Anti Inflammatory Properties Of Raw Fruit & Vegetable Smoothies
Presenter: Neal Howard
Guest: Valerie Ramdin
Guest Bio: Valerie Ramdin is the organizer of the Tucson Inflammatory Disease meet-up group. She has a master’s degreein inner-city education from Northeastern Illinois University and a Ph.D. in counseling. She has reversed her many symptoms of multiple sclerosis, including partial blindness and limb paralysis, and now jogs four miles a day. She is the author of SMOOTHIES THAT HEAL.
Segment Overview:
Valerie Ramdin discusses the anti inflammatory properties of her Raw Fruit and Vegetable Smoothies. Also discussed are the reversal of her symptoms and the effect that her recovery had on her physician visits.
Transcription
Health Professional Radio
Neal Howard: Hello. You’re listening to Health Professional Radio. I’m your host, Neal Howard. Our guest today is Valerie Ramdin, the organiser of the Tucson inflammatory disease meet-up group. She also has a master’s degree in Inner City Education from Northeastern Illinois University and a PhD in Counselling. She is an author, the author of the book Smoothies That Heal. How are you doing today, Valerie?
Valerie Ramdin: I’m great. How are you?
Neal: I’m doing real good. Glad to have you here with us. You’re making a claim that a smoothie a day can keep stress and disease away. Now, knowing that 20 years ago you were diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and you did a whole lot of things to try and treat your disease, including medications, exercises, and herbal teas and whatnot, but you landed upon making smoothies, raw fruit and vegetable smoothies, and taking advantage of their healing properties.
Valerie: Yes, I did. I was led to do that. That really worked for me. I had used kombucha tea before in the past, in order to help myself. I had read about kombucha tea. I thought that was going to be terrific. I looked up mangosteen, and I’d used that. I used other elixirs to help me, but after years of prayer, something led me to look at what I was using out of the regular grocery store every day, and I started looking into the fruits and vegetables that were available, researching them online and in other documentaries and books, as well as on TV.
I found out – wow, there are so many benefits to be had just by combining these fruits and vegetables out of my regular grocery store, just wash them off and blend them and eat them raw, and I would get so much nutrients that would be life-giving.
Neal: Now, I have heard that you cook away the nutrients when you cook your vegetables or steam them and things of that nature. Now, how are the benefits different by combining them in a smoothie as opposed to combining them, I guess, in the traditional three square meals a day?
Valerie: Well, you kind of touched on it, too, Neal, just now. When you cook the vegetables, a lot of the nutrients just leave. You kill it. You kill it just like you kill off a lot of the germs, and that’s why we cook food, to kill off the germs and get rid of the bacteria and other things that may be negative towards us. So what we do is we cook the food. Now, if you cook fruits and you cook vegetables, then you’re killing off a lot of the very strong nutrients that are already there for you.
You can have a lot of vitamin C in your collard greens, because greens have a lot of vitamin C and vitamin K naturally anyway. If you start cooking them, you start killing off that vital vitamin C in those greens. So you don’t want to cook them. You can cook them and eat them, and they’re delicious and some of the nutrients are still there. But there are certain nutrients you’re just totally not getting because you’re killing the vitamin C right away, for one. There’s a lot of minerals also that you’re killing off.
Neal: Now, I love a good plate of greens cooked in that special way. When you’re incorporating them into a smoothie, you’re incorporating them raw. Is that correct?
Valerie: Yes. Collard greens [laughs], it’s just not the same as when you’re setting it at a plate eating collard greens and a square of cornbread there with a ham hock on the side. Yeah, it loses all of that.
Neal: [indecipherable 03:43] [laughs]
Valerie: But it brings something natural … Yes, yes, I could smell it in the air when you were talking. [laughs] So no, it’s not the same as smelling the ham hock cooking in your greens, that’s for sure. However, it’s delicious. It’s very healthy, and it just really makes your insides feel good. When I say that, I mean it cleans you out. It really makes you regular. It makes you feel good on the inside.
One thing that I totally believe a hundred percent is that if it’s taking down inflammation on the outside, like you have swollen ankles or something, it’s taking down that inflammation, it’s also taking down inflammation on the inside. So much of what’s happening on the outside of our bodies is happening on the insides of our bodies too.
So when you take down the inflammation, you feel good also. All of a sudden you feel more comfortable walking. You didn’t even realise that your hip was kind of having a little bit of pain because there was inside inflammation. But it takes all of that down. So you really do feel wonderfully after eating anti-inflammatory fruits and vegetables and greens.
Neal: Now, after having been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and using the medications … I mean, there are some very strong anti-inflammatory and other types of medications that go along with that diagnosis. Did you have to wean yourself from the drugs, or did you slowly replace the drugs with an appropriate fruit and vegetable smoothie?
Valerie: No. What I did, because I live in the world I live in – the doctors did not want to take me off of any medication. Because my sister that I love so much was actually a program manager for Abbott Pharmacies, and she had researched all of the drugs I was using, she said, “Please don’t get off of that drug. I don’t want you to have a relapse. I don’t want you to be bedridden. I don’t want you to be sick. Please just continue to take the drugs.” So I actually took the drugs until my doctors said, “Please get off of this drug.” That’s how I got off the drugs – my doctor.
Neal: It was your doctor.
