So, what, if you aren't exactly sure, is the raw foods diet? First, it is more of a lifestyle, such as vegetarianism or veganism, in which you must subscribe to it indefinitely. Secondly, most raw foodists are or have become vegans and vegetarians by eliminating meats, dairy foods, and any other animal products that cause their bodies allergy or digestive issue.

Eating nutrient and enzyme rich foods almost exclusively, gives your body the opportunity to process foods better, maximize function, and eliminate wastes more efficiently. This, in turn, cuts down on the amount of short term bodily allergies, intolerances, and conditions you may have, as well as aids in the prevention of many chronic diseases and afflictions. Even degenerated, cancerous cells can potentially be reversed back to normal cellular function by utilizing specialized enzyme-active nutritional substances and select vegetable and fruit hydrogen acceptors. These enzyme-rich nutritional substances include: Saccharomyces cerevisiae live fluid yeast strain, raw crystallized (freeze-dried) red beets and red beet juice, raw blueberry juice, bromelain (pineapple enzyme), raw pineapple juice, raw red grapes, raw red cherries, carotene (specifically beta carotene).

Multiple Sclerosis is an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system of your body and results in mild to severe impairment of muscle control, balance, sight, and sensory perception. Basically, the substance in your brain and spinal cord that protects your nerves called myelin is destroyed and this leads to a mild to severe build up of scar tissue in one or both of the areas of your central nervous system (spinal cord and brain).

This, in turn, temporarily pauses or completely impedes some or all of the electrical messages being sent between the brain and the rest of the body.

Multiple Sclerosis affects approximately 400,000 people in this country alone, with most of its victims 2-3 times more likely to be women. Moreover, most people affected develop the condition between the wide range of teen years and age 50. Unfortunately, no known cause is apparent, although studies show a link between genetics and lifestyle factors such as diet, and no known cure has been developed.

So, where is the connection between what we eat and whether or not we develop Multiple Sclerosis? Though there is a lot of theory and not a lot of conclusive evidence of where MS comes from and why it affects who it affects and when, current research shows us that there is a valid and significant link between what our diets contain and a healthy functioning immune system.

Basically, your immune system needs a certain amount of intestinal bacteria – healthy bacteria – to be able to ward off disease and autoimmune deficiencies where your body starts attacking itself as if it were a virus itself. Without this healthy bacteria to train your system, your body becomes vulnerable to external bacteria, and vulnerable, therefore, to the diseases the deficiency can lead to-rendering your immune system weak.

What would make any one of us – adolescent to age 50 – more susceptible to a weak immune system? Just this: our systems do not consume enough foods containing healthy bacteria to act as antibodies when the real bacteria come in to cause weakening of our immune systems. These healthy bacteria are found only in raw foods, foods that have not been altered from their original, nutrient-rich, enzyme full state. Due to the fact that the standard American diet relies predominantly on animal fats, acidic dairy products, processed foods, and refined sugars, not to mention the scary effects of genetically modified organisms, our diets leave most of us without the intestinal healthy bacteria that our bodies need to ward off autoimmune deficiencies.

Digestion has long been considered one piece to the puzzle of overall human bodily health. With more and more research, scientists and doctors alike are finding that digestive health is really quite central to the whole working health of the human body. How we treat it, meaning how we feed it, is how healthy we will be and feel. Though there are many external and internal factors that can affect and shape how our immune system functions and reacts, there are some irrefutable digestive links to its health.

By choosing a diet that is rich in raw vegetables, fruits, grains, and seeds you will allow your digestion system to use the enzymes from these foods to use, eliminate, and store what it needs and doesn't in your system. These enzymes are not present in the other foods of the standard American diet, and without them, the intestinal bacteria needed for healthy digestion will not be present. With the presence of the healthy intestinal bacteria, new strains of bacteria will enter the body without your immune system knowing how to fight it-and will lead consequently, to autoimmune diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis.

Though the connection has only been loosely studied between Multiple Sclerosis and the raw food diet, it is quite clear that diet has a huge, if not exclusive, impact on the strength or weakness of our immune systems, and this is the deciding factor when dealing with pollution to our bodies.

By TTS Cofounder Botanical Chef Omid Jaffari