THE OPENING: A Realization
I woke up at 6 AM. My joints move without creaking. My mind is crystal clear. My energy is abundant. At 66 years young, completing my seventh marathon and training for my eighth, I have more vitality than most 40-year-olds I know.
Here’s what terrifies me: This shouldn’t be surprising. It should be normal.
Yet, we’ve created a world where my health is an anomaly, and your chronic depression, your afternoon crashes, your “brain fog” are treated as inevitable parts of being alive. We’ve normalized sickness so thoroughly that wellness has become exotic, almost suspicious. We’ve accepted decline as destiny and called it “aging.”
But here’s what 16 years of living on a plant-based raw food diet has taught me: Physical sickness and mental sickness are not separate diseases. They’re the same illness wearing different masks. And both are reversible.
This isn’t spiritual bypassing or wellness fantasy. This is documented medical reality. The question is: Why have we stopped questioning the sickness, and started celebrating its management?
SECTION 1: THE NORMALIZATION TRAP
Why We’ve Accepted Sickness as Inevitable
Walk into any pharmacy in America. The shelves are a testament to our collective surrender.
Statins for cholesterol. SSRIs for depression. Metformin for diabetes. Benzodiazepines for anxiety. Each one a white flag waving not at disease, but at the cause of disease. We’ve built an entire economy around managing symptoms while the root cause metastasizes in plain sight.
Here’s the dirty secret: The system profits from your ongoing sickness. Not from your cure.
A cured diabetic patient no longer buys insulin. A person whose depression lifts through nutritional restoration no longer needs psychiatric medications. Someone whose anxiety dissolves when they eliminate inflammatory foods stops visiting specialists. But a person who “manages” their disease? That’s a customer for life.
We’ve been sold a narrative: “Sickness is normal. Decline is inevitable. The best we can do is manage it.”
Madison Avenue has made us comfortable with this lie. Pharmaceutical companies sponsor health segments that normalize disease. We celebrate “awareness” campaigns that do nothing but expand the population of medicated patients. Your doctor tells you at 45, “Your cholesterol is high, that’s just genetics,” and everyone nods as if genetic destiny is something separate from the choices you make every single day.
The medical model isn’t wrong; it’s incomplete. Yes, manage acute disease. Yes, use medications when necessary. But why are we not also asking: What caused this disease in the first place?
My own family didn’t ask. They accepted it.
In 2009, I was headed toward the same path everyone around me was walking. My father died of a heart attack. My brother struggled with diabetes. My extended family cycled through the standard diseases of the modern world hypertension, kidney issues, metabolic disorders. We talked about it as if it were written in our DNA, as immutable as our eye color.
Then something shifted. I made a decision that people around me thought was extreme, even dangerous: I chose to eat nothing that wasn’t made by Mother Nature. I eliminated the 5 Slow Poisons from my life completely. And I watched, documented, measured, and tracked what happened.
My cholesterol didn’t just improve. It normalized. My energy didn’t just increase. It became abundant. My mental clarity, my emotional stability, my physical strength all of it reversed direction.
But here’s the part that keeps me up at night: I’m not special. I’m not genetically superior. I simply stopped normalizing sickness and started questioning the foods that caused it.
What if everyone did?
SECTION 2: THE MIND-BODY CONNECTION
It’s All the Same Energy System
When you say you have “mental health” and “physical health,” you’re speaking a fiction. There is no separate mental realm running parallel to your body, making independent decisions about your wellbeing.
There is only one energy system.
Your brain consumes 20% of your body’s energy, despite being only 2% of your body weight. It is the most demanding, most sensitive organ you possess. And we’ve convinced ourselves that we can feed it dead food, refined sugars, inflammatory oils, processed chemicals and expect it to produce clarity, emotional stability, and resilience.
This is madness.
Let me be specific about the 5 Slow Poisons and what they actually do to your mind:
REFINED SUGAR: The Dopamine Destroyer
Every refined sugar hit triggers a dopamine rush followed by a crash. That crash isn’t just physical lethargy, it’s neurochemical despair. Your brain, which evolved to seek energy (calories), has been hijacked by a substance that mimics that ancestral drive while leaving you neurologically depleted.
