I enjoy restaurants that make effort in providing healthy and natural dishes. Stevie Ray’s Eastside Grill is one of the few mainstream restaurants that put forth this effort.

It’s “mainstream” because it’s not another Adams Mountain Cafe, Dale Street Cafe, Gertrudes or Olive Branch. In other words, it doesn’t appear to cater specifically to health nuts. You can order fish and chips or burgers like most other American food restaurants, but it’s not some disgusting MSG laden chain like Applebees, Red Robin, TGIF or others similar. Even my son who has an arsenal of food allergies can eat the burgers from the kids menu.

The restaurant is very family oriented with old classic cartoons beaming from television sets around the dining hall to the model trains that circle above your head. It also has a classy feel, which is unusual for family restaurants and gives this eating locale a character and charm of its own.

Instead of bringing out the typical complimentary oily GMO chips and salsa or fatty flavored fries, it’s a plate full of crunchy carrot sticks with dressing to dip them in. When you order regular fries, it’s potato strings, oil and salt. You can ask for healthy options when ordering and the waitresses and waiters are quick with their answers which I take as a queue that they are asked these questions often and the restaurant is becoming more known in the circles of natural food eaters as an enjoyable outing.

They offer an interesting burger that most people might first wince at. Imagine a bacon burger with peanut butter instead of ketchup. Don’t laugh. Think about oriental food – Chiang Mai steaks, or Szechuan Beef – and you’ll recall the combination of nutty and meaty timbre throughout the meal. The burger seems to be one of the local favorites because of its unique yet pleasing flavor.

I had the fish tacos, which was probably one of the lesser items on the menu. Even the side condiments were sad in appearance and texture. The owner of the restaurant seems attentive and desirous of his customer’s comments but was busy waiting on tables so I left a comment on their cards for him to get to later. I was thinking today of what could have made the fish tacos great and thought up some points on how to improve them. That’s what the next blog will be about.

For now, do better than me and if you order something that you don’t like, tell the waitress or waiter and have it fixed. These are not the type of chefs that would spit in your food like those who work in other places (especially chain or snobbish restaurants – and there are plenty of horror stories out there that are too disgusting to mention). These are chefs and employees who work closely with the cheerful owner who takes humble honor in running his business.

I give it four and a half out of six forks.

Today I pulled a hair from my head. It was a color that, until this year, had been foreign to my scalp – it was grey. But it wasn’t fully grey. One third of the hair was grey, one third was a deep brown brown and the middle third was a transition. It measured 9 centimeters. What made this hair unique is that there was an equal amount of grey to brown.

I wanted to find out if there was anything that could have caused my hair to turn Grey besides age and the best way to determine that was to find out what point in time my hair started turning grey.

First, I needed to determine how much time this hair had been growing, then I could divide that time to find out roughly at what point my hair started turning grey. Next I needed to check the calendar and recall specific events that occurred during that point in time.

It turns out hair grows at a rate of 1.25 centimeters a month. Doing the math, the hair had been growing for about 7.5 months. Since it’s grey segment started transitioning 2/3 of that time back it meant that 5 months ago, right at Memorial day, is when the transition began.

A few days before last Memorial Day I ruptured a disk in my back between L4 and L5. Although I had degenerative disk disease since January of this year, it wasn’t until just before Memorial Day that a certain incident caused the pain to become unbearable. I went through a series of doctor visits, tests and therapy along with taking irregular doses of Ibuprofen, aspirin, fish oil, and a Glucosamine, Chondroitin, MSM complex.

I don’t know if it has any significance but I wanted to consider some other variables.

During this time I remember being under a considerable amount of stress at work and was overall unhappy with life. All major areas were sources of stress. We kept falling back into debt because of laziness, the relationships with my wife and children were decaying because of long work hours, I wasn’t sleeping or eating properly, and wasn’t relying on God or spending quiet time with Him. If there is such a thing as a biorhythm, I was spent on every level.

The only other factor I can think of involves some terrible fits of sneezing, headaches and itchiness caused by an onset of allergies that lasted from late July to mid October.

I admit that I first thought of the back problems to be the cause; I don’t know what signals a pinched nerve distorts. That idea quickly went away when I searched for “ruptured disk grey hair” and immediately saw a trend in the results. Most of the websites that came back mentioned copper deficiency. That’s not all. There was another page that identified a relationship with grey hair and bone density. Studies at the Maine Center for Osteoporosis Research indicated that if at least half your hair turns grey before you turn 40, you had four times greater chance for showing low bone density compared to others who grey after 40.

Interestingly enough, lack of copper causes the mood to swing downward. It also causes the reproductive system to shift off balance in a way that can cause more nasal infections and sensitivity to fungus.

So if this has merit then increasing copper and calcium in my diet can possibly reverse the grey hair and strengthen my back. Before going down that road I wanted to check out other issues. First, what are the risks of increasing copper? Is there such a thing as copper poisoning? There is, and there is a risk of zinc depletion when copper is in excess. http://www.drlwilson.com/articles/copper_toxicity_syndrome.htm has some good details on the benefits and problems with copper. OK – so now we need a copper, calcium and zinc supplement.

Vegetarian diets contain high amounts of copper – particularly leafy greens.

I still have some unanswered questions. What other nutrients, when lacking, increases the risk of slipped or ruptured disks? What nutrients are depleted from the body to heal the disk? What other nutrients, when lacking, increase depression or stress and what nutrients are depleated when someone is under depression or stress? Finally apply these same questions to allergies. I’ve learned that the grey hair, the slipped and even ruptured disk, the allergies and depression are actually symptoms and not diseases. Rather than buying a bottle of hair color, Advil, Benadril or antidepressants – all designed to cover up the problem – I’m eyeing that cup of fresh wheat grass juice, black tahini spread and a slab of lamb liver. Cure the disease; don’t cover up the symptoms.

Other links of interest:
“When I turn up the raw heat (so to speak) I have seen my grey hairs completely go away.” (Raw foodist diet is high in copper)
http://www.giveittomeraw.com/forum/topic/show?id=1407416%3ATopic%3A88854

“there should be very little of these strength of elastin tissue diseases such as aortic, abdominal, or thoracic aneurysm, hemorrhoids, and slipped disc among people who eat a lot of shellfish.” (food with high copper content)
http://charles_w.tripod.com/copper3.html

“Some symptoms of a copper deficiency: Allergies, Anemia, Dry Brittle Hair, Heart Disease, Hypo and Hyper Thyroidism, Osteoporosis, Parasites, Ruptured Disc, White or Gray Hair, and Wrinkled skin.”
http://www.biophysica.com/copper.htm

“Ragweed [allergies], for example, is generally indicative of a phosphate/potash imbalance, but, more specifically, it indicates a copper problem.”
http://www.soilminerals.com/information.htm

October 1st is World Vegetarian Day. It started in 1977 to bring awareness of the benefits of living a vegetarian life style ranging from the treatment of animals to health importance.

Other than veggies I enjoy a good fish, which technically makes me a pescitarian. I’m not disturbed by bear rugs or mink coats but get ill at the taste of most meat (in the past it tasted like cardboard), though I’m a glutton for just about anything cheese-related.

Cheese-loving occasional-fish-eating mostly-vegetarian people unite!