I don’t know about you, but I recently realized that I have not been paying close enough attention to the water I consume. I did drink from my carbon-filtered water, but the water I put into the kettle to boil for tea, in the coffee machine, into ice trays, or in the pot for rice or soup, I usually took straight from the tap.
So I decided to be religious about my water for the last while to see if I would notice a difference. And I did. Within 2 weeks my skin improved.
My whole life I have had these tiny dry-skin pimply-like bumps on the back of my upper arms and also on my thighs. I would call it my chicken skin. I went through phases where I would attempt to figure out what the problem was. I made sure my omega 3 levels were good, I dry brushed, I creamed, I drank more water … Nothing seemed to work. But since I became crazy vigilant about all water that enters my body there has been a noticeable difference, and I am now hopeful that my skin and maybe my health, will continue to improve.
Even though my water filter claims to reduce chlorine, I was not convinced it eliminated it completely, so figured I would let the chlorine gas escape before putting it through the filter. So, I put hot tap water in my 2 cup (500ml) measuring cup and let the water sit uncovered for half-an-hour before putting it through the filter. If you are using cold water instead of hot, it will probably take an hour (double the time) to do the job.
If your community uses chloramine instead of chlorine, that same 2 cups or 500ml of hot water will take 2.5 to 3 hours to de-gas.
Lately I have been using only the treated water to make anything that I am consuming. I did not decide to do this with the intention of improving my skin, but it is the happy result.
My intent was to help my thyroid. Chlorine, fluorine, bromine (another water disinfectant) and iodine are chemically-related compounds called halogens, and in the body they all compete for the iodine receptors. Our bodies need iodine, so when a different halogen occupies the iodine receptors, our thyroid is deprived of the iodine it needs to function properly.
In my neck of the woods, the water is not fluoridated, but if yours is and you want to remove the fluoride, you will need to look for a water filter that will do that.
If you have a thyroid issue it is possible that making sure the water you consume is free of chlorine and fluoride may at least move you in the healthier direction. Do make sure you are also eating foods that contain iodine.
I refuse to use common table-salt and instead use the Paludier Sea Salt which has not been iodized. So I make sure I eat at least 1 nori sheet (8″x7.5″ or 20.5cm x 19cm) per day. Wakame would be another great seaweed choice to get your daily iodine.
Well, that’s it for today. I have another school deadline coming up (thesis protocol), so I may be silent for a couple of months. Thank you for your patience with respect to my inconsistency in writing. I do appreciate it.
Let me know what you think of this and other topics. We are in this health-thing together!
People choose to be vegan for many reasons, such has to avoid supporting cruelty to animals, for personal health, and for the health of the planet.
I know that the decision to avoid eating animal foods is not taken lightly. Many people struggle with the ethics of taking the life of another living sentient being, and have concluded that becoming vegan fits best with their integrity.
I too am completely against cruelty to animals. What is done to animals in big-agriculture factory-farms is despicable and I want nothing to do with it. Animals have just as much right to a good life as we humans do, in my opinion.
Furthermore with the climate crisis now at the forefront of consciousness, avoiding beef and dairy is commonly suggested as a way to reduce methane release into the atmosphere. Meat substitute products like Beyond Meat are becoming extremely popular.
So the question is, should we all become vegan? If everyone became vegan, what do you think our world would look like? Let’s think it through.
First of all, since they would no longer be needed, cows, goats, sheep and chickens would probably go extinct, except for the odd example of each species kept in zoos.
As Andrew French suggests in the above link, “If the primary goal of veganism is to reduce suffering, then many of us are vegan, and a diet composed of primarily grass-fed beef and dairy, as well as free-range chicken eggs and perennial plant products, is the most vegan diet that I can think of. A diet based on grass that is never tilled, with no worm disturbed, no gopher sliced in half, allows nature to grow and flourish without our annual agricultural blades, machines, and chemicals.â€
There would be more monocrops and consequently less biodiversity, also not good for the health of the planet. If the crops are conventionally grown, that would mean even more chemical run-off into streams impacting fish and wildlife.
