 I'm Wendy Lowe and I'm your dear friend as we journey to take your health back. We are coming to you live from downtown Honolulu from the studios of Think Tech Hawaii. Today our topic of discussion will be putting health in your own hands and that's what we all got to do. We got to take it into our own hands because this is our one body. We know how it feels and what we can do to make it feel better and we have every right to do so because it's our one body. What I would like you to take away from today's discussion is the idea that simple changes bring huge results. Today I would love to introduce to you our dear friend Judy Strickler. She is a former RN and I think she's always going to be a nurse to somebody somewhere in the world and she's an NMD with the Juice Plus Company. Welcome Judy. Thank you Wendy. Yeah so you know we have a slide that shows how beautiful you are with all those beautiful colors of fruits and I just want you to tell us a little bit about who you are. Oh thank you Wendy. I am so excited to be here. You know I love Hawaii. Yes I know. This is like my second home. That's what I tell people but I just am so grateful that I can come here and share some information with all of your friends here in Hawaii. I am a wife of 42 years to my husband. We have four children. We have four in-laws and then three grandchildren. I also am a nurse and I spent 25 years of my life in the nursing field and I retired 21 years ago. Wow. How impactful. I bet you you know you can you remember all your patients. I can but I can tell you I had lots of fun with them. Well that's the main thing and you know that's the process of healing. Absolutely. One not just being there and administering whatever your doctor says you need to give them but loving them and showing them your heart and that's what actually heals. Oh absolutely. The power of your heart and your love through here and so that's really really important. So the next slide says to us the choice is yours. So can you walk us through that and what do you mean by this statement the choice is yours. Yeah the choice is really yours and I have you know on my slide if you knew that there was a way to get well and stay well would you make that choice and then the next major step would you do what it takes. So actually every day we have a choice don't we of what we do every day. Choice to get out of bed. Right. Choice to go to work. Choice to have fun. Whatever it is. And I'm going to talk mostly today about the choice of the food you put in your mouth. You know whatever you put in your mouth either helps you or it harms you. So you really have to think about those choices that you're making. Wow. You know I mean I also what once put before me was if you knew the hurricane was coming are you just going to sit in that house and wait for you to get hit or are you going to take precautions. So no different than a storm. Your health. It's the same idea. It's the same relationship. So you know your health I mean we're taking a gamble by just saying oh we're just going to do as I'm told and not know anything further than that and if you just did that is that going to harm you is it going to benefit you so we have choices and that's what you're saying. Right. Right. And so a lot of times I think we say well I'm just going to do this today. I'm just going to have one of those today and maybe that one is what's going to put you over the edge and lead you into a disease. So I want to know on the next slide is a whole bunch of verbiage. It says what were some of the references that led you to your true north. Okay. So as I grew up on a farm in Kansas and my parents taught me of course about God and I read in the Bible one time in Genesis that God said that he had made all of the seed-bearing plants for us for food and I thought wow and he made them before he made us so I was like wow he must have known our body needed to stay well and then as I went on to my medical field I heard that Hippocrates said food is your best medicine and medicine is really your food. And we don't treat it like that anymore. We treat it as fun you know like we're going out to have fun and just eat something. And then you know the last part Thomas Edison said that the doctors of the future would be interested in the human frame and not in medicine and not in drugs and he invented the light bulb. What does he know about nutrition? But even back then everyone knew that it was good food that made you healthy. And so those were some of the people and I had a lot of mentors in my past that I looked up to Dr. John McDougal helped me get started, Joel Furman, Chef AJ, I could just go on and on Dr. Ethelston, they all and Wigmore way back when said you've got to eat those real foods or raw foods or sprouted foods that foods that have life in it. That's all only thing that will give you life. And if it's dead food, why would you eat it? I used to tell my kids if it doesn't rot or sprout, throw it out, right? If a self-respecting bug won't eat it, why would you? You know so before you found your true north, did you try other paths? You know like everybody has a diet of one sort or another like oh you got to do this, you do this and you have the fountain of youth. You do this and you'll lose 20 pounds a day. So did you have another path before you found your true north and to direct you in your health journey? That's kind of funny, Wendy, because I had lots of different paths I tried. I tried lots of different things because I kept looking for the answer. You know when I got out of medical school and started working in the hospital, I realized then that this wasn't the answer to health. It's not drugs and chemotherapy and radiation