Monday, March 22, 2010
stamina buildup 2
If you haven't exercised in years, it's important to see your doctor before starting any fitness program. Barring any acute health issues, your doctor will probably recommend you begin a well-rounded fitness routine for a healthy heart, strong bones and pain-free joints.
As a beginner, you will want to start slowly to avoid injury to your muscles and joints. While working out will make your body stronger, too much too soon can create soft- tissue injuries like tendonitis and sprains. To avoid injury, choose a lightweight, high-repetition strength-training routine for your legs, hips, shoulders, arms and back. Choose a weight or other form of resistance, such as resistance bands, that you can do 15 reps with good form before taking a break. After at least four to six weeks of consistently using the lighter weights, try upping the weight and lowering the reps.
For your cardio routine, choose a low-impact exercise such as walking, biking, swimming or stair climbing. These activities will help you boost your aerobic capacity and burn calories, and they're easier on your joints until you have the strength to safely do more high-impact training.
Balance, core and flexibility training are important precursors to more challenging activities and should be included in your fitness routine to help strengthen and support your joints. Pilates, yoga, and stability ball training are great choices for this type of training for both the novice and the experienced exerciser.
Keep in mind is how often you plan to exercise. While it is advisable to start slowly by choosing exercises that won't hurt your joints, the number of times you exercise each week needs to be fairly consistent for any positive change to occur within your body. If you have led an inactive lifestyle recently, try to work in at least 20 minutes of exercise each day. If you already lead a fairly active lifestyle—you take the stairs when you can, you often play outdoors with your kids, you are often on your feet and walking—then start by devoting 40 minutes to an hour three times a week to pure physical activity.
Tips on Building Stamina
By Jae Ireland
eHow Contributing Writer
Building your stamina is imperative to improve your performance in sports and fitness activities. If you feel like you are less than in peak shape, you may want to think about creating a fitness regimen in order to improve your stamina. The more you work, the more you'll be able to sustain your stamina and energy levels while participating in different sports, whether it be a simple game of pick up basketball, or running in a 5K. Here's how.
Training Session Habits
If you feel like you are out of shape and have no stamina whatsoever, you are going to need to employ a training regimen that will help you build up your stamina slowly. In order to make an activity a habit, you need to perform it at least 21 times, so in your stamina training, make sure you are diligent. Even if you don't particularly feel like training, you must do it, otherwise you will lose the stamina you've built up during previous training sessions. Whether you are running daily or hitting the elliptical, make sure to do it every day and be diligent about your routine.
Building Up Activity
As you train, you should start small and then work up to the activity level that will build the most stamina for you. You may start with a 20-minute workout, and each day increase your work out time by five minutes. Or you may start with one weight set, and increase your weight by 5 lbs. each week. Starting slowly will ensure that you not only have attainable goals, but you don't strain your body. You should build your activity level gradually until you reach the amount of stamina that you feel is acceptable.
Altitude Training
We all know that the higher you get in altitude, the thinner the air is, therefore the harder it is to train. Altitude training is the practice of performing your sport in a higher altitude than is necessary to train your lungs for better stamina. Many basketball teams have training facilities in Colorado and Utah, which help them to build stamina. To try altitude training, look up a hiking trail near you that is higher than where you live and normally train. Try to do your normal training routine. You'll most likely find it challenging at first, but after some training sessions, you'll notice that your stamina has been built up significantly.
Swimming is an all time great activity / exercise for heart health
When it comes to heart health, nearly all kinds of exercise are helpful; the trick is to do enough (30 minutes or so of moderate activity) often enough (nearly every day). Walking is often held up as the gold standard -- most people can do it, it's easy on the body, and it doesn't require any special equipment beyond a good pair of walking shoes. Walking isn't the only way to protect your heart and improve health, but it's the best option for the largest number of people.
More vigorous activities will improve health in less time than walking. The lion's share of research has focused on running because it's a logical extension of walking and because it's a popular form of exercise. Swimming, by comparison, has been a backwater of exercise research, with barely a trickle of studies over the years on swimming and heart disease. But a study published last year highlighted the health benefits of swimming.
Researchers compared blood pressure, cholesterol levels, maximum energy output and other measures of cardiovascular health across nearly 46,000 male and female walkers, runners, swimmers and couch potatoes. Swimmers and runners had the best numbers, followed fairly closely by walkers. As you might expect, people who didn't exercise had the highest weights and resting heart rates -- and the worst cholesterol levels and overall fitness.
What makes swimming so beneficial? For one thing, it gives the heart and other muscles a solid workout. This trains the body to use oxygen more efficiently, which helps bring down the resting heart rate and breathing rate. And because you use your arms, legs and all the muscle groups in between, swimming improves muscle strength and flexibility.
Water cushions the body, eliminating the kind of pounding associated with running. Because it's easy on the joints and muscles, swimming is often recommended for people who have arthritis and for those who are overweight. The resistance of water also allows you to work out vigorously with little chance of injury.
There's also a relaxing, meditative side to swimming. It can come with letting your mind drift as you focus on your breathing and your movements. This stress-busting ability makes the list of swimming's cardiovascular benefits even longer.
Best of all, swimming is an activity you can do across your life span, and you needn't give up it late in life. And it's never too late to learn how to swim or to brush up on strokes you learned as a child.
If you're a beginner or are getting back into swimming, start slowly with five to 10 minutes of smooth lap swimming. (For safety's sake, never swim alone.) As you get used to the exercise, and your strokes, kicks and breathing become more efficient, you'll be able to swim for longer periods. Mix up your strokes -- freestyle, backstroke, butterfly, whatever you can do. In addition to keeping your swimming routine fresh, the variety helps you work different muscles.
If you tire of doing laps, there are excellent aquatic alternatives to swimming. Try walking or running in water. It is far easier on the joints than walking or running on land but offers an equally good cardiovascular workout. Another option is water aerobics. This type of exercise is a staple at many community centers, YMCAs, schools and other facilities with pools.
