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more. Want better quality family time? Hang out together, play together, and talk amongst yourselves. Need to reconnect with old friends? Invite them over for a meal, laugh, and share your life a little. Everyone is looking for extra hours in the day, but how many hours do we spend in front of the television, on the phone, or staring at our laptops? By changing your food, you can change your life. You can ease digestion, encourage weight loss, aid elimination, reduce stress, and get back to Earth.
    As in, “Earth to Jen! Are you there, Jen?”
    I have been completely guilty of using every single one of the following bandage solutions in the past, but not anymore. Happily, I got back to Earth. (Yay!) You can too. This next list is my old assembly of quick fixes:
Diet pills or shakes for weight loss
Laxatives & stool softeners to induce bowel movements
Various over-the-counter meds to halt diarrhea
Sleeping pills to fall and stay asleep
Various vitamin, mineral, and herbal supplements
Hemorrhoid cream to banish BFFs
Yeast infection medication to control sugary yeast issues in the nether-regions
    All of these crutches can be completely eliminated by adopting a clean, whole, plant-based diet. They exist to mask symptoms and/or provide a temporary solution to a (usually) recurrent problem. None of these items are necessary to take for longer than a couple of days, and only in dire situations. Luckily, everything that they promise to solve for you, I guarantee that good, whole, thoughtful food can do significantly better. If you are going to eat the way that I outline later on in this book, you will never have a need for any of these things ever again. Food becomes your complete nourishment, and takes care of you in every single way. It’s likebeing wrapped up in a warm blanket and rocked to sleep at night. You feel calm, happy, cozy, and in tune with your body. It’s crazy and awesome, and it’s about time.
The Winds of Change
    “If Americans stopped overeating, stopped eating unhealthy foods, and instead ate more foods with higher nutrient densities and cancer-protective properties, we could have a more affordable, sustainable, and effective healthcare system.” 69
    —John Robbins, No Happy Cows
    Dr. Dean Ornish is the perfect example of how we have the power to change the conventional treatment of chronic disease. He is president and founder of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California, as well as Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. 70 For more than thirty years, he has worked to systematically to prove that diet and lifestyle directly contribute to coronary heart disease, diabetes, obesity, hypertension, and other western diseases. His philosophy includes adopting a healthy, whole food, plant-based diet coupled with stress reducing activities, such as yoga and meditation. Not only has Dr. Ornish been able to prove his theories about reducing the above diseases through diet; he has also proven that you can reverse them. His plan is so successful that various medical insurance companies in the United States, including Medicare, have agreed to cover his patients. 71 Now that’s some serious proof!
    Not only is this amazing news for those of us looking for ways to genuinely improve our own health naturally, but it’s also great news for our healthcare system. If we could all be prescribed this lifestyle change instead of the insane amount of drug prescriptions and surgeries, we could collectively save a lot of money, and a lot of tummy aches. I believe that an immense change in current medical philosophy and practice is forthcoming, but we could start healingnow. Why wait for the average Joe? Why not heal ourselves, and then help Joe heal himself too?
    Dr. Ornish is not the only one campaigning for better nutrition. Other well-known professionals in the field of health include Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, author of Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease ,