The health benefits of a whole food based diet and Juice Plus+<sup style="font-size: .45em; vertical-align: top;">®</sup> make a difference for Dr. Mitra Ray

No one enjoys enduring the hardships of life but sometimes they help us find a greater purpose. Such was the case with Dr. Mitra Ray. She decided to study disease and nutrition because of her personal experience with medical hardship and learned the importance of a whole food based diet. She has since dedicated her life to sharing her knowledge of whole foods that prevent disease.

As a child growing up in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), India, Mitra Ray looked forward to bringing her father his morning cup of tea. But one Sunday morning was alarmingly different. Her father didn't look well − something was wrong. Mitra ran to her mother for help. It turned out he was having a heart attack. Fortunately, he survived, but the incident profoundly impacted young Mitra.

“As a 12-year-old, I pledged to become a doctor and save the world from heart attacks,” Dr. Ray says. “I needed to understand how my father had gone from being perfectly healthy one day to being in the emergency room the next. I decided to become educated about how the body works.”

Within a decade, she was attending Stanford University, where she received a Ph.D. in biochemistry. After graduating in 1991, Dr. Ray focused her research on degenerative diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's disease, supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the American Cancer Society. She was a rising research star, contributing important articles to several prestigious scientific journals, such as Science, The Journal of Cell Biology, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

There was one problem, however. In graduate school, Dr. Ray had developed debilitating neck spasms that sometimes left her bedridden for days at a time. Doctors weren't much help. They told her to take lots of ibuprofen and after following their advice, she developed an ulcer. There she was: a research biochemist working within the model of mainstream medicine, with health challenges that the model couldn’t adequately address.

Fortunately in 1994, someone introduced her to Juice Plus+. For Dr. Ray, the product made immediate sense. She had recently started to juice, so she was familiar with the benefits of whole-food nutrition from fruits and vegetables.

Within six weeks of starting her Juice Plus+ regimen, her physical therapist asked if she was doing something differently because she was beginning to heal. That very day, Dr. Ray made a decision to learn as much as she could about fruit and vegetable nutrition. She sent her technician to the library with a list of 200 different research papers to collect.

“I was amazed,” she shares. “Here I was, writing grants to study what I call the chaos of disease, and I said to myself, ‘Wait a second. You can prevent all of this in the first place if you just eat enough fruits and vegetables. The body is absolutely, positively designed to heal itself if given the right nutrients.’”

Dr. Ray realized that simple factors such hydration, exercise, and eating more fruits and vegetables are what keep us healthy. She also realized that these things might have prevented her father's heart attack that day − or have prevented the second heart attack that later killed him.

Today, Dr. Ray has left the research bench for what she believes is an even greater purpose: sharing what she has learned about health and wellness with the rest of the world. She holds health and beauty seminars in the United States, Canada, and Europe; is the author of two books: From Here to Longevity: Your Complete Guide for a Long and Healthy Life and Do You Have the Guts to be Beautiful?; and she passionately promotes Juice Plus+, along with other healthy diet and lifestyle habits.

“Living Life to the Plus+ means not just existing, but really taking advantage of our time on this planet,” says Dr. Ray. “So anyone who loves their life is Living Life to the Plus+.”