Although swimming (and cycling, for that matter) can be great for the heart, lungs, blood vessels and muscles, your friend is right that it doesn't do much for the bones. While most body systems receive the maximum health benefit from aerobic forms of activity, bones are different. Stress, in the form of weight-bearing exercise, is necessary to stimulate the growth of new bone.
Any activity that works against gravity -- running, walking, playing soccer, weight lifting or dancing, for example -- can help build bone. Even daily activities such as stair climbing help, so you don't necessarily need to cut down on your swimming to fit weight-bearing exercise into your schedule. Talk to your doctor about what combination of activities makes the most sense for you.
One final note: Water leaches natural oils from your skin and hair, and chlorine compounds the problem. Wear a cap while you swim. Afterwards, wash your hair with a clarifying shampoo and apply a conditioner; look for products designed for use after sun or pool. Use a body wash or soap with bath oil, and then apply generous amounts of moisturizing body lotion. That way, you'll not only feel good, you'll look good, too!
How to Build Up Your Stamina in Three Days
By Ryan Angus
eHow Contributing Writer
Atheletes are usually concerned with building speed and strength, and with this focus it is easy to ignore another important "S": stamina. Stamina keeps the spring in your step---helping you sustain energy over long stretches of time. The two quickest ways to increase your stamina are building strength and increasing mileage (walking, running or biking). In this article we will look at exercises and workouts that you can do to safely and quickly increase stamina.
Difficulty: Moderately Challenging
Instructions
Things You'll Need:
* Bike (optional) Jump Rope (optional) Exercise Mat (optional)
Quickly Build Stamina
1. Step 1
Run in the morning, if possible, at a slow pace so that you can maximize your mileage. Morning running will give you energy through your day and will also help you burn more calories through the day; helping you to increase your stamina. If you cannot run, then walking or jogging is a good alternative.
2. Step 2
Strength train with weights if you have access to exercise equipment. This type of training is also best done in the morning if you have the time. If you do not have access to weights, a good alternative is to do push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups.
3. Step 3
Do speed work on a track or run hills to both increase your lung capacity and build strength in your leg muscles. These types of workouts are helpful because they are like a strength and cardio workout combined.
4. Step 4
Jump rope as a cross-training exercise to increase the amount of air taken in by your lungs. This is one of the most effective exercises for lowering your resting pulse and thereby increasing your stamina.
5. Step 5
Bike on the roads or the mountains to increase your stamina. Biking increases stamina by allowing you to work your heart and lungs for a longer, sustained amount of time than running. It is also a great way to build strong, lean legs.
6. Step 6
Start a daily yoga routine. Yoga can be a productive stamina building workout. It helps build long, lean muscles, increases lung capacity and fills you with energy.
7. Step 7
Eat healthy, energy packed foods. In general these are foods that are low in fat, mostly unprocessed, high in protein, and full of vitamins and minerals. Focus on fruits and vegetables, lean meats and whole grains.
Tips & Warnings
* Don't push yourself too hard. These workouts can build up your stamina slightly in three days, but larger increases in stamina take time. You will just be tired If you push too hard, instead of building up stamina..
Stamina Build up
5 Ways To Build Up Your Stamina
1. Do you look at little kids running around all the time and wonder where they get all that energy? Do you look at them and remember that you used to do that, or wonder if you used to do that?
2. All kids have stamina that goes on forever. However, as we age, most of us lose that stamina because we haven’t kept up with our health in any fashion, and the foods we eat affect us differently. As a child, if someone gave you a lot of sugar, you’d run like a wild person until you finally crashed. As an older person, you’d probably just crash and fall asleep after awhile.
3. Metabolism has a lot to do with how we process our foods. We can control parts of how our metabolism will work by getting into a workout routine that helps stimulate digestion, which is pretty much what metabolism is all about. Would you like to find the energy to do things that you haven’t felt like doing in a very long time? Here are some ways to regain a bit of that energy and stamina.
First, determine that you’re going to do something. This isn’t a physical tip, but a mental tip. Many people say they want to do something, then don’t do anything at all, or do it for a few days expecting results, and quit. If you really decide you want to do it, get yourself either a large notepad or a large calendar. List what you want to do on a daily basis, then do it. Every day you complete it, or a portion of it, mark it off your list. Set up a 30-day trial for yourself to see if you can do something at least 20 days. They say it takes doing something at least 16 times for it to become a habit you’ll miss; give it a shot.
2. Start off by walking. Walking is one of the best exercises in the world for most people. You can decide to either walk on a treadmill, or do outside and walk. Many people don’t like treadmills because after awhile, even if you have a TV or stereo, it feels boring. So, alternate between that and going outside for a walk. Start out walking at a pace you can handle, and try to get at least 15 minutes in. If you have a course of some kind, such as walking around your block in the neighborhood, that works well also. If you can find a place where it’s beautiful and scenic, such as a park or walking along a lake or river, even better. It helps you stay inspired and want to continue doing it over and over.
At some point, you’ll want to alternate between walking faster and walking slower. What you might try to do is find a place where you can walk at least 15 minutes in one direction. Try walking that one at a brisker pace than you normally would. Then, when you get to your marker, walk back at a slower, regular pace. If you can’t do 15 minutes of a hard walk, do as long as you can, then when you reach your limit turn around and walk normally; it all helps.
3. If you have a bicycle, and the seat doesn’t hurt too much, this offers a great cardio workout. The thing about a bicycle is that you can go so many more places than just walking, get there faster, and your legs move faster which gives you a better workout. Also, when you get a little bit tired, you can coast and you’re still moving forward, or back to where you want to do, with minimal effort. The important thing about biking is to make sure your body is comfortable; if not, you’ll quit pretty quickly.
4. There are plenty of other motion exercises that will help you gain more stamina. Some are a bit more intense, such as running and jogging, whereas others are a bit more sedate and easy to handle, such as yoga and tai chi. The thing here is that your body needs movement, steady movement, and whether it’s controlled or not, it’s movement and motion that helps you build up your stamina.
Many people buy pedometers to measure how many steps they take every day, and if you can shoot for at least 5,000 steps or more a day, your body will benefit from it. This is more of a cumulative type of exercising rather than getting it all in one burst, but you could view it in a way where you use the early part of the day just walking around, then later on try to find a way to get the rest of the steps in, even if it’s just another short walk of some kind.
5. You’ve got to change up your diet. Instead of telling you what to eat, we’ll tell you what drags you down. As you get older, the more carbs you eat without some kind of balance with protein and grains, the most apt you’re going to be to have energy sapped out of you. If you’ve noticed that when you eat certain meals you’re ready to go to sleep in the afternoon, that’s a pretty good indicator of the types of foods you might need to back off from.
Bread, especially white bread, will bring you down. Rice, potatoes, and pasta will shut you down. Too much sugar in something will shut you down also. The best things are more protein, leaner meats if you can, and vegetables. Some people will shut down if they eat too much fruit in the afternoon because it’s natural sweetener, fructose, is still sugar, something that vegetables don’t have in them. The most important thing here is to listen to your body, because even certain proteins will affect some people differently than others.
If you can try to follow each of these tips for at least a 30-day period, you might notice some very positive changes in your body that you like. Because, as you increase your stamina, you should also lose weight and inches off your body. And if that doesn’t inspire you to do more, we don’t know what will.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Heal yourself in 15 days (part twelve)
This isn't some etheric, touchy-feely self-help exercise, by the way: there is a very real healing effect that is initiated in your body when you express gratitude towards people or things outside of yourself. Some of this effect can be measured biochemically, while other aspects of it are currently beyond scientific measurement. But the bottom line is irrefutable: Expressing gratitude initiates a powerful healing effect in your own mind and body.
What do you have to be happy about?
Getting to this gratitude, however, isn't always so easy. Being able to genuinely express gratitude requires you to shift your focus away from the things that are negative and toward those things that you feel thankful for. And as you already know, it's very easy to forget to be thankful for all the amazing things we experience on a daily basis.Many of us living in western society tend to focus on what we don't have. We think we don't have enough money, we don't have enough time, we don't have the partner we're looking for and so on. And in that exercise -- which can frankly dominate our day-to-day thinking if we're not careful -- we tend to ignore those amazing things we do have. So the more we can step back and examine what we already experience that's valuable to us, the more we can focus on gratitude and the more we can accelerate our own inner healing as a result.
Here's a list of some of the things for which you may find plenty of gratitude:
• Your health. Even if it isn't perfect, you may be thankful for the health you have.
• Your family.
• Your freedoms (freedom of speech, etc.)
• Your intelligence, consciousness and awareness.
• Your memories! (Life without memories would be bizarre...)
• Sunshine and nature -- the great outdoors.
• Food and seeds, some of the many remarkable gifts from Mother Nature.
• Your job, business or career which provides the income you need.
• Your inquisitiveness and desire to learn new things.
• A spiritual awakening, or realization or philosophy that you follow.
• Your pets / animal companions.
In fact, if you think about, there are probably a great many things for which you can feel great gratitude -- the small plants in your window sill, the knowledge about health that you've accumulated through reading, and even the fact that the sun will indeed come up tomorrow.
Take a few moments and think about what you are thankful for. You may even wish to take a few minutes to jot down some notes for yourself.
Set aside just 60 seconds a day
With your list of those things you are thankful for, I'd like to invite you to set aside just one minute per day (or more, if you wish) to review that list, to verbalize your gratitude and to really take in your thankfulness for those things that you do have. Literally say it out loud: "I am thankful for the garden in my back yard and the opportunity to grow a small portion of my own food" for example.In just 60 seconds per day, if practiced daily, you will create an attitude of gratitude which will brighten your mood and uplift your day-to-day experience of life because it allows you to refocus your attention on those things you appreciate rather than those things you might despise.
And this, as I hinted at earlier, will result in a very real physiological and biochemical healing effect within your own body.
How gratitude becomes self-healing
Every type of energy that you express to someone else is reflected in your own inner experience. So if you express hatred toward some other person or subject matter, there is an element of that energy that is also expressed internally in that moment. To hate someone else is to subject yourself to some reflection of that own hate, in other words.At the same time, to love something else -- or to express thankfulness towards it -- causes a reflection of that positive energy to be felt inside yourself, too. So the mere act of expressing gratitude is a form of self-healing.
As a person who has written both positive and negative stories for many years, I am acutely aware of this dynamic. When I write negative stories for NaturalNews (critical stories), the energy that is reflected back is often negative in its tone, especially from the parties being criticized. But when I write positive stories, the energy that's reflected back to me is very positive.
You might wonder why, then, I still write some negative stories. The answer is that from time to time there are some injustices that are so extreme that I feel a need to expose them publicly even though I pay a personal price in terms of reflected negative energy. Even then, you've probably noticed a shift over the last several months where more stories here on NaturalNews are oriented toward the positive, because that's what I much prefer to write about. In fact, when there's an opportunity to write a positive story or do a positive product review, I actually feel a great sense of gratitude simply from the opportunity to do that. And that makes me feel good, too. So I'm practicing the same gratitude dynamics that I'm describing here in this article.
What's interesting about all this is something the Buddhists will tell you: In terms of self healing, it doesn't really matter what you express gratitude towards -- the positive feedback and effects on your own healing are still present. You could find a rock on a dirt path and express gratitude toward the rock and you'd still receive a measurable benefit from it.
You can, in fact, express gratitude towards any thing or any person in the world -- even if such gratitude is not necessarily justified -- and still experience the benefits of that gratitude in your own mental and physical healing. This even works if you express gratitude towards larger concepts like "life" or "God" or "the universe."
Anger cannot coexist with gratitude
Anger is a very destructive emotion because it causes stress, adrenal depletion and tension throughout the body. But you can learn to replace anger (or other negative emotions) with gratitude, and anger cannot coexist with gratitude.In this way, gratitude can begin to nudge out the other negative emotions you might be experiencing. This doesn't mean you have to run around blindly thankful for everything without discerning times when criticism or anger might be called for, but the more you can find the gratitude in everyday things, the more you'll activate and support your body's inner healing processes.
So start today and rediscover those things you feel gratitude towards. Express that gratitude either silently or verbally and enjoy the experience of that positive energy being reflected back at you.
Heal Yourself in 15 Days by eating MORE (not less)
But there's a catch, of course: It's not about eating more junk food, processed food or factory-made food. Eating more of that stuff would only promote more disease of course. It's about eating more of some specific foods and superfoods I'm going to share with you in detail right here.
The whole point of this "heal yourself by eating MORE" approach is to chill out and get away from the "avoid everything" trap that becomes a psychological obstacle for a lot of people who are trying to improve their health. The demands to avoid everything can seem intimidating and repetitive: Avoid cheese, avoid sugar, avoid diet sodas, avoid processed meat, avoid MSG, etc. For many people, the list of things to avoid becomes so large and confusing that they just give up trying to be healthier.
So I've advocated a totally different approach that's focused on eating more of the right kinds of things and worrying less about all the other stuff. You might call it a more balanced, relaxed approach to healthful living for a more mainstream audience.
But how does it work? How does eating MORE food actually help heal your body?
How eating more promotes real healing
Here's how: There's a physical limit of how much stuff you can eat in one day. So by adding certain healthy foods and aiming to achieve the goal of eating MORE of those foods, you will automatically end up dropping something else out of your diet without really trying.For example, one of the action strategies here is to aim to eat three whole fruits per day; one before each meal. So each day, I want you to consume a total of three whole fruits such as apples, pears, peaches, mangos, large plums, etc. But here's the key in all this: You must eat one whole fruit BEFORE each meal.
While you're following this strategy, I don't want you to worry about what to avoid. Eat whatever it is you normally eat, but add three whole fruits per day. (Not dried fruits. They must be fresh, whole fruits of a significant size.)
The reason this strategy works so well to improve your health is because by eating three whole fruits each day -- one before each major meal -- you will tend to crowd out the less healthful foods automatically, without any real effort and without worrying so much avoid what to avoid.
Let's say you eat at McDonald's each day, for example. And let's say you order a Big Mac, fries and a Coke for lunch each day (in which case it would be weird that you're even reading NaturalNews, but go with me on this...). Now, with this "eat more" principle in place, you precede each McDonald's meal with the consumption of a whole, fresh fruit. Two important things will happen:
#1) The fruit contains nutrients that will help protect you from the damaging ingredients of cooked foods, processed foods or chemical food ingredients. (Because fruits contain natural medicines.)
#2) The whole fresh fruit will take up more physical space in your stomach, making you feel full faster and causing you to stop eating the other stuff sooner. You may find yourself suddenly unable to finish your Big Mac and fries, for example. You may not even know why but then it hits you: Oh yeah, I ate the fresh fruit before this meal!
Naturally, I hope you choose organic fruit for this, but even if you don't, eating conventionally-grown fresh fruit is better than nothing!
Eat more superfoods
Here's another element in this strategy: I want you to eat a handful of superfood supplements each day, preferably before noon.By superfood supplements, I mean microalgae like chlorella, spirulina or food-based vitamins like those from Pure Synergy (this could be in the form of powder, tablets or capsules). So at some point each morning -- it could be after breakfast or before lunch -- I want you to swallow an entire handful of these superfood supplements (with water, of course). You may want to do this with food for the first few weeks, to get your body used to these nutrients arriving all at once.
Note: I am not recommending you swallow a handful of vitamins, many of which are made with synthetic chemicals. I'm talking about real food here -- superfoods in a supplement form.
Doing this will cause something else quite amazing to happen in your body: Unhealthy cravings will start to vanish. Within just 30 days, in fact, you may suddenly begin to notice that your cravings for unhealthful snack foods and carbohydrates begin to fade. You may no longer feel the need to eat the cookies, donuts, ice cream or fried foods that you were once drawn to.
Why does this work? Because many cravings are simply biochemical translations of your body's cry for nutrients. And superfood supplements fill your body with abundant nutrients that you might be missing. As your body realizes it's no longer deficient in crucial minerals and other micronutrients, your cravings are automatically turned off, putting YOU back in control over what you choose to eat.
Also, another benefit here is that eating the superfoods will displace something else in your diet (because you can only eat so much physical stuff in one day, remember?). So a mid-morning superfood habit will ultimately end up knocking something else out of your diet without even trying.
Eat more REAL salt
This one will shock many people. Some doctors swear this is bad advice, but that's only because they don't acknowledge the difference between real salt and processed "refined" salt. Refined salt is bad for you. Real, full-spectrum salt is good for you!Processed salt raises blood pressure and promotes disease. Full-spectrum salt, on the other hand, may actually have the opposite effect. One thing I've noticed over the years is that cravings for salty snack foods are often just cravings for full-spectrum salt.
When I crave snack foods, I've found that those cravings are 100% of the time dismissed by eating things like raw nuts rolled in full-spectrum salt. And the more you exercise, the more salt you lose from sweating so the more salt you need to replace. As a person who exercises regularly and drinks a lot of fresh veggie juice from my garden, I find myself frequently salt deficient. I actually have to add salt to my diet, and I do so by eating full-spectrum salt sprinkled over raw nuts (or I add salt to other foods I'm making).
See some full-spectrum salt products here:
http://store.naturalnews.com/index....
If you already exhibit symptoms of high blood pressure, don't add salt to your diet without removing some processed salt from it first. Check with your naturopathic physician on this matter. But if your blood pressure is normal, adding full-spectrum salt to your diet is generally considered remarkably safe.
