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Mercury has been known to be a potent nerve toxin for about fifteen years, and recently the University of Calgary has shown exactly how mercury causes this nerve degeneration by examining what happens to nerve cells in a culture medium when mercury is added. Please view this short yet excellent and understandable presentation from the University of Calgary Faculty of Medicine, to see for yourself how mercury attaches to the receptor sites of another protein, and destroys the structure of the nerve.

Mercury is especially damaging to fetuses and infants as their nervous systems are only just developing.  A very common cause of mercury exposure in infants is from vaccines that contain thimerosal, a vaccine preservative that is 50% mercury, and with the aggressive immunization schedule suggested for infants, the cumulative dose of thimerosal becomes quite high (the flu vaccine alone that is given to infants has more mercury in it than is allowable under the EPA standards!) The mercury in these vaccines has been linked to autism. Thankfully, because of the outcry, thimerosal is slowly being taken out of vaccines, but it is by no means gone, so be careful of what is being injected into your baby. Mercury is not the only problem with the infant vaccination schedule – more on this in a future tip, but for the sake of your baby under the age of two, please see the user-friendly vaccination schedule published on Dr. Mercola’s website for more information about this extremely important topic.

Lately we have been hearing news about how much of the fish we eat is now toxic due to high levels of mercury from the polluted waterways in which they swim. Many sushi restaurants in California were recently tested, and the fish in many instances were found to have dangerously high levels of mercury – especially the tuna. If you eat a lot of fish, use this mercury calculator to check your dosage, and perhaps switch to less toxic fish. This is especially important for pregnant women and infants. Remember that cooking the fish does not get rid of the mercury. It is sad that fish are now so polluted that they border on dangerous to eat, as most of us get far too few of the omega 3 fatty acids that fish can provide. For this reason, it is a good idea to get your omega 3s from fish oil supplements, as they generally have been cleaned of mercury.

In the grand scheme of things, the mercury poisoning from fish is minor compared to the mercury that gets into our systems from metal fillings in the mouth. The average amalgam filling has 750,000 micrograms of mercury and releases about 10 micrograms a day. Mercury vapor constantly leaks from silver or gold amalgams and crowns, and even more so when the person chews, or puts something hot in their mouth, like tea, coffee or hot food. The mercury is inhaled, goes up the olfactory nerve to the hippocampus in the brain where it effects memory. It is believed by some that amalgam fillings are heavily implicated in Alzheimer’s disease. Mercury also spreads throughout the body, causing degenerative problems in the nervous system and causing organs, particularly the kidneys, to function less optimally. Please see the video The smoking teeth, and see the mercury vapor coming off a 25 year old amalgam, as well as the studies done on sheep and monkeys that examined where and how quickly mercury from their fillings infiltrated their systems. Notice how the mercury got into the fetus, and into the mother’s milk. If you have metal amalgams or crowns in your mouth, particularly if Alzheimer’s disease exists in your family, a precautionary measure may be to see a biological dentist that has been trained to remove these fillings without exposing you, the dental assistants or him/herself to the vapors, and get them out of your mouth as soon as possible. If you have metal amalgams in your mouth, or you work in a dental office and are exposed to metal amalgams on a regular basis, take chlorella daily, a seaweed that is known to be very good at removing heavy metals from the body.

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The medical community tends to examine the solutes of the body for imbalances, which can be important, but it is critical to also consider the solvent.

After all, it is the fluids of the body that transport pretty much everything via the blood, lymph, cerebrospinal fluid, saliva, urine, synovial fluid, extracellular fluid, tears, and milk in lactating females, and it is obvious that nothing would happen if everything were dry.

Fluids are needed within each cell to keep them juicy and round so they can function properly. Our organs can be considered water balloons sloshing around in the sea of water that is our abdominal cavity.

