Are You Nourished?

by Dr. Brooke Goldner

As a vegan medical doctor, my approach to health and healing is focused on maximizing the nourishment of your body so that your cells have the raw materials they need to do the jobs they are programmed to do, including healing.

You see, healing is the natural habit of injured cells.  That is why you don’t have to pull out your sewing kit when you get a paper cut; your body knows exactly how to heal itself.  As long as you have the platelets, white blood cells, and other necessary immune cells, as well as the nutrients required to patch up your skin, it will happen on its own, business as usual.  

While it is important to avoid injuring your cells with toxic foods, like animal products and processed foods, health is not just about what you avoid eating, it’s about what you put into your body as well. That is why even people who noticed the benefits that they experienced when they first went vegan sometimes stall out before completely reversing their disease. They stopped creating more illness by avoiding the toxic foods, but their body did not have the building blocks required to heal, which mainly come from diet.

That’s why we don’t just want to focus on avoiding injuries caused by toxic foods, we want to optimize health and the ability to heal by eating the right foods. The most nutrient-dense plant foods, like greens, deliver health with every meal. They can protect us from the harmful effects of bad foods and reverse disease and injury.

My healing protocol focuses on not just nourishment, but hyper-nourishment of the body. I am referring to my practice of over-supplying the body with the most nutrient-dense foods. Then, it has everything it needs for healing—which rapidly increases the rate and the totality of the recovery from disease.

That is why the most important part of my healing program is eating large amounts of nourishing raw plant foods like greens, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds.  Eating foods in their raw and whole state maximizes the delivery of the nutrients in the food without damaging the enzymes and other phytonutrients that are often destroyed by cooking.

My 4-week Detox & Heal Program uses hyper-nourishment as its key feature, and has been hugely successful in reversing pain and inflammation.  It also dramatically increases energy and vitality in people with extremely severe diseases. It uses the protocol I used to heal myself of Lupus (with blood clots) 10 years ago. It keeps me healthy and strong to this day. The reason for the dramatic results is that it utilizes both of the steps it takes to achieve vibrant health: (1) avoiding all toxic foods, and (2) hyper-nourishing the body with healing foods.

In order to hyper-nourish, I encourage people to eat at least eight cups of raw greens and vegetables a day. You read that right!  This can be totally overwhelming for people who usually only eat greens when there is a piece of lettuce on their burger. It’s also more than even most vegetarians and vegans eat in a day.

That is why I love green smoothies so much! Green smoothies are a delicious way to deliver an extraordinary amount of nutrients into the body, already partially broken down, so they can be absorbed immediately, with very little digesting necessary.

While you can find recipes online for drinks that call themselves green smoothies, they are often mostly fruit with a few leaves of spinach in them. While that is delicious, it is not a green smoothie in my book— that’s a fruit smoothie!  My prescription for green smoothies requires at least 4-5 tightly packed cups of greens, leaving just enough room to squeeze in the fruit you need to make it taste good. 

It is very important to invest in a good blender that can really liquefy all the food you put in it, and continue to power through day-after-day of making your healing foods.  A high-powered blender will be more expensive, but it is one of the best investments you can make in your health.  When you use a regular blender, the food is simply broken down into smaller pieces, which is helpful, but still requires your body to do some work digesting the food. When you use a high-powered blender such as a Vitamix or Blendtec, the blades are so fast, they actually rupture the cell walls and cause the nutrients to spill out so they can be immediately absorbed.  Clients who use a high-powered blender often tell me that they feel so energized after their smoothie that they no longer crave caffeine! After all, low energy is not a sign of a caffeine deficiency; it’s a symptom of malnourishment!  When your body gets everything it needs, you feel amazing.  Because of this, even people who are not used to eating raw foods quickly become accustomed to, and even enjoy, drinking their greens this way.

Once people are convinced of the health benefits of green smoothies, the next roadblock is that they don’t know how to make them taste good. That is why I wrote, Green Smoothie Recipes to Kick-Start Your Health & Healing.  It is filled with my favorite green smoothies, both for their healing power and how delicious they taste!  Even clients who tell me that they hate vegetables and salads tell me that they enjoy the flavor of my green smoothies!

Here are three of the nourishing recipes from my green smoothie book. Feel free to change them up according to your taste. You may like it sweeter and want to add more fruit or dates, or you may want to add some fresh herbs.  You can also change up the greens depending on your tastes and what you have available, like kale, spinach, or even romaine lettuce.

Cheers to amazing fitness and health!

Dr. G

The Beginner

This tasty smoothie makes a great first smoothie.

• 4 cups kale leaves
• 1 pear 
• 1 large banana 
• 1 cup of pineapple 
• 1 avocado 
• Add almond milk 1/2 the way to the top of veggies
• Add water until 3/4 way to the top of the veggies.*

Rise and Shine Smoothie

Better for you than orange juice and delicious all day long.

• 5 tangerines (or 2 large oranges) peel removed
• 1 banana
• 2 carrots
• 4 cups kale leaves
• Optional: 2 Tbs Spirulina
• Optional: 3000 mg Chlorella
• Add water until 3/4 from the top of veggies.*

The Husband’s Favorite

The way Thomas Tadlock likes to start his day!

• 4 cups of spinach
• 2 green apples
• 1 cup of grapes
• 1 avocado
• 3 small bananas
• Add water until 3/4 from the top of veggies.*

*FOR ALL: Add 5 ice cubes and blend for 2 minutes with a Vitamix or other high-powered blender until completely smooth, adding more ice halfway through blending to keep it cold. If you have a less powerful blender, you will need to blend longer until it is completely blended, adding ice as needed.

Brooke Goldner, M.D. is a best-selling author and board certified physician known worldwide as a medical doctor who has developed a nutrition-based treatment for her own autoimmune disease, Lupus. She founded VeganMedicalDoctor.com and created the Hyper-nourishing Healing Protocol for Lupus Recovery. She has been featured in multiple documentaries (Whitewashed, Eating You Alive) and was a keynote speaker for Lupus LA, and has had numerous stage appearances, including the 2014 Health Healing & Happiness event and The International Plant-Based Nutrition Healthcare Conference. She has twice been featured on the cover of Vegan Health & Fitness Magazine, is the author of Goodbye Lupus, Green Smoothie Recipes to Kick-Start Your Health and Healing, and star of Goodbye Lupus and Super Healthy Meals for Your Family DVDs. She is a graduate of the Temple University School of Medicine, was Chief Resident at UCLA-Harbor Residency in Psychiatry, and holds a certificate in Plant-Based Nutrition from Cornell University.