Drink a fresh superfood smoothie each day
Here's the last item to add to your diet to improve your health: Drink a superfood smoothie each day.It doesn't even matter what time you drink it, really: Just find a way to add a full 8 oz. glass of freshly-squeezed fruits and vegetables to your daily intake of foods and beverages. I like to do this mid-morning, but you may enjoy it in the afternoon or evening, too. Some people drink it for breakfast.
The ingredients should be fresh produce only. Examples: Celery, parsley, cucumbers, apples, pears, watermelon, beets, kale, broccoli, berries and so on. You may add a natural sweetener such as stevia.
You'll need to make this juice yourself. The very best juicer for this is the amazing Hurom Slow Juicer that I've already recommended here on NaturalNews (http://www.naturalnews.com/028232_H...)
By doing this, you'll be adding a huge burst of living nutrients to your diet. This simple addition of a daily superfood smoothie will displace other things in your diet that aren't very healthy. This happens automatically, without any real effort on your part.
Alternatively, if you cannot make fresh juice each day, the next best thing is to drink a superfood product that you mix with water instead. There are many to choose from in this category. I've recommended Rejuvenate (http://www.naturalnews.com/028242_R...), Boku Superfood (http://www.naturalnews.com/024479_s...), Pure Synergy (http://www.naturalnews.com/027006_f...), Healthforce Nutritionals (http://www.naturalnews.com/023398_J...), Living Fuel (http://www.naturalnews.com/021637.html) and so on. These aren't quite as fresh and "alive" as homemade juice made from fresh produce, but they're the next best thing, and they do provide a wide assortment of nutrients that you normally don't get in fresh produce (such as super-healthful seaweed extracts).
Do not make the mistake of thinking that pasteurized, bottled "superfood" products bought from the store (such as Naked Juice or Odwalla) are an equivalent replacement for real superfood products. They are pasteurized and do not meet my requirements for high-end superfood beverages. They're better than Coke and Pepsi, of course, but not as good as the superfood products listed above.
Eating more really works!
So far, then, we've talked about eating MORE food to improve your health:• Eat three fresh raw fruits each day (one before each major meal)
• Eat a handful of superfood supplements each day
• Eat more full-spectrum salt (ideally as a replacement for processed "refined" salt)
• Drink a fresh superfood smoothie each day
And remember, during all this, you're not going to think much about what to avoid. Instead, you're just going to focus on what to ADD to your diet! Eat whatever else you're normally eating; just add these four things to your daily diet.
By doing so, you will find remarkable things happening with your health even if the rest of your diet isn't the greatest in the world.
You see, you don't have to focus on the things you shouldn't eat. Instead, you can greatly reduce your stress and increase your enjoyment in life by simply adding more things to your diet and letting your biology put them to good use. Focus on what you're adding!
This is a very different approach to health than what you might normally get from a more strict dietary regimen. Strict dieting works for some people, but not most. Most people are still going to eat at restaurants, or pick up a snack from time to time, or snarf down some processed foods at some point during the day. The approach I've outlined here gives all those people a powerful nutritional advantage that displaces many of those foods with something far better.
I've found that this approach works even for super busy people who are under a lot of stress and don't have time to think about all the details of which foods and ingredients to avoid. All they have to remember is to add four things to their day:
• Three fresh fruits
• A handful of superfood supplements
• Full-spectrum salt
• A superfood smoothie
... and a partridge in a pear tree. :-)
Heal Yourself in 15 Days (Part Ten)
But first, let's get something out of the way that's crucial to all this. The consumer products industry wants you to believe their "Big Lie". The Big Lie is that chemicals you put on your skin don't get absorbed into your bloodstream. So there's no need to make sure consumer products are actually safe.
The FDA and most members of the conventional medical community also believe this lie: They don't acknowledge the absorption properties of the skin, so they tend to say that all the things you put on your skin are perfectly safe for your health even if they contain toxic chemicals. (Of course, these very same people then promote nicotine patches and other drugs delivered through the skin, so they do indirectly acknowledge that the skin absorbs chemicals.)
How many different products come into contact with your skin on a regular basis? You'd be shocked to consider all the sources:
• Perfumes, colognes and other fragrance products.
• Shampoo.
• Shower soap or shower gel products.
• Pesticides used on your lawn which are carried to you through pets or children.
• Skin creams.
• Sunscreen products.
• Cosmetics.
• Antibacterial hand soaps.
• Laundry detergents and dryer sheets (through your clothing).
• Dish soaps.
• Furniture polishes.
• Household cleaners such as window cleaners.
• Artificial dyes found in clothing.
• Feminine hygiene products.
• Deodorants and anti-perspirants.
• Shaving creams and after-shave products.
• Hair dyes.
• Massage oils and lotions.
• Hair sculpting products and hair sprays.
• Tattoos and temporary skin art.
• Insect repellants.
• Over-the-counter creams: Anti-itch, pain creams, etc.
• Chlorine in your shower water.
• Anti-flea and tick chemicals acquired by touching your pets.
Cancer-causing chemicals
If you look at all these products whose ingredients come into contact with your skin, you'll begin to realize something quite disturbing: They're loaded with cancer-causing chemicals!The average perfume product, just as an example, contains over twenty cancer-causing chemicals all by itself -- and these are never even listed on the label. Antibacterial soaps are made with a chemical that's similar to the nerve toxin chemical called Agent Orange which was used as a chemical weapon in the Vietnam War.
Hair dyes contain highly toxic chemical solvents. Conventional laundry detergents are made with extremely toxic cancer-causing fragrance chemicals. Conventional cosmetics are loaded with not just cancer-causing chemicals, but also heavy metals like lead. Lawn pesticides contain chemicals that promote Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
The list goes on and on...
The products listed above probably contain over 10,000 different synthetic chemicals, and virtually none of them have ever been safety tested or approved as safe for human consumption by any federal agency. The EPA doesn't even know what many of these chemicals are because companies claim they need to protect their formulation "trade secrets" by not even listing the ingredients on product labels.
But think about these 10,000 chemicals for a moment and ask yourself this question: Why are you putting them on your skin?
