much care, but for me to keep on doing exactly the same thing. And I am, and intend to continue. I have no reason to change. I finally got used to Green (that wasn’t easy),now like them very much and miss them when I travel.

All reasonable people could easily agree that the foregoing recited benefits should be much more than enough to induce the most cynical to Jump on Board. But in my case, in addition to getting up and moving around a lot more sprightly (to see where I really spend my time, check web site www.Millersvets.com) I have one other item, which to me is HUGE. I have been getting up in the night for bathroom visits at least one time, frequently two times and occasionally three times each night. This pattern persisted for probably 60 years or more. For most of those years I have routinely taken one over the counter sleeping pill when I go to bed, and lay out a second one to help me go back to sleep after a bathroom visit. You will never guess, but for the last three or four months, I have never taken the second pill-I sleep all night long. What has caused that fantastic phenomenon? Who cares? It is simply a fact.

If I did not mention it in my first letter, I ride the bike with the moving handle bars every morning for 12 minutes, been doing that for more than 40 years. I have added 4 to 5 minutes additional on the Rebounder(mini trampoline with a bar). On balance, it makes me watch the news every morning. The only way I know to keep healthy with all the bad news being reported 24/7.

Suppose it won’t hurt me to say thanks to my daughter’s for shaming me into the Smoothly Program. Better say thanks to my nurse Eva for keeping me in. She can mix a Smoothie blindfolded. Piece of advise; don’t bet against me writing another letter a year from now.

My name is Renee. I wanted to share with you the impact that green smoothies and the live food lifestyle has had on me. Let me just give you some insight into the kind of girl I was this past year. Last year I was a freshman in high school. I truly was your typical teenager. I was in a constant battle with my parents about every little thing that I could possibly think of. I lied to them to be able to attend high school “parties.” I experimented with drinking and smoking. I was always trying to be in the “cool” clique. I cared extensively about my physical appearance and was never satisfied. I was annoyed easily by my friends and talked about one to another thinking that would solve the problem of the other being annoying in the first place. It did not. I was convinced that I was invincible and could never get hurt. Hurt in the sense that I would never get kidnapped, robbed, or assaulted like my parents always said to be careful about. I went through a cycle of depression and hated everyone. I was involved in sports but only for social status reasons. I was smart but had no care for school. I received straight B’s and B-’s my freshman year and I don’t remember ever studying for one test. I talked in class continuously and always was given negative comments on my report card about being a distraction. My teacher for English was so upset with me that she insisted that I go to get tested for ADD. The test came back negative. I would read an entire book and could not tell you one thing about it except for a vague plot analysis (I also hated reading to begin with). My relationship with my family and also extended family was very weak. I never took interest in any of my other family member’s lives and had at least one fight a day with my sisters. In the summer of 2009 though, all of this was about to change.

I found a website that promoted raw live foods to help clear acne which was starting to slowly plague me. I could never thank that acne enough for appearing when it did, for if it hadn’t, my life would be totally different. So, after this discovery I slowly started to transfer onto the raw diet. By October 19, 2009, I was eating a 100% raw diet. At first, I dropped weight rapidly. I think that every ounce of fat on my body was eliminated within the first month or two. I am 5’6” and was 120 lbs but now am about 112 lbs and my weight never fluctuates. My skin is flawless and so soft that if someone touches my arm or face, they always are in awe and then touch me again. I am happy with my body and wouldn’t change anything about it. I have shunned drinking and smoking, not because of the ads you see on TV, but because of that fact that I truly do not want to harm my body. I never talk about other people now because no one annoys me to give me a reason to. I attend parties but never without talking to my parents before and after about it. I am not worried or feel any need to try to be part of a clique. I dress and act like myself. I am more aware about my surroundings and know how avoid and handle bad situations. I have more focus than I have ever had and am driven to do well in school. I have received grades ranging from 87 to 100 percent. I started taking notes in class, which I had never done before. I am in love with reading and read whenever I don’t have homework. I am currently reading Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. I look forward to getting assigned a paper to write and have become a fantastic writer. My thoughts are much clearer and easier to express through words. I am never tired. I go to sleep at 11 and my body wakes up at 6:00 or 6:30. I love my parents and talk to them everyday. I don’t ever fight with them. My sister and I talk about her 7th grade drama. I don’t stick my nose up at her and call her lame for liking Zac Efron anymore. She shares with me everything. I felt so warm and thankful when being with my whole extended family over winter break. I have higher sports stamina and can easily sprint for a long distance after not running for a month. I am not depressed anymore and sometimes even have outbursts of joy and bliss. I drink a green smoothie everyday and am totally obsessed with them. I drink 40 oz+ every day. I am suddenly interested in history and art, two topics I would have vomited at the thought of taking last year. I am interested in astronomy, ancient cultures, Greek mythology, biology, physics, art history, evolution, and creation. Last year the only interest I had was about whose house I was going to go to that weekend and what boys would be there. I enjoy the outdoors and appreciate the snow. Last year I was ecstatic about the idea of only having to take 4 majors for senior year. Now I am trying to convince my school to let me take 6. Last year I declared myself atheist for the simple reason of rebelling against my parents. Now I am open to all religions and searching for the one best for me. I am constantly enthralled by the skill of language, the comprehension, and the roots being so deeply linked to the culture. I want to travel the world and be involved with helping others experience the mental enlightenment that I have. The world has opened up to me and I am ready to embrace it. I must sound insane for a sixteen-year-old girl, but this is now my mentality about life.

