“Exercise is King, nutrition is Queen, put them together and you’ve got a kingdom.”

– Jack LaLanne

There’s more to life than protein

One of the very few downsides to living in a major city is the pollution. If you go downtown or into a highly crowded area you’re going to ingest a lot of smog. Millions of vehicles coupled with poor air circulation makes this unavoidable.

Thanks to all the smog I ended up with a terrible cough. I was always short on breath and constantly hacking up mucus. It was awful.

Rather than whining about my predicament and gobbling up medicine, I decided to change the way I ate. Since moving I haven’t juiced or taken any vitamins. In fact, I hadn’t even eaten as much fruit as I usually do back home.

Due to the fact that diet and health are closely related, I figured my eating habits might affect my illness.

Changes I made

To combat my cough, I started to eat more fruit and began juicing again. I didn’t do anything crazy, most of my juices were just simple orange and carrot concoctions. And most of the raw fruit I was consuming was very basic as well. Bananas, oranges, stuff like that.

In addition to this I continued going to the gym set up some fans in my apartment to get air circulating.

It wasn’t much, but it helped tremendously. While I haven’t completely beaten my cough, it has been waning. I’m no longer choking on mucus or feeling horrible.

A lot of times people make the mistake of assuming that being in-shape is the same as being healthy. You look at some of these bodybuilding diets and they consist of nothing but protein and oats. When you’re only focused on protein you’ll miss out on all the protective benefits that fruits offer.

I thought I was too cool to juice and I ended up horribly sick. Were I to have packed a travel blender and eaten my vegetables things would have went a lot differently.

According to a study published in Chest magazine:

“The diets and respiratory symptoms of 2,012 high school students were examined for one year. By the study’s end, researchers found that participants who consumed fewest amounts of antioxidant-rich foods were most likely to develop chronic bronchitis and other respiratory problems, such as asthma and wheezing.”

If you’re doing any travel to a developing nation or city with lots of pollution, like Los Angeles, you need to eat those fruits. They’ll keep you from developing serious respiratory problems.