So much land devoted to farming would further impact migration routes of wild animals, reducing their habitat, and potentially causing those species to decline.
After 2-5 years of vegan-only eating, many people, particularly those whose ancestry is from places that are cold and snowy for several months of the year, will notice a decline in their health. In general, humans are omnivores and need to get some nutrients from animal foods, although those with tropical ancestry may manage to stay healthy longer without animal foods.
As a result of deforestation and even more planting of annual crops, desertification would further increase, which is already a huge world problem. I will get into why, below.
Somehow I have a feeling that the above list is not what vegans want at all.
Desertification, a process where fertile land slowly dries out and becomes desert, is a growing problem that is made worse with hotter climates, deforestation, and poor farming practices.
Please watch this wonderfully hopeful TED Talk about how to reverse desertification and store enough carbon to put a dent in the climate crisis!
Isn’t the Ted Talk wonderful? According to Allan Savory, the best way to prevent desertification is to introduce grazing animals to the land. The cows, bison, sheep, goats etc. trample the grasses down stopping moisture from evaporating, fertilize the land which helps the vegetation grow, while at the same time sequestering carbon. The key to preventing desertification is to keep the animals moving so they are not grazing on the same exact bit of land day after day.
The way I see it, for our health and the health of the planet I choose to follow the middle path. Not veganism, but also not continuing with the status quo that doesn’t think about the impact of factory farms. What we eat is a political statement that has huge impacts for the world we live in and want to live in.
Absolutely refuse to eat animal foods from big agriculture factory-farms to stop the animal cruelty. We have a lot of power by choosing where to spend our dollars. If enough people stop supporting cruel farming methods, big agriculture would be forced to change.
Instead, to protect our health and the health of the planet, when I choose to eat beef and dairy, I am picky enough to choose from a farm that I know pastures their animals, and lets them lead a good life. Cows being cows, grazing outside, with the farmers moving them from pasture to pasture like nature intended, in order to retain moisture, keep the grass growing and sequester carbon.
Pastured animals and the carbon they sequester offsets the methane they produce, and the resulting reversal of desertification of the land helps cool the planet.
And pastured animals provide far more nutrition than factory-farmed animals. Twelve times the omega 3, 6 times the CLA, double the beta carotene, 5 times the vitamin E and A, and no antibiotics or hormones as they are not needed, and virtually no e-coli risk.
Every one of us will have to face that one bad day when we die, and it is important that while we are here that we live. And that we allow our animal friends to fully enjoy their life on this planet too before their one bad day.
Life eats life – should we fault the lion for eating the deer? Many plants eat insects too. Is that immoral? And why is it bad to eat animals and not bad to eat plants? Plants are living creatures also.
Yes, choosing how to eat in the most ethical way possible is complicated. There is so much information to sift through, and it can be hard to consider the hard truths and not make an emotional decision. I told you the decision I arrived at, but really your choice is yours alone to make. My goal here is to provide you with information that maybe you had not thought about before, so that your decision can be an informed one.
(I think it is also worth mentioning that artificial meat products are extremely processed”. Beyond Meat is made with peas, which is better than soy, but no matter how you look at it, it is still processed.)
If you want to share this article, scroll to the very bottom and click the “share” icon to post on Facebook. If you want to subscribe or search for other posts by title or by topic, go to blog.wellnesstips.ca.
November 26, 2017 at 3:06 am
· Filed under Exercise
This may seem obvious but many don’t do this – keep your weight over your base of support to ensure good balance as you move.
First of all, I owe you another apology. It has been a long time since I sent you a tip. There was a death in my family and I wasn’t in a state to write.
There is something I have noticed in my practice related to balance that I thought I would share, since once you become aware of it, it is probably not hard to fix.
What I have noticed is that often people move before they are stable. What I mean by that is they don’t have their weight solidly over the forward foot before picking up the back foot.
For example, the front foot is placed on the step, and then instead of leaning forward to centre the weight over that foot, they push off with the back toes launching the body forward, and hope they will “stick the landing” on the foot on the step. Most of the movement is off balance.