This is the mechanism of modern depression. Not a serotonin deficiency that magically appears. A created deficiency through repeated dopamine dysregulation. Sixteen years ago, my moods were unstable, subject to the cycles of blood sugar and the boom-bust of refined carbohydrates. Now? My mood is steady because my brain’s fuel supply is stable.
REFINED SALT: The Stress Amplifier
Processed salt isn’t just about blood pressure (though that matters). It’s about your nervous system’s ability to regulate stress. Excess refined sodium keeps your body in a low-level inflammatory state, which means your nervous system is perpetually on alert. Anxiety, you’ve been told, is a psychological problem. Wrong. It’s often a physiological response to your body being bathed in inflammatory substances.
PROCESSED OILS: The Inflammation Highway
Vegetable oils, seed oils, the industrial byproducts we call “healthy alternatives” these are gateway drugs to systemic inflammation. Inflammation isn’t just something you feel in your joints. Brain inflammation is silent inflammation. It’s the mechanism beneath depression, anxiety, attention disorders, and cognitive decline. When I stopped consuming processed oils, my mental fog lifted within weeks. Not because of placebo. Because my brain could finally function without chronic inflammatory attack.
DAIRY: The Energy Thief
Pasteurized, processed, chemically altered milk products create inflammation and mucus accumulation in the body. The result? Lethargy. Your body is using energy to process the inflammatory response instead of fueling your mind. Emotional numbness, lack of motivation, the sense that you’re moving through the world in slow motion these are often dairy’s calling cards. Remove it, and watch what returns: motivation, clarity, emotional presence.
GRAINS: The Blood Sugar Rollercoaster
The constant grain-induced blood sugar spikes keep your brain in a state of metabolic stress. Your neurotransmitters fluctuate wildly. Your ability to focus becomes impossible. Your emotional regulation breaks down. This is not a weakness. This is physiology. Replace refined grains with the foods your body actually evolved to thrive on, and watch concentration return, anxiety diminish, focus crystallize.
The Living Experiment: My 16-Year Proof
I don’t ask you to believe this theoretically. I’m offering you 16 years of documented evidence.
In December 2009, I was a man living inside a declining body. I didn’t call it “normal aging.” I thought the afternoon crashes were just how life worked. I thought the occasional brain fog was the cost of being alive. I thought my emotional stability was subject to external circumstances beyond my control.
I was wrong on all counts.
When I eliminated the 5 Slow Poisons and committed to eating only what Mother Nature provides fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, in their raw, living state something unexpected happened. Not just physical transformation (though that came: weight optimization, muscle tone, cardiovascular strength). But mental resurrection.
The clarity came first. Within weeks, I noticed it. The fog that I’d assumed was permanently lifted. I could think. I could create. I could write poetry with precision I hadn’t experienced in years. My mind felt sharp, present, alive.
Then came emotional stability. I realized that what I’d normalized as “just how I am” mood fluctuations, occasional depression, background anxiety wasn’t my personality. It was my physiology screaming for the right fuel. Remove the toxins, provide the energy, and watch the person emerge who was always underneath.
The athletic achievements came as a byproduct. My first marathon at 56, now my seventh completed and eighth in training. Not because I “got healthy” in some abstract way. But because when your energy system is running on premium fuel, your body responds. My joints move without pain. My recovery is rapid. My performance improves with age instead of declining.
But here’s what matters more than any metric: My mind is mine again. Fully present. Fully engaged. Not fighting against a body that’s drugging itself with inflammatory foods.
This is what wellness actually looks like. And it’s not rare. It’s what’s supposed to be normal.
SECTION 3: WHAT WE’RE NORMALIZING
The List of “Normal” That Isn’t
Let me name what you’ve learned to accept as inevitable:
The 3 PM energy crash. You blame your job, your sleep, your metabolism. You reach for another coffee, another sugar hit. But you’re not tired because of external circumstances. You’re tired because you’ve been feeding your brain processed carbohydrates and inflammatory oils that cause your blood sugar to spike and crash. This isn’t normal. This is malfunctioning.
Chronic anxiety. We’ve created a vocabulary for it: “I have anxiety.” As if it’s a permanent resident of your soul. But anxiety is often your nervous system’s response to your body being in a state of chronic inflammation. Remove the inflammatory triggers (the 5 Slow Poisons), and watch your anxiety dissolve. It’s not that you learn to “manage” it better. It’s that the cause disappears.
