We’ve all heard the saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” but you could actually interchange apple with any of the cornucopia of fiery fruits and vegetables. Red, orange, and yellow fruits and vegetables are high in the antioxidants lycopene and anthocyanin, among other powerhouse nutrients. The darker the color, the higher in these antioxidants that they tend to be. How many red, orange, and yellow fruits and vegetables are you and your family consuming on a daily basis?

Eating a diet rich in fire-color spectrum foods will help promote a healthy immune system, as well as combat cancer cells and free radicals and decrease premature signs of aging, among so many other internal and external benefits. However, it takes more than just an apple a day to “keep the doctor away.” Fortunately, foods of this color happen to be delicious and oftentimes sweet and juicy.

Do you and your family eat apples, peaches, cranberries, oranges, papayas, acerola cherries, pineapples, prunes, dates, and beets every single day? This amount of fruits and vegetables might seem like a daunting amount to be feeding yourself and your family every day, but there’s actually a very easy trick to get this all in and still have the time and stomach space to eat the other important food groups.

The trick is Juice Plus+ Orchard Blend. The Parker Dentistry family has incorporated Juice Plus+ into their daily routine for nearly a decade and a half. Two organic, non-GMO, and farm-grown dehydrated fruit powder capsules or chewables a day contains all ten of those fruits and vegetables. This almost effortless approach to whole food nutrition has been backed by an inspiring amount of research, clinical studies, and extraordinary conclusions. 

Juice Plus+ Orchard Blend (the red topped bottle) has been proven to help fight heart disease, prostate cancer, and macular degeneration, as well as decrease the risk of stroke and increase your body’s defenses against free radicals. Remember, free radicals are a major contributor to premature or early signs of aging. Red-spectrum fruits and vegetables can also kill cancer cells, lower blood pressure, improve skin elasticity and radiance, promote healthy gums, support eye health, and ease inflammation. 

Aside from all the red, orange, and yellow fruits and vegetables that your body will enjoy from ingesting two small Orchard Blend capsules or chewables a day, red bell peppers, tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries, watermelon, and pomegranates should also work their way into your diet. Your body will surely thank you graciously for eating these dynamic fruits and vegetables. Nutrition is one of the most powerful defenses against disease. As we’ve said before, preventative healthcare is a far easier, less time consuming, and a more affordable approach to health than treating a virus, disease, or chronic ailment once it's wreaking havoc on your body and life. A simple change can really make a radical difference. 

Talk to Honi or Dr. Blake if you are interested in learning more about Juice Plus+ Orchard Blend. For the next few weeks, we will be breaking down the remaining three Juice Plus+ blends and their benefits. Let us help you make your simple change today. 

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Summer is in full bloom and the 4^th of July is right around the corner. Summertime is synonymous with BBQ’s, backyard and beach parties, cruises, and family vacations. While all of those things are obviously fun and often delicious, they often involve decisions that might not be so healthy and anti-inflammatory friendly. Remember, diet plays a major role in chronic inflammation. You are in luck though! You can enjoy summertime without wrecking havoc on your health.

Click on the below links for some healthy alternatives to your favorite summertime foods. 

8 Healthy Food Alternatives for Summer Recipe Favorites

Healthy Substitutes for Your Favorite Summer Foods

It all comes down to choices, and the best choices are made when you are the most informed. Eating an anti-inflammatory diet is actually quite simple and once you get in the habit of it, you won’t even think twice about it. An anti-inflammatory diet is high in fiber, loaded with fruits and vegetables, rich in omega-3, spiced up with ginger, turmeric, and garlic, low in saturated fat, and very low (if you can’t completely eliminate) red meat, processed foods, refined sugars, and trans fats.

Side note: Juice Plus+ can help you with your omega-3 (plus 5, 6, 7, and 9) fruit, and vegetable intake! Too easy!

While it will take time, when you cut out refined sugars, processed foods, trans fats, and red meat, your body will eventually stop craving them. This might be the most difficult part of changing your diet, but you will feel and look noticeably different once your diet is free (or near free) of these toxins. The best way to make changes in your diet and lifestyle is not necessarily by emptying out your entire pantry and making a sudden and drastic change (that approach might work for some though-you know yourself the best), but rather by taking small steps and making little changes every day.

You are more likely to succeed if your change is gradual. Try and add a bit more anti-inflammatory foods to your diet while taking away a little bit of the inflammatory causing foods. You can see where this process of adding and eliminating will eventually take you. There is no better time to start taking care of yourself than the present! 

You’ve probably heard the term essential fatty acids, good fats, or healthy fats thrown around before. You’ve probably also been told or have read that good fats are an integral component of a healthy diet. But, what exactly does that mean? What are healthy fats? Why do our bodies need fatty acids? Every system in our body requires fatty acids to function properly. Fatty acids play a critical role in brain development, blood pressure regulation, and immune, nervous, and respiratory system support. Essential fatty acids also help to reduce inflammation, which has been linked to most degenerative diseases, like heart disease, gum disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, arthritis, and multiple types of cancers.

Our bodies cannot produce omega-3 or omega 6, which are two very important omegas. We need to ingest these. Our bodies also cannot naturally produce omega-9 unless we have sufficient omega-3 and omega-6. Omega-3 fatty acids are found in grains, spirulina, green leafy vegetables, raw walnuts, flaxseeds, pumpkin seeds, and chia seeds, as well as in fish like salmon, mackerel, and tuna. Omega-6 fatty acids are found in olive oil, pistachios, raw nuts and seeds, and wheatgerm. Omega-9 fatty acids come from avocados, cashews, almonds, pecans, and hazelnuts. Chia seeds actually contain all three. Are you eating these things every day?