The way to stay safe from falls is to have your weight centred over a base of support at all times. If you are getting into a chair, keep your weight over your feet until your butt touches the chair. When you are getting up from a chair, get your shoulders forward over the arches of your feet before sinking into your feet to stand up. Think forward, not up.
September 9, 2017 at 11:57 pm
· Filed under Exercise
Balance issues are common and have a variety of causes. In today’s post I want to offer a piece of the solution that can make a big difference, even though there may be other causes that are also playing a role.
So, is it nature or nurture that has the biggest impact on our health? This question has been around for a very long time, and I had always thought it was a combination of both.
At some point in my schooling I was taught that the genes are in the nucleus of the cell, and the nucleus runs the cell, sort of like the brain runs the body. Remove the brain, kill the person. Remove the nucleus, kill the cell? Nope!
According to biologist Bruce Lipton, if one removes the nucleus containing all the genetic material from the cell, the cell continues to function perfectly as if nothing has happened. The cell does not need the genes to function – clearly the genes are not operating the cell at all!
This interesting fact leads to 2 questions: a) if the genes do not run the cell, what is the purpose of the genes? b) What part of the cell is the control- centre for cell operations if it is not the nucleus?
The answer to the first question is that the genes provide the blueprint for the body. The architectural design. The “how to build” manual, so the proteins can refer to it to make the spare parts of the body that need to be replaced.
It is common knowledge that are body is 75+ percent water, and yet we don’t really know what the purpose of all that water is, except for being the solvent for all the solutes (proteins, fatty acids, hormones, neurotransmitters, nutrients, minerals etc.)
Research by Gerald Pollack from the University of Washington in Seattle is now suggesting that water is far more complex than we have ever believed, and may be providing our bodies with another energy system – another driving force that moves fluids through our bodies.
I think this topic is fascinating, and has implications for a big change in our understanding of our basic physiology, as well as provides opportunities for technical applications in daily life.
When you are out in a boat, have you sometimes you noticed droplets of water sitting on top of the surface of the lake? How does that happen? Why don’t those drops immediately merge with the lake? Have you ever tried floating a coin or paperclip on the surface of some water? Possible, and somewhat amazing, no?
“Oh, that is just surface tension”, one would say. Right? Well, actually we now know there is more to it than that. We all know that water has 3 phases – solid (ice), liquid, and gas (steam). According to Pollack, there is a 4th phase of water – a gel phase between the liquid and the solid, and this is the phase of water that explains a lot of phenomena that has been largely a mystery.
When water contacts a water-loving surface (hydrophilic), the water molecules split, with the negative ions lining up next to the hydrophilic material, and the positive ions being pushed further away from the material. The negative ions rearrange themselves in such a way as to create a gel-like honeycomb lattice changing their molecular structure from H2O to H3O2.
The interesting thing about this negatively charged water is that it pushes everything else out into the positive water. The negatively charged lattice excludes everything including particles, contaminants, bacteria, even salt. Pollack calls this negatively-charged water, exclusion zone water, or EZ water for short.
Because the water is now divided into a negative zone and a positive zone, we essentially have a battery. If you put an electrode into each zone of the water, you can run an electrical device.
But what charges the water? Light. Pollack found that the more light was shining on the water, the more EZ water layers were created. He found that infrared light was particularly effective at increasing the layers of the negative-ion lattice.
This concept may explain how some biological processes in our bodies work. For example, red blood cells are commonly thicker than the capillaries (smallest blood vessels) that they have to go through. Is the pumping action of our heart really strong enough to squish these cells through the narrow tubes? Seems unlikely. So how is this possible?.
Pollack found that when he put a hydrophilic straw in the water and shone light onto the water, there was a constant non-ending flow of water and the particles it carried, through the tube. The charged water in our vessels may provide the energy to propel the red blood cells through the capillaries.
According to Pollack, the water inside the cells are negatively charged due to the many proteins they contain having hydrophilic walls, which creates EZ water, forcing the positively charged water outside the cells (extracellular fluid).