Mainstream consumers poison themselves
Consumers are very easy to covertly influence through corporate advertising. I'm particularly struck by the advertising of a cologne product called "Axe" which is marketed to clueless teenage boys who naively believe that wearing these toxic chemicals will magically bring them hoards of slutty women who want to have sex with them. That's the underlying message of the Axe Cologne advertising, anyway.So these teenage boys buy up these Axe products which include cologne, deodorant and shampoo. Naturally, they're oblivious to the fact that these products are made with artificial, synthetic fragrance chemicals that are absorbed right through the skin. None of these chemicals have been approved as safe for human consumption by the FDA, of course. But young men coat their bodies with these chemicals with no regard for their own health, thinking that smelling like Axe will reward you with female companionship.
And the ads work! Axe sales are through the roof. Sex sells everything... even synthetic chemicals.
Are you poisoning yourself, too?
But if you think these teenage boys are silly for buying such products, think about your own personal care products. Do you buy conventional shampoo? Sunscreens? Lotions? Cosmetics? Which toxic products are still in your own bathroom, kitchen or garage?I've visited a lot of homes of people who told me they were "super health conscious." Yet in almost every case when I visit such homes, I still find they're using conventional laundry detergents, brand-name soaps in the bathroom, toxic skin lotions and baby products, etc. It is extremely rare for me to walk into someone's house and not find a huge assortment of cancer-causing products there.
People are poisoning themselves by poisoning their skin with synthetic chemicals. And they still think they're "health conscious!"
Most people, you see, are kidding themselves about protecting their skin from toxic, cancer-causing products. They may follow a fairly healthy diet, but they still bathe their skin in chemicals that damage the brain, liver, heart and kidneys. For some strange reason, many people who are acutely aware of what they put in their mouth are surprisingly unaware of what's contained in the products they put on their skin.
The point of this article is to raise your awareness of what's in the products your skin comes into contact with, and then to take new action to get all those toxic products out of your home.
Action items: What you can do right now
This may sound crazy, but here's what I want you to do: Go through your entire house, covering every room including the garage, under the kitchen sink, the bathroom closet and so on. Gather up every "chemical" product and throw them all out. (You're poisoning the environment by doing so, of course, but you're going to make up for that by never buying these products again...)This includes all your conventional cosmetics, soaps, shampoos, fragrance products, cleaning products, laundry products, bug sprays, air "fresheners" and the whole lot. Gather them all up and throw them out.
More importantly make a commitment to never buy these products again. That's the only way to enjoy a long-term benefit for your health, of course.
Once this is done, begin to detox your body from these synthetic chemicals using a variety of detox products: Zeolites, chlorella supplements, cilantro, spirulina, etc. Drink a lot of water. Take liver detox herbs to support healthy liver function during all this. (I recommend Livatrex from www.GHChealth.com ).
Within just a few days, your chemical burden will start to fall as your body eliminates the chemicals that have been routinely poisoning it. After six months, your chemical load can drop as much as 90 percent, greatly reducing the chemical stress on your liver and kidneys while sharply reducing your risk of cancer and other neurological disorders.
Over time, your health will improve as your exposure to synthetic chemicals plummets. This action, combined with all the other steps in this 15-day self healing series, will vastly improve your health while slowing or even halting the development of many different degenerative diseases such as cancer, liver disease or Alzheimer's.
Heal yourself in 15 days(part nine)
I suspect you may have a nature deficiency. I know because I've been there. Probably much like you, I spent a lot of time outdoors as a child, but in my adult years, I found myself spending more and more hours indoors. It didn't take long to realize that breathing re-circulated indoor air and having little or no time in nature wasn't a good recipe for lifelong health.
Today, I'm a nature advocate. Time in nature is healing all by itself, and children are especially vulnerable to the negative effects of a nature deficiency. But few people in the field of conventional medicine embrace the idea that nature itself a healer, so the message of spending time in nature to improve your health doesn't get much attention.
However, I believe that not spending enough time in nature promotes depression, obesity and even cancer. In fact, I believe that nature is so important to lasting health that I took up permanent residency in a country where I have spring-like weather year-round, just so that I can be outside in nature every single day of the year!
That's not possible to do in most places, but wherever you are, more time in nature can help you heal. Here's how:
How spending time in nature helps you heal
• SunlightSunlight supports all life on our planet. Without sunlight, we would simply have no life on Earth. Your body is designed to be exposed to sensible levels of sunlight, and that's why experiencing a reasonable amount of sunlight directly on your skin makes good sense for your health.
As you well know, sunlight also causes your skin to generate vitamin D -- perhaps the most miraculous nutrient yet discovered in the modern world. Vitamin D prevents cancer, heart disease and diabetes. It boosts bone density and immune function, and it prevents infectious disease far better than vaccines could ever hope to.
To get more vitamin D, simply spend more time in nature!
• Natural sounds
The natural sounds of nature are, in and of themselves, healing therapy. Simply surrounding yourself with the sounds of real nature causes a scientifically-provable reduction in stress levels and blood pressure.
The most powerful healing sounds in nature seem to be those from water: Waterfalls, water running down a creek or stream, rain and thunderstorms, etc. You can mimic these sounds with "sound conditioning" devices that broadcast sound loops of natural sounds. They're very effective machines, but still nothing equals the healing potential of real sounds experienced directly in the real world.
• Colors
The colors of nature are, scientifically speaking, different wavelengths of light striking your retina and being interpreted as colors by your brain.
These different wavelengths are, in essence, a form of energy medicine. Light is energy, and what your body needs to be healthy is exposure to a diverse assortment of those energy wavelengths. That's why looking at all the various colors of flowers, plants and animals is, by itself, a healing experience. It also stimulates the brain to become more active and more intelligent.
Spending more time in nature allows your brain to explore a more diverse natural reality, causing it to function at a higher cognitive level. Dull people, in contrast, tend to spend a lot of time indoors where the scenery never changes.