Fish oil pills have remained one of the most popular ways to get in a daily dose of omega-3.  However, the demand for fish oil has had a terrible effect on the Atlantic marine environment. The most common fish that is caught and used for fish oil is the menhaden. This particular fish, a member of the herring family, has been labeled one of the most important fish in the sea. Not only does this fish play a huge role in filtering algae from the water, it is also at the base of the food chain. Fish oil companies are wiping out this fish at an alarming rate. But what is our alternative?

Juice Plus+ recently created a brand new environmentally friendly and sustainable omega blend capsule. Unlike fish oil, the Juice Plus+ Omega Blend contains omega-3, 5, 6, 7, and 9. This amazing capsule cuts of the “middleman,” the fish. The omegas come from algae, pomegranate seeds, sea buckhorn berries, raspberry seeds, tomato seeds, and safflower seeds. Just like the three other Juice Plus+ blends, these capsules are non-GMO, gluten-free, preservative free, and contain no artificial colors or flavors. Adding this to your daily routine will be life changing!

Eating a diet that is sufficiently rich in essential fatty acids, antioxidants, and plant-based proteins is one of the easiest ways to reduce and or prevent chronic inflammation. Mix in that with regular exercise, adequate sleep, and other healthy lifestyle choices (no smoking, minimal alcohol intake, and stress reducing/releasing practices) and your chances of persistent inflammation and life altering aliments will be significantly reduced. We don’t have control over everything, but we should take advantage of the things that we do have control over. Our health is everything.

Ask Dr. Blake or Honi about this incredible new additional to the Juice Plus+ family and how it can help reduce chronic inflammation and its many other amazing benefits.

We are expected to go above and beyond in our careers, take care of our families and friends, pay the protracted list of bills every month, plan ahead for our futures, deal with unanticipated circumstances, maintain relationships, conquer to-do lists, and somewhere in there have a little fun too. We are busy people! However, in order to sustain the lives we have created for ourselves, it is inordinately important that we are also healthy people. So add that to the list too: heed a healthy lifestyle.

For a lot of us, that is often easier said than done. A healthy lifestyle is made up of several basic components that alter in their specificity depending on age, sex, body type, weight, physical activity level, and other individual concerns. In order to promote this lifestyle, we must eat a nutritional and well balanced diet, exercise regularly, and be mindful of our emotional needs. So really, this is adding three things to the list. Don’t get overwhelmed though! You might be surprised to learn that little changes can make monumental differences. One little change you can make with very minimal effort is incorporating Juice Plus+ into your daily regiment.

According to their website, www.parker.juiceplus.com, which is filled with invaluable information, “Juice Plus+ is whole food based nutrition, including juice powder concentrates from 30 different fruits, vegetables and grains. Juice Plus+ helps bridge the gap between what you should eat and what you do eat every day. Not a multivitamin, medicine, treatment or cure for any disease, Juice Plus+ is made from quality ingredients carefully monitored from farm to capsule to provide natural nutrients your body needs to be at its best.” Juice Plus+ is a company that Parker Dentistry Facial Rejuvenation and Wellness fully stands behind and represents. Honi has been a Juice Plus+ representative for twenty-one years and is always willing to share her wealth of information regarding the product and how to get started.

What are the 30 Juice Plus+ fruits, vegetables, and grains that you could be ingesting daily in a matter of seconds and for a fraction of the cost of what you would spend in time and money to make sure all of those nutrition-bursting foods made in into your routine diet?

Apple, Acerola Cherry, Beet, Cranberry, Date, Orange, Pineapple, Papaya, Peach, Prune, Broccoli, Brown Rice Bran, Cabbage, Carrot, Garlic, Kale, Oat Bran, Parsley, Spinach, Tomato, Artichoke, Bilberry, Blackberry, Black Currant, Blueberry, Cocoa, Concord Grapes, Elderberry, Pomegranate, Raspberry

Looks like a juicy kaleidoscopic rainbow to me! Your body will thank you graciously. Surprisingly, it hasn’t been fully accepted that what you put into your body plays a significant role in your body’s ability to fight and prevent major health complications, such as heart disease, multiple types of cancer, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, kidney stones, and bone loss among so many other types of maladies. Diet is dominant player in our overall health and wellbeing. It contributes to the health of our insides and outs. As serious as it is, it doesn’t have to be something that consumes you. It can be easy and Juice Plus+ can help make it a little easier.

Dr. Blake Parker has been taking Juice Plus+ for the past fifteen years. He said he truly realized the power of the product when he was a freshman living in the dorms at the University of Florida. During flu season, he was the only student out of the forty living on his same floor that didn’t have to miss any classes due to being sick. In the fifteen years that he has been taking Juice Plus+, he has only been sick once! With a background in nutrition, he also realizes the importance of these thirty fruits, vegetables, and grains that are rich in vitamins and antioxidants. While he is a health conscious eater and a pretty impressive chef, he knows he would never be able to fit all of those powerhouse foods into his everyday diet.

It’s when we don’t have our health that we realize how surely paramount it is. We are meant to do great things with our lives and greatness doesn’t typically happen when we are sick or not performing at our best. While some things are out of our control, your diet is something that you can make the conscious decision and effort to be active and present in what you put into your body. Remember, you only get one body, and Parker Wellness is here to help you learn how to take care of it.

Thanks for sharing a smile with us this week! Stay turned next week as we continue with nutrition as it relates to healthy gums and teeth

Don’t forget to answer the question of the month for June that was posted on our Facebook page this week.