Depression. We’ve medicalized sadness, pathologized grief, and created a category of “mental illness” for what is often a nutritional crisis wearing an emotional mask. I’m not dismissing chemical depression. But I’m asking: How many people taking SSRIs could resolve their depression by eliminating refined sugar and processed oils? How many would never need the medication if we’d addressed the root cause?
Brain fog. The inability to think clearly, to organize thoughts, to remember. We’ve normalized this as “just getting older” or “information overload.” But your brain isn’t overcrowded. It’s undernourished and inflamed. Give it clean fuel for 30 days, and watch clarity return.
Inability to focus. ADHD diagnoses skyrocket. Children are medicated. Adults buy nootropic supplements. But what if the inability to focus is simply the result of eating foods designed to destabilize your blood sugar and inflame your brain? This isn’t a disorder. This is predictable physiology.
Emotional numbness. The sense that you’re going through life on autopilot, that nothing quite touches you, that joy feels distant and muted. This is what happens when your body is in a state of chronic energy depletion. When every calorie you consume is being diverted to handle inflammation and toxin processing, there’s nothing left for genuine emotional presence. Restore your energy system, and watch life become vivid again.
Insomnia. We’ve created an entire pharmaceutical industry around sleep deprivation. But most insomnia is caused by digestive stress, blood sugar instability, and the body’s inability to enter rest mode when it’s processing inflammatory foods. Eat in alignment with your physiology, and watch sleep return naturally.
Physical pain that we assume is permanent. Joint pain. Back pain. Muscle soreness. We’ve learned to live with it, to stretch it away, to medicate it. But much of it is inflammation. And inflammation is a direct result of your food choices. I know people in their 70s moving through the world with less pain than people in their 40s. The difference? Their fuel source.
THE REFRAME
Here’s what I want you to hear: These aren’t your personality traits. They’re not incurable conditions. They’re symptoms of an Energy System Malfunction.
And a malfunctioning system can be restored.
The foods you eat are either building your energy or depleting it. There is no neutral. There is no “balanced” consumption of inflammatory poisons. Every refined sugar, every processed oil, every pasteurized dairy product, every refined grain is a choice to operate your body with suboptimal fuel.
Most people make that choice unconsciously, having never considered that another option exists.
I’m here to tell you: It does.
SECTION 4: THE REVERSIBILITY
Your 16-Year Living Experiment
I’m not asking you to believe in the abstract power of plant-based raw food. I’m offering you measurable reality.
In 2009, my blood work reflected the standard decline: elevated cholesterol, markers of inflammation, early indicators of metabolic dysfunction. The hereditary path was clear. This was my future, or so everyone told me.
By 2011, after less than two years of eating exclusively plant-based raw food, my medical markers had normalized. Not marginally improved. Normalized. My cholesterol settled into the range that cardiologists report seeing in perhaps 5% of their patients.
But the physical metrics, while remarkable, weren’t the revelation.
The revelation was mental.
I noticed it first in small ways. I’d be writing something I’ve always loved and suddenly I could hold complex thoughts. I could move between poetic metaphor and scientific precision without my mind fragmenting. I felt sharp in a way I’d forgotten was possible.
Then came the emotional shift. I realized I’d been living for decades with a baseline of anxiety I’d accepted as “just who I am.” It wasn’t. It was my physiology. Remove the inflammatory trigger, and the anxiety dissolves. Not through meditation or therapy (though those have value). Through the simple act of eating foods designed to nourish, not deplete.
The energy this is what most people don’t expect. Raw plant-based food provides bioavailable energy that processed foods can’t match. Your body doesn’t have to work to extract nutrition. It doesn’t have to mount an inflammatory response. It simply receives fuel in a form it evolved to use. The result? Abundant energy. Not the artificial spike-and-crash of caffeine or refined sugar. Steady, sustainable, reliable energy.
At 50, I ran my first marathon. My family thought I was experiencing a midlife crisis. But I wasn’t rebelling against decline. I was experiencing what was supposed to be normal all along: A body that moves, responds, endures.
Now, a decade later, at 66, I’m training for my eighth marathon. My recovery time is rapid. My cardiovascular system performs better than it did in my 50s. My mental clarity allows me to write, create, think at levels most people reserve for their 30s.