• Movement
Being in nature makes physical movement almost mandatory. When you're in nature, you're often walking, running, biking or swimming. And yet because the scenery is so beautiful, it doesn't feel like exercise! It simply feels like fun!
The health benefits of all this movement are tremendous: A boost in circulation, increased bone density and muscle strength, increased flexibility, lymph fluid circulation and much more. And yet being in nature allows you to experience all these benefits without it feeling like hard work.
• Air
There's something qualitatively different about fresh air versus indoor air. Indoor air is contaminated with chemicals that have been off-gassed from all the synthetic materials used in the construction of homes and buildings: Carpets, furniture, paints, glues, dyes and so on. Plus, you often get mold spores from indoor air ducts.
The air in a living pine tree forest (or any forest) is refreshingly different! Some people attribute it to the "negative ions" in the air, but there's much more to it than that. There's something almost magical about fresh air in a natural environment -- it's "sweet" and energizing! The more time you can spend in nature, the more fresh air you can take into your lungs and enjoy as a healing experience.
It's an innate thing to desire "fresh air." Every person on the planet intuitively knows that fresh air is better than indoor air. Ever wonder why this knowledge is so deeply imbedded in the human brain?
• Microbes
Western medicine believes that sterility is safety. They want people to live in a sterile environment, where all the microbes in your environment (or on your food) are killed by antimicrobial soaps and pharmaceutical drugs.
But certain microbes are very important for your health! Exposure to microbes in the real world is hugely important for the healthy balance and functioning of your immune system, and the best place to have exposure to these microbes is out in nature!
When I was a kid growing up, I played in the dirt. I swam in the pond. I camped out on the grass. Today, many parents would be horrified to allow their children to even touch dirt or swim in the "non-sanitized" water of a natural stream. This obsession with sterility is deeply misguided. Seek out nature and don't be afraid to experience the real world even if it means getting your hands dirty.
• Bio energy
Beyond the light, the sounds, the air and all the other healing elements of nature, there's also something less tangible: The bio energy of living systems. In some way that scientists still don't understand, lush living ecosystems "recharge" the human body and mind. Spending time in nature rejuvenates your system, and when city life leaves you feeling depleted, nature can bring your energy back.
Part of the magic of the bio-energy in nature depends on coming into physical contact with nature. Walk barefoot. Hug a tree. Touch a flower. Lie down on the grass. Touch nature as your body intended and you'll create a closed circuit with the planet itself. Some people say that being electrically "grounded" with the earth (through barefoot walking) makes an important difference in reducing the electric "noise" that interferes with your health. There's merit to this thinking. Your ancient ancestors didn't walk around in Nike shoes. They walked barefoot, and they were healthier for it!
Kids suffer from nature deficiency, too!
Most modern children live their lives indoors, banging away on gaming consoles and social networking websites. Few children are offered opportunities to spend any real time outdoors, in nature. The idea of "going to camp" during the summer seems to have been lost on the current generation of children, most of whom spend their summers in air-conditioned environments that are highly detrimental to their health.One of the greatest gifts you can offer any child is time in nature. And the earlier you start teaching children about the joys of nature, the more success you'll have in sharing outdoor experiences with them. Plus, introducing your children (or grandchildren) to more time in nature means that you get more time in nature, too.
One way to encourage time in nature, by the way, is to get rid of the TV. Television is the enemy of the natural world, and the more time children (or adults) spend in front of the TV, the less time they tend to spend in nature. Once children spend enough time in front of the TV, they won't even want to venture into nature at all. Their whole "world" becomes the virtual world broadcast into their brains from the television set.
For teenage boys, time in nature has largely been replaced with time spent playing computer games and console games. While there's nothing wrong with a little time spent gaming, when this act becomes the dominant focus of a child's life, it is hugely destructive. What these children need is more time in the real world and a lot less time in virtual worlds.
Seriously: I've often thought that somebody should launch a "nature camp" business that would offer rehab services for teenage boys who are addicted to gaming. It would be a hugely successful business given how widespread modern gaming addiction has become.
In any case, whether you have kids or not, spending more time in nature will vastly improve your health! So make it a point to get outside, soak up some sunshine, breathe in the fresh air and get all the nature you can! You'll be healthier, happier, more fit and even more intelligent for doing so!
natural health Heal yourself in 15 days: (part eight)
Mainstream consumers, you see, have been trained by the medical industry to believe that disease strikes spontaneously, without any real cause. One day you have nothing wrong with you, and then suddenly the next day you're diagnosed with a breast cancer tumor. Shazam! It happens just like being struck by lightning... (and it's not your fault, you're told -- there's nothing you could have done about it...)
That's what they want you to believe, anyway. But the truth is very different: All the most common degenerative diseases -- cancer, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer's, etc. -- take many years to grow and expand. A cancer tumor can take 10 years (or even more) before it grows to the size that will show up on a mammogram. That means the tumor has been "under construction" for a decade!
During that time, the patient has been "making cancer" on a daily basis.
By the way, I've borrowed this concept from Dr. Thomas Lodi, a brilliant cancer doctor who has a presentation called "Stop Making Cancer." You can check out his clinic in Arizona at http://www.anoasisofhealing.com or watch his speech for yourself on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKH_...
Dr. Lodi's concept of "stop making cancer" is so powerful and simple that I borrowed it for this article (with credit, of course) and expanded it to all degenerative diseases. If you want to be healthy, stop making disease!
How disease is manufactured
In reading this, the first question you might ask is, "How do I stop making disease?"To answer that question, though, you need to understand how disease is created in the first place. All disease begins with an imbalance in the mind or the body (it can originate in either place and then spread to the other).
Disease can be set off by a nutritional deficiency (not enough vitamin D, for example), or a dietary excess (too much homogenized milk). It can be caused by an emotional state such as anger or stress that then spreads to the tissues and begins to create dis-ease in the physical body.
Most disease that's being "manufactured" in the bodies of people today is created through controllable factors: What people eat, what chemicals they expose themselves too, how much exercise they get (or not), their state of mind, what supplements they take (or don't) and so on.