and all that stuff. It went back to the food. So yeah, I tried everything from raw diets to fasting 10 days on water. I did the cabbage soup diet, I'm sure everybody tried that once, right? It was a little white. I did the paleo, I did the keto, I did you know the standard American diet, what most people eat, but until I came back, I tried even handfuls of vitamins. And we don't have a vitamin deficiency, do we? We have a whole food deficiency. So I was able to come back to the whole food. It's like one of my friends said, Judy go back to the farm and eat what you ate when you grew up on the farm. Right. You know you were so blessed. I mean, I know that back in the day, you thought, oh, we have to work so hard. The other kids aren't doing this dirt and farm thing. But you know what? When we look back, how blessed were we that we have the foundation of great health instilled in us from the time we were young. Yes. And so that's the difference with the generation now. They're not living on a farm. You know, if you truly ask a kid, hey, what's this and you have a tomato in your hand? They may not know what the tomato is because they only know it as salsa or as ketchup. And where it came from. Right. They have no idea. That's a perfect lead-in to a story that I'll share with you. When I left the farm, I was very healthy in 12 years of perfect attendance and all that. But I went to school and I found those golden arches, you know what I'm talking about, right? Right. And I was so amazed that I could have food without killing the cow, baking the bread, peeling the potatoes, and here was a meal. But that food led me down a path to illness. Yeah. And so, you know, that's why it's so important to take your health back. And that's exactly what we want to share with all of you out there is it's so important for you to just understand the simple rules of how we can take our health back. Baby steps. That's the first thing I want to say. It's just baby steps where there you're going to, and it's not a diet that we want to choose. It's lifestyle. Absolutely. Right. And so that's what we, you know, we really want to impress upon our audience today. So our next slide says prove it. Okay. So tell me about the importance and the urgency in your search to keep your family healthy. You knew better now how hard or how easy is it to get your people in your household to follow what you now know? Well, it's not real easy. It's a little complicated. You have daughters. You understand what I'm saying to you. But yeah, I knew that my mom was right, my grandma. My grandma used to say, you know, to eat your fruits and vegetables and she would peel a carrot every morning before breakfast and she'd eat that to help her keep her eyesight. She said, these are good for my eyes. And my other grandma went to a healing resort several times and we bring special water home to drink. So they were kind of in this. So I guess it's in my blood to do have this passion to help people get well and stay well. So now we know that there's over 4500 studies that confirm that almost 75 to 80% of all diseases are caused by either what we do eat or what we don't eat. And that's why we have to take care of it. What led me to want to really dive into this is my husband's daughter died at 21 from cancer and I did not want to bury any of my children. And so I was struggling at the time. I had four teenagers. I really was getting pretty desperate to find a way that they would eat the good things that I made. There were times they would eat it at home, but when they were gone, you know what happens. It's that pizza and beer probably right. It's not Brussels sprouts and cauliflower. Right. So, you know, I always bring my buddy with me, this apple. And you know, this is the food. This is fast food, guys, the fastest food you're going to find over 10,000 nutrients and vitamins within one apple. And if we were hungry or are hungry, just pick this apple up, eat it in a suffice. It'll take the hunger pains away. It'll make your body smile and be very happy on the inside because you're doing what you're supposed to be doing by stewarding your body. From the food, from the earth. And the secret about that is, Wendy, I love that you brought that apple. It's not just vitamin C. It's all of those nutrients and synergy together, working together that has such a powerful punch in your body to make you well, to keep you well, to help detoxify your body. Right. So, Judy, what was the final point that proved to you that your mother was right? The final point is when I finally got away from all those crazy diets, went back to the farm and started to eat mostly fruits and vegetables. That's all, pretty much what I ate, a lot of starch, but I saw how I felt. I saw when I found some plant powders and was able to start putting those in our body, more concentrated. It changed my children's appetite. And I was just amazed because I know about metabolic programming. You know what that is. If you drink a lot of caffeine, you want caffeine. If you eat a lot of sugar, you want sugar. And if you, you know, cocaine, heroin, whatever it is, whatever you put in your body, you crave that. Wow. When I found out that loading your body with all these plant powders made you start craving fruits and vegetables and helped start, start detoxifying your body and healing what was going on in your body. I knew I was onto something and I wanted my children to know this and take it forever. And our family has been able to do that for over 21 years. You know, there are so many gurus out there on health. And you know, sometimes it's not easy to, who do I listen to? Which one do I listen to? Is that real or who sponsored it? So it gets very