Green smoothies complimented by a raw food life style, has turned my world upside down. When I come home I plan to get my friends involved so they can understand what it truly feels like to be a 100% healthy and happy human being. I like to imagine what it would be like if everyone in the world was in this mental state. There wouldn’t be any murders or rapes, drunk driving crashes, drug smuggling, kidnapping, stealing, deceiving, or lying. Everyone would be at peace because there wouldn’t be any jealously or cruelty. The human race would work harder toward preserving their environment because they would realize that this is their only home. I know that this is a far-fetched idea to happen in my lifetime, but I believe that one day, the posters will changed from “got milk?” to “got green?” I am a whole new person from the girl I was back in June and I hope to change the world with my discovery. I thank you so very much for taking the time to read my experience with raw food and green smoothies and hope that it opened your mind to the possibilities and wonders of just changing your ways of eating.

This is how Green Smoothies have changed my life. While working one day, one of my patients out of the blue asks me if she can ask me a personal question. I was kind of taken back, but said sure. She proceeds to ask me if I want to quit smoking. Of course I want too, but every time I would quit I would gain weight. While talking to her, she lets me know about green smoothies. How they will take away cravings for the cigarettes. She told me the story about her arthritis and something in her eyes really got me excited. She was talking with such passion, that I had to believe her. When I went home, I told my husband and we went out to get started. If you know anything about me, I am not a person to follow trends at all. But for some reason, I really wanted to try this. It made such sense to me.

She told me what to do with the greens, bananas and fruit. She told me to get all organic. Oh and most important a GOOD blender which can handle frozen fruit. My husband and I were on the journey to get all the things we needed.

That weekend we started. We did the mixture and away we go. We started with just in the morning. We would both drink one full glass. But that didn’t last long at all. We then did Morning and Evening. Now we drink it all the time. I make 2 big pitcher of these smoothies and they last about 2 days.

We started this about 6 weeks ago and I have lost 20 lbs, and craving for cigarettes have faded. I still have the habit to smoke, like when I am bored or driving, but the cravings are gone. I have noticed that I won’t smoke all day, and I didn’t even know it. My children have told me ” wow mom, you didn’t smoke all day”. I haven’t yet kicked the habit, but I have cut down to about 5 cigarettes a day, from at least a pack. That is when I am under stress or just bored and start think about a cigarette. The one thing I love about this is all cravings have gone a way. No craving for salt, chocolate, grease, NOTHING! I don’t think about getting that big bowl of Ice cream at night.

I feel great. My hair is healthy, My skin looks good, I have energy (which I never have), my nails are strong, and most of all I am not tired all the time. I stay up at night with my children reading and laughing. Before I would be in bed by 8:30pm, now I am up until at least 10pm doing all the things I would wait to do on the weekends. Like wash and cleaning. Now I have my weekends for the important things in life, like spending it with my family.

My husband also has lost weight. He feels great also. The most impressive result he has got from this, very little heart burn medication. He has a server stomach issues and was on all kinds of strong medication. Well now he doesn’t take them and he feel great. Don’t get me wrong, he does get slight heart burn still, but he wouldn’t be able to move if he didn’t take his medication. He would be so very sick. Now he takes a tums here and there. It is unbelievable. He still doesn’t believe it. He has been on medication since he was 8 yrs old. Now off of it and taking a tums. That is unheard of.

My children are even jumping aboard. I have 18, 11 and 8 year old children. My 18 yr old has weight issues. He scares me to death at times, just due to worrying about his life. He does drink the smoothies, just hasn’t jumped on our wagon full force yet. I always have him taste the smoothies after I make them and he will drink it. But just isn’t convinced YET, My other 2 children they don’t like the color, but like the taste. So they are coming aboard also.

This drink has truly changed my life for the better. I have never felt so good. My mind is clear. My life is my life for once. When I tell people of this, they feel it is a diet. I tell them it is NOT a Diet, it is a CHANGE of LIFE!

I thank my patient every day for changing my life.

