and he's been in practice for twenty five years in oakland california he is a chiropractor and it has an advanced degree as a chiropractic neurologist he has extensive training in holistic health care and he has been a regular guest on k b s a radio dr otis we'd like to get some the knowledge about how to be more specific when it comes to what we need to do for a health care how to take charge of our health and especially to avoid things like diabetes could you give us some tips on that in terms of what we should and should not do specifically great let's get into nuts and bolts about how to do it and it is you remember last time we were on the show we talk extensively about diabetes and the type of problem it's becoming in society and some of the underlie lying reasons that people get diabetes today let's talk about but what do you do and practically where that whether steps that you do and so we'll talk about practices that will help keep us healthy throughout our life to really is and it takes a practice it takes how we live our life the choices we make day to day makes all the difference in our long term health much more than the medication that we take or whatever it's really the food we eat the exercise that we get the amount of rest that we get the you know how we manage our emotional stress all of those things are spiritual orientation all of those things help us navigate life in a way that promotes a healthy can make can can really promote our health and so so let's talk some nuts and bolts and we'll let's take it one they help support a good healthy digestive system they will help protect us from cancer and heart disease and diabetes and it is a the list goes on and on and on the vegetable what is the better play to cook them i would start steaming i'm ok to slightly steam them or underneath the steam or put a cover on the pan put it put your vegetables inside the steamer so then the water starts to boil and then the vessels available to steam cooks a vegetable so that's really the best way to co nice to own yes oh yes yes yes yes yes and speaking of salads i would suggest salads are great and i would suggest having avoid iceberg it doesn't iceberg lettuce doesn't have as much nutritional value as the red or or  ideal organic are gannett is ideal because there's less pesticides and the organic vegetable they have two to five times the nutrient value of the other rest of other non organic vegetables so you're getting more you pay more for em but you get more nutritional value again like two to five times more mineral content in in the organic vegetables versus the other ones and most people say they taste better too so so so if you can organic vegetables and there's a whole ecological reason that this helpful for our planet in our environment that is then i would like to promote it as well became more fruits of the it work that's right that's right and this it's really right and here's another general kind of concept you can eat vegetables for breakfast there's no rule against vegetables for breakfast in fact i do almost every morning greek and and in general i recommend eat fewer grains and more vegetables for breakfast for breakfast lunch and dinner just do a lot of people do it's very common and i think it's ten to fifteen percent of population and it can be very significant and yeah i know i could tell you all kinds of stories about people who were having seizures or were it's really serious health problems they may got off the grains are or instead and it's nice to have some starch with meals so if you like if you're not going to have pasta it might be nice to have some kind of squash and one squash that i like a lot is called spaghetti squash and this is named because it when you cook it it comes out in little threads that are very much like spaghetti now being that peel this is the way the way that there's several ways to cook it one is you can just cut it in half and they make it in the oven  and ideally one way to do it is to put about an inch of water in the bottom of a pan cut this in half take the seeds out and put this face down and let it cook for about an hour forty five minutes to an hour and you know when it's done and you go in the in it's delicious other kinds there are a number of number of squashes acorn squash kombucha squash butternut squash they're all you can bake them steam them you can little bit about some people why why to reduce the grains you know why and what and there's a common wisdom right now that i disagree with that says eat a lot of complex carbohydrates including  i disagree with that for several different reasons this one is grains can well they do to a certain extent interfere with the absorption of other nutrients so there are chemicals called fight minerals in the first place another potential problem with grains is that they can cause are our stimulate auto immune diseases where our body starts to attack itself and then it also people can get allergic to them seeds of a grass that then we harvest and now if you want if you are going to have grains there are a couple that i like that i would recommend and they have funny sounding of hours for twelve hours before you cook them so you're starting to sprout them and you know how people talk about like  there you've transformed the grain into a growing plant and in that transformation you break the plant has a lot of ns out what are called enzyme inhibitors so here's this little seed that the grain is a are they don't have a lot of sugar and their diets yeah you know and they're you know there's a one city it really and that they did a story on it and the people lived high up in the mountains and there was they never had a dentist in the town born with their teeth died with their teeth in their back they never lost teeth they were healthy and all the age old this was their diet they made minestrone soup with the vegetable soups different kind of vegetable soup and then they had they had the salads i think or something and there were homemade ones and they little for that they never had full solid meals and i guess their bodies were used to that but they were healthy and they lived a looked at what happens with a cavity xenos i looked at what happened with people's jaw and your actual structure right and he noticed that in traditional societies where there wasn't a lot of the grains that were never being you know that was one of the major differences and people had a very well wider palate and their teeth were more even and came together in a more healthy way than happens in most most societies western societies which means th now what about sugar and sweeteners great great question so remember this reminds me of our talk last week and we talked about water does this is a little academic and technical but in order to stay healthy  blood sugar much we're training our body to burn sugar instead so generally with sugar be careful really limited is the is the basic the basic suggestion the average person in this country eats i think it's one hundred thirty six pounds of sugar each year and that's like that this is much that way then is that a lot of love a lot of sugar and it's it's state taking a toll with obesity with diabetes our teeth to have all of that and now sugar isn't always called sugar sometimes it's called so i have a few names here fruit  standalone yes not not like a candy bar in the afternoon or not like dates in the afternoon are just a drink of juice in the afternoon had something else more substantial with it is that easier on your sugar regulating it won't raise your blood sugar so fast it wants to cause a surge of insulin it won't stress your adrenals mans and your pancreas it will help keep your blood sugar more even now eating it before or after the meal which one is better if you can have sweet idea right with  special recommendation of void artificial sweeteners oh yeah just a don't get don't you know you don't like the diet the diet sodas and that kind of stuff it's true they don't have the calories in it but they do have enough to stand on some people get hypoglycemic on them and invite what that means a technical word that means that our blood sugar is dropping and you know people might get shaky if you feel better when up and you feel better and for people in that category to specially important to not skip a meal they have three to five small meals a day and eat something like some kind of snack every three hours two to three hours and and it's especially with meals sometimes if there's a you know you go to a restaurant now bring out i glass of water with ice and and the when you drink that cold water with a meal the cold causes your stomach the some people don't handle the nitrates and why some people so so i'm saying that these are good and that's true for most people and i guess the basic thing that i would suggest to our viewers is listen to your body right it seems as though we will need to wrap up or should i really appreciate what you've said because water sounds like it's very very important it's one of the most of us but it's a really important thing and there we can pick this up next week right thank you so much so we can take charge of