difficult for the average person out there. You know, I know that you told me a little bit about Bob Goff and what an impact he's made on your life. Can you just share a little bit about him and what he's done with you and your life? Yes. I love Bob Goff and I was blessed to meet him this year in person. That picture is very special in my office, but he talks about love. How we're really here to love each other. And God has given us all a passion, a mission here on earth. So mine certainly is to help people heal themselves, get well and stay well. But Bob Goff said several things that really made an impact on me. You know, he said, you love that love does and you can't just love somebody, you have to do something, you know, you have to move your feet when you pray. Okay. And so the other thing is that he said that was powerful. He said, I used to be concerned about not succeeding at something I thought was very important, but today I'm worried about failing at what is really important. Wow. And so I think that he made me really start thinking about what true love is. If I had this knowledge, I had to share it with someone and I couldn't keep it to myself anymore. Wow. Sounds like the Aloha spirit to me. And so that's why, you know, we're so blessed here in the land of Aloha and we live with Aloha and when we share that Aloha, it comes back. And even just to say Aloha with all the goodness of it, what it means. I love you. Hello, goodbye. It just means everything. It's just a breath of life. And that's what we breathe upon each and every one of our visitors as well as our family members. And if we can spread more of the Aloha throughout the world, I think, or I know that the world will be healthier and happier. And that's what our goal is to just continue to spread that, that, that mission, I should say, of Aloha. So what do you mean that you turned your minute, your misery into ministry? That's so important because my minute, my misery was working in the sickness industry. I wanted to get out of that and go into the wellness industry. And I was blessed to do that about 21 years ago. And so I just, I wake up with a smile on my face, knowing that I'm going to improve someone's health. And so I want to just keep doing that every day. And, you know, in, in, in the Bible, Jesus said, I was hungry and you fed me. I think about that because aren't we starving to death? Aren't people starving to death with what they're eating? They're really, truly hungry. You know, I was in prison and you visited me, but we all know people that are in a disease prison, right? Or poverty prison. We have so much to offer them if we just teach them how to eat a few simple things. And I'll get into that a little bit later. But I'm telling you, there is a way that we can give hope to people and not be so depressed and so desperate in this life. Wow. You know, and actually, so what you're saying is just take your health into your own hands. Absolutely. And, you know, we go around saying, take your health back, take your health back, people are wondering, what do you mean by that? I mean exactly that. If this is your one body, your one temple, take care of it, steward it right, do the right thing, eat and drink the right things because your body will respond. You talked about metabolic programming. That's the scientific word. The other word is addictions, right? And so, yes, do you want to be addicted to good, healthy food? Or do you want to be addicted to the other types of food? And so the more we learn and understand what we eat will matter and how our body feels and responds, it really makes the journey a lot easier. Absolutely. And how we think, you know, gives us more ability to think, right? And the brain fog disappears. The brain fog. Yes, hold the brain fog. We're going to take a 60 second break right now. And when we'll come back, we'll clear that fog up for you. OK, so stay tuned. Hold on, guys. Aloha. This is Winston Welch. I am your host of Out and About where every other week, Mondays at three, we explore a variety of topics in our city, state, nation and world and events, organizations, the people that fuel them. It's a really interesting show. We welcome you to tune in and we welcome your suggestions for shows. You got a lot of them out there and we have an awesome studio here where we can get your ideas out as well. So I look forward to you tuning in every other week where we've got some great guests and great topics. You're going to learn a lot. You're going to come way inspired like I do. So I'll see you every other week here at three o'clock on Monday afternoon. Aloha. Aloha. I want to invite all of you to talk story with John Wahee every other Monday here at Think Tech, Hawaii. And we have special guests like Professor Colin Moore from the University of Hawaii, who joins us from time to time to talk about the political happenings in this state. Please join us every other Monday. Aloha and welcome back. So we have Judy Strickler here, former nurse or I should say forever nurse because even though she's retired from the office, she will continue to be a nurse of the world. And so we're so excited that you're here with us to share not only your knowledge, but your heart. And that's the whole premise of how to take your health back. And that's what we're all about, that we take little baby steps and we can find out how simple it is to take back the quality of life that we so desire. So our next slide will say eat food, not too much. So remember now locals eat food, not too much, mostly plants. So we tell people we're not that we want to be vegans or vegetarians. No, we just want to eat more of the right things. And it comes obviously from plants. So