Valerie: It was not only my neurologist, but it was the director of that department came down, looked at my MRI, and said, “Valerie, you haven’t had a relapse for five years. Please get off of this medication. There’s no reason for us to prescribe this to you any longer.”
Neal: Now, at that point, when you were urged to get off of the drugs, had you had any experience with raw fruits and vegetables and their healing properties, or was this kind of the beginning?
Valerie: No. That’s after I had taken all of the smoothies for years – for a year. Then the doctors told me, “Get off of it. You’re not having any problems. We don’t see any problems on your MRI, and you’re fine.” The funny thing is, Neal, they did not know … even, he said, for five years, I hadn’t had any issues. But I want to tell you. When you’re taking that $4,000 drug – I was taking Copaxone – and what it was was a subcutaneous drug that you have to put in your skin. I hated giving myself injections. It was an injectable. I’m starting to stutter just thinking about it.
I hated it so much because I looked at my legs, my legs were so much fatter. They were just so much fatter. I had swollen up all over. I was a fat woman [laughs], which I didn’t like. Then I looked down at my legs, and they had bruises all over them. I looked at my tummy, it had bruises all over it too, because I always had to rotate where I was going to give my injections because I didn’t want it to become necrotic tissue from me injecting in the same site. And these things would hold on for about seven days, so I always had swollen bruises, because I had to take a shot every day. So I hated that, but … I’m sorry, I forgot what you were asking. [laughs]
Neal: Well, actually, it sounds like some of the drawbacks of the medication, you eliminated all of that totally just by replacing the medication regimen with a daily regimen of these fruit and vegetable smoothies. Am I correct?
Valerie: You’re right. So, after I started – oh, so this was the point I was going to make, so I can go back to it! I remember [laughs]. After I had done the fruits and the vegetables, I no longer had to take the injections. When I was taking the injections, I felt so miserable. It was because there was something in those injections that was getting me down. I was very fatigued. I was very depressed on a regular basis.
I didn’t realise how depressed I was until now, when I’m totally not depressed and I’m not on any drug, and I’m very happy and I’m fine. But I was really depressed, I think at a point clinically depressed, even. But now, everything is okay. And now, I can exercise twice a day. Are you kidding me? I love exercise.
Neal: You couldn’t do that before.
Valerie: I … no! Are you kidding me? I would start to exercise, I would just walk, walk, walk, walk all the time and walk fast, and before I knew it, my ankle was giving out. And then, all of a sudden, it was my hip. And then, all of a sudden, I’m limping. And then, all of a sudden, I start getting migraines and I get optic neuritis, where I can’t see out of one eye. Oh, my gosh! It just kept on going.
Neal: You were just getting it from every direction with your sickness, yeah?
Valerie: Right. And that stuff would happen to me, and they wouldn’t say that I had any kind of relapse.
Neal: Was your use of the smoothies and your doctors recommending you to give up the drugs, was that an eye-opening experience for them? Were they aware that you were using smoothies?
Valerie: [Laughs] No. They didn’t ask me what I used at all. They didn’t ask me anything. They just said, “Okay, Valerie. You know how you were when you came in here and you had a relapse? Remember our number, and call me as soon as you have a relapse.” They were just like that. They really didn’t … it was very miraculous to me, but it didn’t seem to be anything to them, so.
Neal: Now, when you’re in the kitchen and you’ve got your fruits and your vegetables there and you’ve got your blender and you’re getting ready, I guess, to puree or whatever it is …
Valerie: Just blend it. Just blend it. Just a regular blender. I’m a simple woman. [laughs]
Neal: Blend it down. Okay. Now, when you’ve got your stuff there, do you sometimes leave out an ingredient or add an ingredient or put something in for it, because you’ve given up sugar? Or do you just drink the same thing every day?
Valerie: No. I have a lot of recipes in my book, Smoothies That Heal. As a matter of fact, in the book, also, at the end of every recipe, I have a section that says “Punch It Up,” and it says, “Add cinnamon for extra flavour. Add a tablespoon of olive oil for a digestive aid. Add a tablespoon of honey for energy. Substitute soy milk for skimmed milk,” and it tells why to do it. And then it says for extra super effective healing, use water instead of apple juice and add a serving of spirulina powder and wheatgrass.
So I tell you how to change, to diversify and to make each recipe different. So you can get five recipes out of one. Because at the end, it says, “Punch it up,” and it tells you how you can change it. So I do that on a regular basis.
Neal: That’s great. Now, as the author of Smoothies That Heal, which is available at www.valerielynnramdin.net … and is it also available at Amazon?
Valerie: Yes, it is. It’s also available in – you can have an e-book, or you can have the hard copy.
Neal: Our guest today has been Valerie Ramdin. You’ve been listening to Health Professional Radio. I’m your host, Neal Howard. We’ve been talking about the health benefits of just one raw vegetable and fruit smoothie a day. It can lower your stress level and actually help prevent disease. Valerie Ramdin is the organiser of the Tucson inflammatory disease meet-up group. She’s also got a master’s in Education from Northeastern Illinois University and a PhD in Counselling, and she’s the author of the book Smoothies That Heal. Thank you so much for being with us today, Valerie.
Valerie: Thank you so much for having me, Neal.
Neal: I look forward to our next conversation.
Valerie: All right. Have a great day.
Neal: All right. Transcripts of this program are available at healthprofessionalradio.com.au.