Mitochondrial cells are known as the powerhouses of the muscles as they provide energy for muscle contraction. Their structure contains many membranes, which would create a significant amount of EZ water, possibly increasing the energy production within the cells.
When we consider any biological process that involves a molecule sitting in water, we perhaps should now look at it with the understanding of all of the components involved: the molecule, the negatively charged EZ water, the positively charged water, and the effect of light. As Pollack says, perhaps we now need to reconsider many biological processes with this new understanding.
The take-away is that we are solar beings. Like plants, we are able to convert light into energy, and we also use this energy system to run some of the biochemical processes of the body.
It does make sense to me that if we can improve the body’s ability to use this energy system, we might feel much better. So, what might we do?
Certainly if we are dehydrated, EZ water would be depleted, and generally we don’t feel as good as we could. So drink up! There is anecdotal evidence that infrared light / saunas greatly increase people’s energy levels. Juicing raw greens like wheat grass is thought to be very healthy. Is it that we are consuming the plant’s EZ water that is also contributing to the health benefits?
At the very least, I think I will shine a light on my Britta pitcher – can’t hurt, might help …
February 5, 2017 at 8:07 pm
· Filed under Detox, Eat
Maybe you have used Round Up on your lawn, as it is a very common herbicide sold at Home Depot and other stores for home use. I imagine it is very effective.
Round-Up, otherwise known as glyphosate, is the most common herbicide used in North America, invented by and put onto the market by Monsanto. What they did is a truly brilliant for their bottom line.
Why, you ask? Monsanto is famous (or infamous depending on your point of view) for marketing genetically modified seed, particularly GMO Round-Up Ready canola, soy and corn. How they modified the seed was to make it resistant to their brand of herbicide, Round-Up or glyphosate.
So, they market their GMO seed, and also sell Round Up Ready herbicide, which kills everything but the plants that contain the modified genes.
Monsanto makes money on their GMO seed, and they make money on their herbicide. A perfect marriage. Personally, I don’t have a problem with businesses making money on their inventions – I admire innovation and find it amazing how much our world has changed even in the last 10 years.
But here is the thing. Glyphosate has been recently classified as a probable carcinogen by the World Health Organization’s cancer branch, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
It is being sprayed on corn, canola, soy, cotton, sugar beet and alfalfa GM crops in greater and greater quantities, because as the years go by, the weeds that it is supposed to kill are becoming more and more resistant to the herbicide, and it takes more and more Round Up to do the job.
Round Up is also regularly sprayed on other crops such as wheat and oats just before harvest, a process called desiccation. By killing the crop first it allows the grains to dry down faster after harvest.
Consequently, glyphosate residue is everywhere in the food supply, as most of us eat wheat, soy, oats and canola every day in processed foods, such as breakfast cereals, cookies, cookies, and products containing canola or soybean oil. It is also found in animals that have been fed GM Round-Up ready grains.
Unintended consequences of spraying Round-Up Ready herbicide, include wind carrying the spray to other crops, run-off into water-ways harming stream life and birds, and although glyphosate is not really a pesticide, it does seem to impact the spatial-tracking ability of bees, making it harder for them to find their way back to their hives. Our bees are struggling enough without this added problem!
It is said that the poison is in the dosage, and the amounts of glyphosate in the foods is small. But we now know that often lower doses of a toxin disrupt endocrine function more than higher doses.
According to the University of California San Francisco, 93% of the population has glyphosate in their urine, and children have larger amounts than adults. With a steady daily drip of glyphosate entering our systems, it can’t be surprising that it may play a role in throwing off our hormones.
So, what can we do? Although probably almost impossible to eliminate glyphosate exposure altogether, there is a lot we can do to dramatically decrease the amounts we are exposed to. Choosing organic would make the biggest difference, as by definition organic crops are not sprayed with toxic herbicides like Round Up.
Read packaging labels carefully, and avoid conventional foods that contain canola, soy, corn, wheat and oats. And obviously, don’t spray the stuff in your own yard!