My two sisters and I recently spent a week end at the Creative Health Institute in Michigan to get our certifications in Raw Chef 1 food preparation. It was really great to all be together again and to continue our journey. The experience really renewed our commitment to staying on course and taught us several new, critical things. The Institute focuses heavily not only on raw foods, but on living foods. I think we had lost sight of this a bit. They grow their own wheat grass and sprouts on site and add sprouts to nearly every recipe they make. Once I get quality water running in my house, I will begin to grow my own sprouts and eat them every day. Another thing the Institute emphasizes is having good balance in your life through good nutrition, good down time, exercise and good sleep. You need them all to be truly healthy.

Perhaps one of the best take away in preparing raw foods is to not get too caught up in the transitional foods or gourmet raw foods. These foods certainly taste good and tend to mimic the foods that are familiar to us, but they are also the raw foods that are really high in calories. The main ingredient is frequently nuts. I don’t think that this transitional stage is really necessary and that there is a wide range of delicious, raw recipes to choose from to keep this life style interesting and fresh.

We left with lots of great recipes to add more variety to our raw food preparations. There are many delicious dips and dressings that are so easy and quick to make in a good blender. I thought their raw garden burger recipe was tremendous and easy to make and then dehydrate. I am anxious to start working through their cookbook. Bon Appetite!

When my sister Lisa invited Pam and me for a Spa Weekend last February (2009), the farthest thing from my mind was something healthful. On the contrary, I had envisioned the three of us girls laying by a pool with Mai Tai’s in hand, chatting away and catching up while “Miguel” worked on our shoulders. But alas, our sister, Pam, is far to sensible to allow a good opportunity to be squandered. She quickly pinpointed a ‘colonics’ spa not far from where I was living in CA and, because of my reluctance to be too far from home, I found myself agreeing. When she told me the best part was that we could view what was exiting from our colons, I almost turned tail and ran. I didn’t think it could get worse until she told me there was no eating allowed and that a fruit and vegetable fast was required for the entire preceding week. I had just begun to digest that when she topped it off with the ‘No Imbibing’ rule. I quickly phoned Lisa and we conspired to find another spa before Pam could commit us. When neither of us were able to unearth anything else with our limited time allotment, we conceded to go, but with a hidden bottle of booze to help get us through the weekend. (We never cracked the lid!)

We laugh about that now because, a year later, all three of us are COMPLETELY different. Not only do we look utterly fantastic, but we’ve never felt better. The spa experience laid the foundation by educating us on all manner of health issues including the importance of de-toxing, being aware of the PH balance in our bodies, and caring greatly about the foods we choose for nourishment. For me and my husband, Tony, who I quickly recruited to join me in this new lifestyle, the changes have been astounding,

Before changing from what is commonly referred to as the Standard American Diet or SAD, I suffered from arthritis in my knees so badly that I was often on crutches, in braces, or both. I had resigned myself to believing this was an inherited condition and figured I would just have to accept it. I was on medication that helped with the pain but didn’t help with a cure. Tony was on two medications for high cholesterol and high triglycerides and I hated that he had to put such poisonous drugs into his body. When I returned from the spa, we immediately changed our eating to a vegan, raw food diet. I enrolled for a week at the Creative Health Institute where I learned how to prepare food in this manner and, upon my return, began sprouting, soaking, and spiralizing. The results were almost instantaneous. Tony lost 45 pounds. I lost 35 pounds. We both threw our medications away. After about 6 months, Tony had his blood tested and, miracle of miracles, it was in the normal range. As for me, all symptoms of my arthritis disappeared and I was able to walk briskly and even run if I wanted to.

Perhaps the greatest change was that my agoraphobia (my discomfort at leaving home) has melted away and I find myself jumping in the car and going all kinds of places. Unbelievable.

Tony and I started slipping on our raw commitment toward the end of last year, particularly when the holidays hit. We continued a vegetarian diet but started eating some cooked rice and vegetables and even an occasional egg. It didn’t take long to start feeling sluggish and we both gained between 5 and 10 pounds. Worse, my joints started hurting again and Tony’s latest blood test showed a rise again in both the cholesterol and triglycerides. We recommitted to 100% raw as our New Year’s Resolution and we felt great again almost immediately.

Pam, Lisa and I just returned from another girls power weekend, this time back to Creative Health Institute in Michigan where I had been a year ago learning to prepare raw food dishes. I really wanted Pam and Lisa to experience CHI and we left as certified raw chefs. More importantly was our renewed understanding of the role ‘living’ foods play in our diets. Living foods are any sprouted food and are called ‘living’ because they are actually alive at the moment on ingestion. Things like alfalfa sprouts, sprouted almonds, quinoa, mung beans and other beans, nuts and seeds do your body a WORLD of good. www.sproutpeople.com is my new favorite web site!!!

While Tony and I aspire to 100% raw right now, that can be hard to sustain over the long term so if we eat a cooked vegan meal from time to time, we won’t beat ourselves up over it. The important thing is that we’re flexible and everyone should be. Remember that we are all different and any percentage of raw foods you can add to your diet will enhance your health.