In 2003 I went to a presentation by Dr Fuhrman for his book **Eat to Live**, which had just been released.

He presented this simple formula which defines how our health is related to the nutrient density of our diet:

H = N/C (Health = Nutrients/Calories)

It made so much sense to me! I was fascinated by how he was treating his patients with a nutrient dense diet and seeing incredible results.

Since that presentation, my interest for **lifestyle medicine** only grew and since then I have learned about many wonderful doctors and their incredible work. This article would be very long if I were to mention all of them, they are all very special and their contributions to healthier lives have been huge.

I'm ending the #coilgratitudechallenge expressing my gratitude for all the plant based doctors that are transforming health care through lifestyle medicine, but I'd like to extend a special mention to two incredible neurologists that I respect immensely for the evidence based work they are doing and for the important message they are spreading:

“Making changes in your lifestyle can have a huge impact on your mental capacity and minimize risk of Alzheimers and dementia.”

Meet *Dr. Dean* and *Dr.* *Ayesha Sherzai*, aka Team Sherzai:

A unique husband and wife team on the cutting edge of brain science, Dr. Dean and Dr. Ayesha Sherzai are dedicated to educating people on the simple steps to long-term health and wellness through their work as Directors of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Program at Loma Linda University Medical Center, with patients, as well as through online writing, videos, and books.

I am very grateful for all I have learned through the work done by Team Sherzai. I read their book, The Alzheimer's Solution, which gave me great insight about all the nuances of this sad disease, but also armed me with tools to prevent it.

We all have a family member or know someone struggling with cognitive decline. Unfortunately there is no treatment to cure Alzheimer's disease, but fortunately there is a lot we can do to prevent it.

Cognitive decline does not happen overnight, but rather over many years, way before symptoms start to present. The damage is silent and that's why it is so important to take action early in our lives while our brains are still functioning well.

I personally have a loved one going through cognitive decline and can affirm from first hand experience that once the decline starts, it is so, so much harder to get the person to understand and make the lifestyle changes that can help slow down the progression of the disease.

The time to make changes is when our brains are healthy and we can understand the impact of the changes.

The *NEURO* *plan* by Team Sherzai:

N – Nutrition: Adopting a balanced, plant-based diet leads to maximum mental proficiency.

E – Exercise: Daily exercise, simple movements and stretching increases life expectancy and boosts mood.

U – Unwind: Unwinding and developing ways to alleviate stress optimizes overall health.

R – Restore: Restorative sleep cleanses the brain of unhealthy chemicals and is vital to brain health.

O – Optimize: Optimize cognitive capacity by focusing on activities that are driven by your purpose.

I cannot recommend the Team Sherzai's book enough, it's one of those books that should be a required reading for everyone.

They also have a very informative podcast: Brain Health and Beyond

Thank you Dr. Dean and Dr. Ayesha Sherzai!!

Cintia

Header image is from the Team Sherzai's website: https://teamsherzai.com/

All images on this article are from the Team Sherzai's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teamsherzaimd/

Discovering a whole food plant base lifestyle and incorporating what I call **cooking-therapy** into my life is the focus of my 3rd week of the #coilgratitudechallenge.

Cooking has been my form of meditation, my time to unwind after a stressful day at work, my time to stimulate my creativity by experimenting with new ingredients and by assembling beautiful bowls of colorful and healthy foods.

ooking-therapy!

Until some years ago I was a very tentative cook, I could cook meals following recipes, but if I had to tweak the end results I was never sure which spices I should use and how they would affect the flavor. I relied on store bought sauces and dressings, and wouldn't even know where to start if I had to cook something from scratch on my own.

I had always been into vegetarian dishes and never too crazy about meat but knew very little about vegan food, I had always thought of it as a very restrictive way of eating where no animal products are used. But that changed on Christmas 2011 when someone from my family got me the book “Blissful Bites” by Christy Morgan.

I was instantly intrigued by the simple recipes with short lists of ingredients even though some of the ingredients were not familiar to me. I decided to try a couple recipes from that colorful book and instantly fell in love with those new-to-me flavors.

From there I started to buy other vegan books, try new recipes with more new ingredients and little by little learned how to cook some incredibly delicious vegan dishes.