we want to say to people, eat plants strong. And that's that's our message today pretty much is that's how we journey to that. So tell us how you found the simplest form on how we can take control of our health, Judy. Well, through a lot of research and a lot of trial and error, I have found maybe five main things that will help you take your health back. So first of all, exercise, we know that's important. Oh, OK. Move your move every day, no matter what it takes. Secondly, make sure you get your sleep, seven to nine hours of sleep every night. The research is now showing that lack of sleep has something to do with the increase of Alzheimer's and dementia. So, yeah, Wendy, you better make sure you get some sleep. OK, I better not forget that. And then then we want to eat calorie density. And that means that you want to eat food that has the densest the densest food with the least calories. So if you ate like three tablespoons of oil, that would be like 500 calories. Well, if you ate 500 calories of potatoes or rice or vegetables that would fill up your stomach. It wouldn't even go in hardly. So we want to eat calorie dense food, food that has fiber and water always has to have it in there. And the other thing is we want to get rid of food addictions, food like addictions. Now, we all addicted to food. We have to eat to live. But the pleasure trap is what gets us into the feed eating. So there's a difference between feed, eating something to fill you up and food that nourishes your body. So food does something to your for your body. Drugs do something to your body. So a lot of times the foods and the things we're putting in our body, whether it's junk food, processed junk food, no vitamins, no nothing in it, alcohol, whatever it might be, that is affecting your body harm, harm in your body. So you have to be careful about trying not to do that. It's like the hurricane. It's coming. So do you want it to come faster? You want to get to hit your house without boarding it up and getting food? Right. And then the last thing I want to talk about for sure is food poisoning. Now, for a lot of people, they don't understand what that is. Dr. John McDougal has a picture book that you can download and print, and it helps explain it. But food poisoning is not about salmonella or it's not about E. coli. Food poisoning is about eating those foods that are harmful to you. And Dr. McDougal believes that food poisoning is caused by animal products and oil. Those two things are the main culprit that cause harm in our body. And so if I can help teach people how can eat your food without putting all that in it, I think that's very important. I also teach a batch cooking class where I teach you how to cook all the vegetables and and prepare all the starches for a whole week in three hours. And if you want to add something else to that, you can, you know, in I'm sure where you came from, Wendy, you didn't have a big piece of meat. They use meat to flavor a big pot of soup. Right. And so it's quite different the way it is here now. And when you process that meat, I mean, it's like I heard someone say one day, would you really eat a piece of steak with nothing raw? Would you just chew that up, really just go out there and get that? Or do you need the salt and the seasoning, the oil and the grill? And, you know, most people wouldn't eat it. Just a piece of chicken raw off the chicken. OK. Right. Right. They would have to be prepared. So the main thing is not that you don't have to, you know, you decide what your true north is for my family and I. We pretty much limit our animal consumption and our oil, but take steps towards that. So don't make the animal products the main part of your meal. If you want to eat that, make it just a flavoring. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And when you eat all those other things, those, you know, the potatoes and squash and the lettuce and the vegetables and the fruit, that all builds up your body. That is helping your body get rid of the poisons from those other things. It's detoxing it. Right. That's why they're called antioxidants. That's right. That's why it gets rid of the toxins. Yeah. And so, you know, and you talk about Dr. McDougall, he had a really good start here in Hawaii and it was noted on the documentary that he was featured on as well. Forks over knives. Yes. And by watching those sorts of documentaries, the truth, it really guides us to understand. So I always tell couples, families, it's a love story. So I say, grab your husband's hand, get your family, set him down, have a good bowl of skinny popcorn, a great salad. And, you know, just enjoy what the message is. And then after that, do, you know, Q and A with the family because that, to me, is a great love story. Now, Judy, you take care of your husband, Daryl. And Daryl takes care of you by eating healthy. And then you travel and you visit Hawaii exactly how we should do it. But now, if we don't take care of each other, spouses or family members, then it either delays a trip or postpones a trip. And so we have choices. We have choices, but we all have to take baby steps towards these choices. You know, like taking meats or lessen the amounts of meats that you have in your diet. I love meat, but I've made a focused effort not to cook it in my home. But when I go out, I'll enjoy. But at home, I've never cooked pork beef or chicken in my home since I've retired. I'm the same way, I might partake when I'm out. But at home, we don't have that in our house. And I love the thing that you just said, Wendy, about getting a movie like Forks Over Knife or What the Health. That's a love story. If you just sit down, I mean, listen to what they say and