As I was lying relaxing in the comfort of my bed this morning, I had a realization. A realization that seemed simple enough, yet somehow profound, and one that I was surprised I had not previously fully understood.
And as the beginning of a new year is often associated with New Year’s Resolutions, I thought I would share it with you, as maybe you will find it helpful too.
I realized that whenever we are experiencing a negative feeling, we are actually coming from a place of lack. Usually we feel a negative feeling because we perceive a lack of something – money, health, thinness, time, a relationship, worthiness, confidence, security – whatever that lack is. We want something to be different than it is.
Because we are viewing our situation from the position of lack, we are pushing against and thinking more about what we don’t want – lack of money, sickness, being overweight, loneliness, overwhelm, self-doubt etc. – which is exactly what makes us feel bad.
And if we make a habit of pushing against what we don’t want, we are directing our energy in the wrong direction. Solutions to problems do not come from dwelling on the problem and agonizing about how awful the problem is.
Nobody enjoys feeling bad, so what if we were to turn our thoughts to what makes us feel good? Whenever we catch ourselves in that feeling of lack, immediately focus our thoughts to what we are grateful for instead, until the feelings of gratitude, blessing, and happiness bubble up.
Inspiration that solves problems tends to happen when we are in a happy place. And life is generally better when we are feeling happy.
So, if you are one to make New Year’s Resolutions, think about the feelings you are associating with your goals. Feelings of sacrifice? Does sacrifice feel good? No. Probably won’t work. Discipline is an external thing you are imposing on yourself, and the negative feeling will likely eventually slow progress. No point fighting upstream.
Can you find a way to look at your Resolutions from a downstream perspective? What can you do that is fun, that will take you in the direction of your resolution? For example, if you want to improve your physical fitness, maybe spending time outside going for a walk and chatting with a friend each day would be a great way to start. Or get and love a dog, who will need daily walking.
May your 2017 be filled with peace, joy and happiness, and may your life flow softly and gently downstream in the direction you want to go.
Control your thoughts, feel better, and that lowers your stress!
I imagine I am not the only one that agrees with Stuart Mclean when in one of his Vinyl Cafe stories he describes life as a speeding train.
A train that starts at the town of New Years, whips through Valentine’s Day, pauses briefly at Spring Break, takes forever through Income-Tax Season and Final Exam Jitters, speeds far too quickly through Summer Vacation to get to Back-To-School Shopping, winds through Halloween and Thanksgiving to rush like the bullet train through Holiday Preparations, and Parties to arrive at Christmas, Hanukkah or Ramadan (or whatever celebratory town I missed …)
And just when one thinks the trip is finally over and one is about the step off the train, one discovers the train has been yanked all the way back to New Years and the crazy trip starts all over again. And then combine the train ride with the ebb and flow of health, relationships and money, and we find ourselves stuck in a huge swirling stress-bucket. And stress has very negative consequences for our health.
Maybe it is not possible to slow the train down, but what can we do to stop the stress of the daily grind from impacting us and find more daily peace? This past year I have been experimenting with a different approach, and I think it is helping.
Firstly, I have been trying to stop the negative self-talk. It is amazing how I am my own worst enemy! I am sure you have heard it said that if someone else talked to you as harshly as you talk to yourself, you would fire them as your friend. Yet somehow it is okay to bully ourselves? This one is tough – I catch myself being mean to me fairly often still, but when I notice, I am now gentle with myself. I tell myself that it doesn’t have to be done this instant, that I am learning and I will get better, that there is only so much time in a day …
Secondly, when I am experiencing negative feelings like depression, anger, or frustration, I try to talk myself into a more positive-feeling place. My goal is to not allow myself to stay in the negative feeling for very long, as I don’t want those feelings to turn into a mood, or into a personality! Sometimes I can accomplish this in a few minutes, usually by distracting myself and thinking about another topic that makes me happy.
Other times this can be very difficult, as usually there is a story attached to those feelings. Since it is often next to impossible to detach an entrenched story from a feeling, the easiest option is to diffuse the story enough to get to feel better. Maybe not to joy and happiness, but it might be possible to talk oneself from depression to anger. Or from overwhelm to disappointment.
