A healthy gastrointestinal (GI) or digestive system is the cornerstone of wellness. Your digestive tract not only processes nutrients, it also rids your body of toxins. An unhealthy digestion can compromise the body's immune system making you more vulnerable to a variety of illnesses.

When it comes to taking good care of yourself, there's nothing more important than what I call the "5 Rs" of gastrointestinal care: rebalance, remove, replace, reinoculate, and repair.

“When I look at the way we get out of balance nutritionally, we get either deficiency (we’re not getting enough of the nutrients we need from eating the wholesome foods of the earth) or toxicity.

“When foods are broken down, our body is left with either acid or alkaline residue. I think this is really one of the important cutting edge areas of understanding health and disease.

“Our body wants to be more alkaline, and when fruits and vegetables are broken down in the body, they create a more alkaline residue.

“One of my basic philosophies in medicine is that our body and how we look and how we feel is a result of our life. If we don’t feel well and we want a different result, something has to change.

“What we feed ourselves is often one of the more important areas in this regard. To follow nature’s path, or a natural path, in our health means that we’re living more naturally – we’re living with what’s available on the earth.

“We have a problem and we treat at it - we attack and conquer it. We fight weeds, we fight germs, and we fight insects.

“The problem is that those chemicals and toxins that we use go into the plants that we eat, then into our body.

“We are like the earth. Whatever we do to the earth we do to our body.”

 

Integrated Medicine Practitioner, Nutrition & Detoxification

Overview

Elson Haas, MD is one of the nation's leading practitioners of integrative medicine. Over the last two decades, Dr. Haas has integrated several natural and traditional healing disciplines into his family medical practice. He is the author of seven books, including the NEW Staying Healthy with the Nutrition (2006), The New Detox Diet (2004), his classic Staying Healthy with the Seasons (1981, 2003) and The False Fat Diet (2000), which is about food allergies and reactions and their association to body swelling, increased weight, and overall health.