If you are unfamiliar to the raw foods movement, the basic principle is that vegetables and fruits contain huge amounts of essential vitamins, minerals, and enzymes needed for efficient digestion and overall bodily health. When we cook a vegetable or fruit, these vital ingredients are destroyed by about 50% of their original nutritional value. As a result, not only are our bodies given less vitamins and nutrients for storage and energy, but it also makes our bodies work much harder to digest these modified foods. Consequently, our bodies store what it cannot digest and these particles become poisons lodged in the organs, tissues, and blood of our bodies. This, in turn, leads to the malfunction and deterioration of many vital processes in our bodies, which become short term discomforts and also chronic conditions and diseases.

What is Parkinson's Disease exactly? Though you may have seen it in the media and heard vague translations of its symptoms and function are, you may not be sure exactly what it is and what characterizes it.

Roughly, one half million people are living with Parkinson's Disease in America today, with about 50,000 people per year contracting the disease. Though outside cases do exist, the probability of getting Parkinson's Disease increases with age, and with more people living longer these days, naturally more people are living with the condition.

Basically, what happens with this degenerative disease is that the nerve cells in your brain stop producing enough of the natural chemical, Dopamine, that makes communication from your brain to your muscles possible. Consequently, common symptoms of Parkinson's Disease are slight to severe shaking of your arms, legs, hands, or head, sometimes termed tremors, which are involuntary spasms induced by loss of muscle control. Moreover, other common symptoms in patients affected are balance issues, trouble walking, stiff muscles, and slowed overall movements. These symptoms get progressively worse, and can, in many cases, soon impair all speech and movement.

Unfortunately, as of late, studies have not found a cure for this debilitating and degenerative disease; though many patterns have been found in the occurrence of age as well as environmental factors such as diet and exercise.

Though Parkinson's Disease is still a mystery to many scientists, doctors, and specialists, research has yielded many interesting results as far as what may contribute to its prevalence as well as what may cause it to lead to degenerate cells in the body. One of these factors is diet. Below, we take a closer look at how the daily diet can contribute to the working condition of our brain's function, and what foods may be connected to neurological disorders and conditions, such as Parkinson's Disease.

Basically our brain's function is to be able to communicate with different parts of our bodies through cellular activity and electrical transmitter signals. If anything disrupts or impedes these central messages, our bodies cannot work properly, and the autoimmune deficiency will cause the damaged cells to treat our body's organs and tissue as disease itself, causing the common degenerative and progressive diseases such as Parkinson's Disease.

What causes this impairment of cellular activity both in the brain and then, consequently, in our nerve cells? Buildup of tissue in the central nervous system is typically the reason. What causes the buildup is improper utilization of foods and consequent function breakdown. The most common reason for wastes and other food byproducts to be used and distributed incorrectly is improper digestion. If we trace the causes of improper digestion, we come back to the standard American diet full of indigestible sugars, processed foods, saturated fats, and enzyme-deprived veggies and fruits.

Not only are we messing with our body's ability to digest efficiently, i.e., eliminate wastes, store nutrients, and convert foods to energy; but we are also depriving our bodies of key vitamins needed for proper health. The below vitamins have been studied to greatly disavow the early symptoms of Parkinson's Disease:

• Vitamin C: an antioxidant vital to the body's health, proven to slow the effects and progression of Parkinson's Disease.
• Vitamin E: an antioxidant shown to also impede degeneration of cells in this disease by actively protecting the brain's cells and function.
• B Vitamins: significant in maintaining brain function, through Dopamine production, cellular activity, brain circulation, and the overall protection of the brain.

The above referenced vitamins help with bodily health in a number of ways to prevent neurological disease and condition, by ensuring proper digestion and elimination of wastes in the body. They are also vitamins found most often and in the largest potencies in raw vegetables and fruits. So, raw vegetables and fruits are your best sources for disease-fighting vitamins and nutrients.

By TTS Cofounder Botanical Chef Omid Jaffari