There's a recipe for creating each disease. If you want to manufacture type-2 diabetes, for example, the recipe is very simple:
How to manufacture diabetes:
• Drink lots of liquid sugars and high-fructose corn syrup.
• Consume a huge number of empty calories (junk food).
• Avoid all exercise. Live a sedentary lifestyle.
• Live indoors. Avoid sunshine and the natural world.
• Maintain nutritional deficiencies in vitamin D, selenium, zinc and plant-based nutrients.
If you do this for long enough, you will begin manufacturing diabetes. And before long, you'll be officially diagnosed with it by a doctor who will say something like, "You're diabetic." (Which isn't really true. You are not defined by a disease. You're just expressing a certain physiology that's been named a disease.)
If you want to make cancer, there's a different recipe:
How to make cancer:
• Expose yourself to radiation (mammograms, CT scans, X-rays, etc.).
• Eat cancer-causing foods like bacon, processed meats and foods with chemical preservatives.
• Avoid all anti-cancer nutrients like superfoods, medicinal mushrooms, spirulina, etc.
• Avoid sunlight. Remains deficient in vitamin D.
• Use lots of toxic personal care products made with cancer-causing chemicals.
• Live a high-stress lifestyle.
Do these things for long enough and you'll get cancer.
Similarly, there's a recipe for every major degenerative disease, including kidney stones (drink lots of soda), brain cancer (drink diet soda), obesity (eat more MSG), liver disease (take more pharmaceuticals) and so on.
So if you want to make disease, it's a very simple matter to do so. Shockingly, most people are following these disease-making recipes right now!
They're living the "Make More Disease" lifestyle! Every time they wolf down some bacon, or eat processed junk foods, or use conventional personal care products, they are creating disease in their bodies!
Disease doesn't appear immediately, of course. It takes many years for the daily poisoning of the body to be diagnosed as disease. But make no mistake about the origins of that disease: The body manufactured the disease over many years!
So when doctors tell patients "There's nothing you could have done to prevent this" they are actually lying to their patients. Of course there's something you can do! You can stop making disease before it gets out of control.
Conventional doctors usually don't like to acknowledge this because it would give patients the idea that they have control over their own health. Most conventional doctors would rather believe the Big Lie that says doctors control your health, or that disease strikes randomly, without cause. And therefore you have no control over your own health and are dependent on western medicine to take responsibility for your health.
It's a belief system specifically designed to entrap you in a system of medical dependency (enslavement). Fortunately, you can free yourself from medical enslavement...
How to stop making disease
Each day, depending on what you eat, drink, do or put on your body, you are either moving towards disease or away from disease. The way to stop making disease, then, is to halt any actions that move you toward disease and, instead, pursue actions they move you away from disease (and toward improved health).Once you fill your body with living, healing juices, sunlight and regular exercise, you will shut off all kinds of chemical "disease-making" processes in your physiology. And you'll activate healing processes that move you towards lifelong health. This is how you start making health instead of disease.
The longer you pursue a healthful lifestyle based on superfoods, nutritional supplements, healthy eating and the avoidance of pharmaceuticals, vaccines, mainstream personal care products and other poisons, the faster your healing will accelerate! Beyond the mere halting of manufacturing disease, once your body achieves a certain level of vitality, it will begin to automatically reverse disease. Cancer tumors in your body, in other words, will literally vanish over time. Heart disease can be cured. Diabetes may disappear. Cognitive function will be restored. These are just a few of the many benefits you may experience when self-healing is in full swing.
Which recipe will you choose?
You see, there is a recipe for disease, but there's also a recipe for outstanding health. Which recipe will you choose?Most people inadvertently choose a recipe for disease (it's the recipe everyone else is pursuing, so it's easy to go along with). And because they follow that recipe, they get the results of that recipe. That's why disease should not be surprising to anyone who knows these recipes. If you follow the recipe, you will get the results (good or bad).
So it's up to you to decide which recipe you wish to follow. You can choose from all the various recipes for disease -- which include enormous quantities of junk foods, pharmaceuticals, personal care products and a barrage of vaccines -- or you can choose to pursue the recipe for good health. That recipe is based on sound nutrition, fresh fruits and vegetables, time spent outdoors in nature, real sunlight on your skin, targeted nutritional supplements, regular exercise and the elimination of synthetic chemicals from your body. It's a simple, commonsense recipe that anyone can choose to follow at any time.
The minute you start pursuing the recipe for health, you will begin to see results. And the longer you pursue this recipe, the more your positive results will accelerate.
Ask your doctor
Remember this the next time your doctor or some other health professional gives you advice. After receiving their advice, ask yourself, "Is this a recipe for HEALTH, or for DISEASE?"If the advice includes a lot of radiation, chemotherapy, pharmaceuticals, surgery or injections of some kind, it's probably not describing a recipe for health. Be wary of any advice that does not resonate with the simple principles of commonsense health... as in, don't irradiate yourself. Don't poison yourself (chemo). Don't cut your body (surgery). Don't use chemicals to control your physiology (pharmaceuticals). Use these only as a last resort when all other options have been exhausted.
Certainly, if you suffer some sort of accident like a broken leg, then it's perfectly okay to submit to the necessary surgery, anesthesia or other elements of acute medical care. I'm not against western medicine's usefulness in emergency care situations. But when it comes to long term habits of health, be aware that pharmaceuticals, mammograms, chemotherapy, vaccines and most surgeries are really just components of the recipe for disease. So if you choose to follow that route, don't be surprised at the outcome.
By the way, following the recipe for health may take more self discipline and maturity than following the recipe for disease, but it's far more rewarding. For one thing, you get to live longer. Better yet, you get to live happier and healthier during all those years. And isn't that essentially why we're all interested in the health in the first place?
There is a recipe for perfect health. It's a recipe that's available to you right now, and it's the same recipe that will stop your body from manufacturing disease. Follow that recipe for good health and you will experience far more enjoyment in your life, no matter how long you live.