make a choice. Are you willing to take those steps? Right. Because good things will happen. Right. And do it now when it's a choice versus it's mandatory. Honey, we got to change our lifestyle because no, honey, let's change our lifestyle because I want to travel with you around the world as long as we can. Absolutely. And I don't want to be pushed into a wheelchair or, you know, having a cane on your hand. I want to hold your hand. Sometimes I like to explain it this way that people, you know, eat what they want to the standard American diet, they drink whatever it might be. And they don't think about getting sick because they think a doctor will fix them. It's like going up on a cliff and falling off when you get sick. Instead, we would like you to build a fence up there. So you never have to fall off. And an ambulance picks you up. I get it. You know, I get the vision. I get it. Yeah. Then Hawaii, you know about the cliffs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it. Got it. OK, so you talked about the pleasure trap. Tell us more about that and explain to us what is a pleasure trap? Yeah, the pleasure trap is the food addiction, you know, and it could be something else. It could be or only could be anything like that. And you see some things listed there as far as a food pleasure trap. And I know you think it might be kind of silly. I talked about most of those things on the bottom. I have sleep and exercise because believe it or not, there's people that are addicted to exercise. They do too much. Some don't do any. And there's some people that stay up all night and never get their sleep. And that's a very big problem. But one of the simplest ways to kind of remember what you should eat and what would be better for you is I tell people to get off of the sofas. So sofas stand for salt, oil, flour, right? Alcohol and sugar and then limit the animal products as much as you can. So if you did that alone, you know, it's not the starches that that are bad for us. It's what we put on. Right. You know, a baked potato with some steamed broccoli is delicious. There's some rice, I love rice with beans, maybe corn, salsa, whatever. Right, right. There's nothing wrong with that. High protein, tastes good and cheap. Oh, yes. I mean, cheap and affordable and it tastes really, really good. And there's so many ways that you can prepare it. And now that I've gone plant strong, I have beans in my preparedness kit. So there's that hurricane that does come to Huy. I have a whole container of beans and rice noodles. And I have plants that I grow on my balcony and I have plant powders. So I'm prepared. So I'm not waiting for that hurricane to come. I'm doing, I'm proactively working on that. And so, so tell us a little bit about what is this? You mentioned Juice Plus and what is plant powders and all that. Well, when I discovered these plant powders, I was a school nurse in Lubbock, Texas. And a PE coach came and asked me to listen to this cassette tape. Do you know what that is? It's a little white thing. Oh, I know, not that young. I bet there's people in there like, what is that? So anyway, I took it home. She wanted to learn if she wanted me to listen to it to see if it was something she could take. And I was not interested because she said it was food and a capsule. And I said, no, just eat your food the way God made it. You're all good. And for her, I did her favor. I listened to it. And by the time I got finished listening to that tape, I knew I would want my family to take this for their life. I knew it. I went back to school the next day and bought enough for our whole family. And we've been taking this now for 21 years. And the nice thing about that, you saw the towers on the slide that was up there. They also have now towers that you can grow your own produce right on your patio. That's what we do. And we had that guy last week. He came and talked to us about the tar gardens and it was amazing. So fresh food right at your fingertips and again, cheap. Very affordable and no GMO. And no question marks because I know I grew it. He grew it and there's no chemicals and non GMO. And it's like when I need it, I'll eat it. And you know, like you, like I travel a lot. So I need that convenience when I'm home. I want it and I don't want to have to throw things out and waste because I don't want to waste because it costs money. And by growing my own, I save a whole lot of money. Right. And you can grow what you like to eat. Right. Right. That's why you use that so. So real quickly, Judy, just tell us what's your passion, mission? What are you doing now that you're retired and you're sharing this information of health? My really, I feel like I get up every morning and I have a ministry that I have to go out and save people's lives by teaching them how to eat better because I know as a nurse, I saw what happened in the hospital. As a school nurse, I saw a five year old that needed five medications every day and I knew that was probably killing him. And wow, look at this. You were, where is this? This is in Africa. My husband and I went to Africa in 2006 and Planet Gardens for a dream of Africa with Bruce Wilkinson and that was a real eye-opener. And it really made an impact on my life. What a full life you've had, Judy. I mean, you're retired, but you're not stopping. So keep on going. You're here to make a difference and change people's lives. And that's what you're going to do every day. And as you come to Hawaii and you share your message of Aloha and when you return back to your home, take our Aloha with you. So we thank you and Darryl for being here with us in Hawaii, sharing your great love for what you're doing. So for now, everyone, Aloha.