Any relief from the negative feeling even if it is to another feeling that is less negative, is moving downstream towards a happier place.
I am not talking about “positive thinkingâ€, as the thought must ring true, or at least feel better. Saying “I am richâ€, when you actually feel poor will make you feel worse, not better. Yet acknowledging that there are many opportunities out there and you just haven’t found the right fit yet, may be a more downstream thought.
One of my wisest friends, Mary Ann Gillies, told me that the best approach is to allow oneself to feel the feelings while ignoring the story. If parents made a concerted effort to avoid attaching a story to an incident with their children, their children would grow up with less self-doubt, less fear, more self-confidence, more optimism, and more self-empowerment.
As she puts it, “Think of kids who fall down and bump their knee. It hurts, they cry and if the parent acknowledges the hurt but doesn’t add a story to it by saying “You always fall down, you klutz.â€, or “You poor baby – you need to move more carefully so you don’t get hurtâ€, the kid gets up, stops crying and in short time has forgotten all about the bump and the fear or anger or whatever feeling it generated in addition to the physical pain.â€
The bottom line is that our thoughts and our feelings are inextricably linked, and since our feelings determine which neurotransmitters, hormones or peptides are created, our feelings largely determine our health status.
Our mind is the only place we are truly free. No matter what is going on in our lives, it is possible to imagine anything we want with our mind. We can let our minds drift to worst case scenario thoughts, doubt thoughts, generally negative thoughts, or we can actively shift our thoughts to solutions, to fun, to our dreams, thereby infusing ourselves with good feelings, which will improve our happiness and our health.
Please do keep the comments coming on my blog. If you want to share this article, scroll to the very bottom and click the “share” icon to post on Facebook, Twitter etc. If you want to subscribe or search for other posts by title or by topic, go to www.wellnesstips.ca.
First of all, I owe you an apology. I have not been updating this blog or sending out my email newsletter in over a year.
The major reason is that in September of 2014 I started a 6 year program to become an osteopath. The volume of material we are responsible is huge, but I am loving it. And when I am done, I think I will be an amazing therapist. BUT because of that the blog and newsletter fell by the wayside.
I would like to start again to fulfill what I promised you. It won’t be weekly – the next two weekends I am in courses – but I will endeavour to send something at least once or twice a month that hopefully you will find informative and useful. If there are health topics you want me to discuss, please let me know.
Now on to your tip. You probably have already heard that sitting is the new smoking. We now know that sitting for prolonged periods of time is dangerous to our health, making us prone to blood clots, leading to embolisms, heart disease, and stroke. Prolonged sitting even seems to impact blood-sugar regulation, making us more prone to diabetes. Even if we do an hour of exercise a day, it does not erase 8 hours of sitting.
This isn’t great news since our world seems to be designed around sitting, and many of us sit at office jobs all day. So, what do we do? Is there anything that can counteract all that sitting?
The simplest solution is to set an alarm and get up out of your chair at least once every half-hour and walk around for at least 2 minutes. Much more impactful though, would be to get up, then lie all the way down on your yoga mat that is on the floor beside your desk, then stand up again, and repeat that 3 or 4 times. This will bump up the heart rate, and ensure great blood-flow through your entire body. Do this, and it will erase that half hour of sitting.
And the bonus is: if getting down onto and getting up from the floor is NOT easy for you, it will become easy for you, which will mean increased range of motion and strength, and therefore better ability to do many tasks of daily living!
If you live in the Vancouver Lower Mainland, come on out to our free seminar called “The 6 Movements You Should Be Able to Doâ€. Learn why being able to do these movements increases life enjoyment, test yourself to see how well you can actually do the movements, and learn how to get better at them! Please register at Eventbrite.
Please do keep the comments coming on my blog. If you want to share this article, scroll to the very bottom and click the “share” icon to post on Facebook, Twitter etc. If you want to subscribe or search for other posts by title or by topic, go to www.wellnesstips.ca.
Hay House, 2006.
Facebook Wellness-Tips Page
Design by