I realized this type of eating offered way more variety than my traditional diet, instead of being what I thought would be a restrictive style of eating. Not only were there so many interesting new ingredients, but also interesting new ways of combining old familiar ingredients that I hadn't thought of before.

I also learned that vegan doesn't necessarily means healthy as many might think, there are tons of heavily processed vegan products on the shelves claiming to be healthy items; my husband and I call them non foods because they have no nutrition whatsoever. I learned that there is a big difference between a vegan dish and a whole food plant based dish, which can be made with really simple ingredients and yet be incredibly delicious and nutritious. Combining any type of grains with any type of beans and some veggies is one of my favorite things to do on busy days: it's easy, simple, nutritious and delicious.

On social media I had the pleasure of meeting Dreena Burton, a vegan cookbook author/recipe developer, and was introduced to the fun world of recipe testing for cookbooks under development! Since then, I have done recipe testing for 6 books and 3 ebooks, it's **a lot** of cooking! **Plus it's a lot of fun!**

Not only have I gained an amazing hands-on opportunity to become a better cook, but I now have an immense appreciation for cookbook authors. When we buy cookbooks, we don't realize how much work happens behind the scenes before the recipes are released!

These are some of the cookbooks for which I helped test recipes (I am currently recipe testing for Dreena's upcoming cookbook)

All that exposure made me become really fascinated by the power of a **whole food plant based lifestyle**. I met some wonderful people in the plant based community that are really making a difference. It's so great to see them helping others have a better life based on food choices! I have witnessed people transforming their lives for the better, having more energy, less pain and more health, which led them to more happiness. It's just wonderful.

The last few months have been so difficult for everyone, I am so grateful for how my **cooking-therapy** helped me disconnect a bit from reality and gave me a chance to recharge and feel strong to get through this difficult time. Doing something we love and putting our focus into positive things has been more important than ever!

Cintia

I was born in Brasília, capital of Brazil.

Brasília is a planned city, the architecture is very modern and the center part of the city is shaped like an airplane as shown on this map:

If you fly over Brasília nowadays with someone that knows the city, that person can easily point out where the wings and the body of the airplane are, but if you are seeing Brasília for the first time, you will likely not immediately find where the airplane is because the city grew quite a lot, expanding around the original airplane area.

Brasília was inaugurated in 1960; my dad used to be a political correspondent for a large Brazilian newspaper called “O Estado de São Paulo” and moved to Brasília a couple years before the inauguration to cover the events from the new capital of Brazil.

I was born in 1964, I am part of the first generation of people born in Brasília, we are a mix of Brazilian culture, a mix of people that came from all over the country to build the new city.

Until my early teenage years it was a very unique thing to be born in Brasília as there weren't that many people born there yet, I remember people would always say something like “really?” when I mentioned I was born there.

There wasn't much to do in the city back then other than get the family all dressed up, drive around, let the kids enjoy the outdoors and take pictures.

Almost every Sunday my dad would drive us to a square in the center of the city where we would eat popcorn, walk around, play a bit, pose for pictures and then go back home.

Finding the first popcorn cart always deserved a happy dance. Ahhh... simple pleasures!

Sometimes other relatives and/or friends would join us for that special popcorn moment.

Sometimes we would save some popcorn, drive to the area where the Brazilian Congress is located and feed the swans in a small lake by the Government buildings. If you ask anyone from my generation if they've fed the swans by the Congress when they were kids, you will very likely hear a yes!! It was the cool thing to do. Unfortunately I couldn't find any pictures featuring the swans, but this is the little lake.

Some days we would stick around and wait for the President to come down the ramp from his office at the Presidential Palace, there were some scheduled days for that event and the population would gather to watch him.

President who? What’s a President? Can we please leave soon so I can get my yummy popcorn?

Ahhh... finally back to my happy place, popcorn bliss!

For the #coilgratitudechallenge this week I'm expressing my gratitude for having had the opportunity to grow up in a place and time where the simple things in life were the norm and were enough. It was so special because it was absolute peace.

Modern lives have become so busy that the new norm is the need for reminders that family time and slow down time are so very precious.