But here’s what I notice most: I’m not fighting against my body. I’m not managing disease. I’m not accepting decline as the cost of living. I’m simply living as a human body is meant to live with abundant energy, mental clarity, emotional stability, and freedom from the constant low-level pain and dysfunction we’ve learned to call “normal.”
The aha moment didn’t come on a specific date. It was gradual. It was watching a close friend diagnosed with diabetes, knowing exactly what caused it (the 5 Slow Poisons), and watching that person choose medication over food change. It was seeing my brother continue down a health decline path similar to our father’s, despite having documented proof that another option existed. It was realizing that most people aren’t actually sick because they have to be. They’re sick because they’re eating foods designed to make them sick and they’ve normalized the sickness to the point where wellness feels extreme.
That’s when I understood: The real revolution isn’t in the food. It’s in the willingness to question what you’ve accepted as inevitable.
SECTION 5: THE CHOICE
From Normalized to Conscious
You’ve been conditioned to believe that sickness is inevitable, decline is natural, and the best medicine is accepting what you cannot change.
This is a lie.
It’s a profitable lie. For pharmaceutical companies, for food manufacturers, for the medical establishment that has learned to manage disease more than prevent it. But it’s a lie nonetheless.
Every generation of humans before the last 100 years lived without this epidemic of chronic disease. Not because they had better genetics. Not because they had magic pills. But because they ate foods that Mother Nature provided, and their bodies responded with health.
We haven’t become genetically weaker. We’ve become nutritionally poisoned. And we’ve normalized the poisoning to the point where wellness looks like madness and disease looks like natural aging.
Here’s what I know after 16 years: The plant-based raw food lifestyle isn’t the extreme. The processed food diet is the extreme. We’ve just normalized it so thoroughly that we’ve reversed the paradigm in our minds.
Let me be clear: I’m not asking you to adopt this lifestyle for spiritual reasons or moral superiority. I’m asking you to consider it for the most selfish, practical reason possible: Because you deserve to experience what your body is actually capable of when it’s properly fueled.
You deserve mental clarity that isn’t interrupted by afternoon crashes.
You deserve emotional stability that isn’t held hostage to blood sugar fluctuations.
You deserve energy that sustains you throughout the day.
You deserve to move through your body without pain.
You deserve to think, create, and engage with your life at full capacity.
None of this requires a genetic lottery. None of this requires luck. It requires one thing: The willingness to question what you’ve been taught to accept.
When you remove the 5 Slow Poisons and eat exclusively from what Mother Nature provides, your body has one response: It thrives. Not slowly. Not marginally. Dramatically.
Your mental fog lifts. Your anxiety diminishes. Your depression dissolves. Your energy skyrockets. Your joints move freely. Your mind becomes sharp.
This isn’t a wellness fantasy. This is how your body is supposed to function.
CLOSING: RECLAIMING YOUR ENERGY
Here’s the question I want to leave you with: What sickness have you accepted as permanent that could actually be reversed?
Maybe it’s the chronic fatigue that you’ve made peace with. Maybe it’s the depression that you’ve learned to “manage.” Maybe it’s the anxiety that you’ve normalized as your baseline personality. Maybe it’s the brain fog that you’ve attributed to aging or stress.
What if none of it is permanent?
What if the energy you’ve surrendered to disease is actually waiting to be reclaimed?
Sixteen years ago, I made a choice that people around me thought was extreme. I decided to eat nothing that wasn’t made by Mother Nature. I documented what happened. I watched my physical markers normalize. I watched my mental clarity return. I watched my energy become abundant.
And I’ve spent these 16 years watching others around me continue down the path of disease management, all while proof exists that another option is possible.
This is my invitation to you: Stop normalizing sickness. Start questioning the foods that caused it.
Your 16-year transformation awaits. Not because I’m special. But because your body, properly fueled, is capable of extraordinary things.
Life is Energy. Energy is Life. And your energy is waiting to be restored.
Want to take the first step?
If this resonates with you, if you’re ready to question the sickness you’ve accepted as inevitable, I invite you to:
- Explore the Evidence. My 21 years of documented medical transformation is real, measurable, and publicly available.
Your energy is waiting. The question is: Are you ready to reclaim it?
Life is Energy. Energy is Life. If it’s not made by Mother Nature, it’s not going on my plate.
– Axay Shah
Raw Food Guru
RawFoodiest.com