Water is the major ingredient in ALL the fluids necessary for our survival. Water also conducts electricity, which is important in many functions of the body, most famously, that of the heart. Electrocardiograms are used to measure the electrical charge in the heart, and pace-makers are given to regulate the charge in the heart. It is unlikely that any of that would be possible without water.

Remember that 75% of our bodies are made up of water, and 85% of our brains are made up of water. Basically, as we age we tend to dry out.

Because water is so critical to the function of EVERYTHING, and we get rid of water daily through urine, sweat and breathing, our bodies have very elaborate methods of preserving and prioritizing water when not enough is consumed.

One top priority is the blood, and the body does what it can to maintain a proper viscosity and composition of blood elements. So, if the person is dehydrated, water will be selectively taken from areas that are less important for survival, such as the joints (ouch!) and the lumbar disks, particularly L5, the bottom-most disk (double ouch!)

The disks use their water volume as hydraulic support for weight of the upper body. Less hydrated disks are more prone to flatten or degenerate, causing the ligaments that interconnect the vertebrae to slacken, possibly resulting in instability and low-back pain. But at least the blood is in good shape.

If there isn’t enough water for adequate blood volume, some capillary beds (tiniest blood vessels) may close so that the blood doesn’t have to go as far. Closed capillaries cause resistance in the arterial system, so more pressure is needed to pump the blood throughout the body.

Exercise helps reduce blood pressure because it keeps capillary beds open. One can ask if diuretics (water pills) are really a good idea for treating high blood pressure! Getting rid of more water is most likely to make the problem worse over time as the body adjusts to a further dehydration.

Usually initially one’s blood pressure is reduced on diuretics, but eventually most wind up on a different form of blood pressure medication such as beta blockers or ace inhibitors when the diuretics “stop working”, due to further constriction of the arterial system to cope with chronic worsening dehydration.

Perhaps the initial treatment should be to drink adequate water so that the capillary beds can re-open and blood pressure can return to normal. According to Dr. Batmanghelidj in his book Your Body’s Many Cries For Water, if there are heart failure issues, water intake should be increased gradually over time to allow the body to slowly reduce its drive for sodium retention, and increase its ability to produce urine.

Most of us can increase the amount of water we drink more quickly. Drink half your bodyweight in pounds, in ounces of pure water each day (0.033kg in litres.) Measure it so you know you are getting enough.

Caffeinated beverages, and alcohol do not count as they are diuretics and will cause you to lose water, so drink an extra cup of water for each cup of those beverages you consume. Drink up and feel better!

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The stability ball is the perfect piece of home exercise equipment that can double as a chair.  Those big air-filled, colourful balls are full of whimsy and make exercise fun, yet give a surprisingly tough workout. When I got my first one I did one set of abdominal curls on it and my abs were sore for a week.  And at that time I thought I was in great shape! 

The stability ball (Swiss ball, physio ball) is one of the best ways to train the body because you must stabilize yourself while you do the exercises.  You are forced to use not only the movers, but also the stabilizers of the body, and as such, you teach your body how to move in a coordinated way. 

If you think of yourself as a bit of a "clutz", using a stability ball will go a long way to solving that problem.  Because you use far more musculature with stability ball training, you burn far more calories as well.

Compare that to doing machine training in a gym, where you are usually seated in a chair that is bolted to the floor, often wearing a seat belt, and pushing or pulling the handles, or moving your legs back and forth. Fewer stabilizers are necessary, so your mover muscles become stronger at the expense of the stabilizers. 

Do that for a long time and you develop joint pain, because the small stabilizer muscles that are supposed to control the motion at the joints can no longer do the job because they are so over-powered by the mover muscles.

For this reason, include stability ball exercises in your fitness routine.  For example, lie on the floor and put your feet on the ball.  Draw in the tissue just above the pubic bone, and push through your feet to lift your pelvis into the air, then slowly lower your pelvis back to the floor.  This is an excellent exercise for strengthening the back body, and it teaches the brain to coordinate the movement with the trunk as well. 

Or, put your stomach on the ball, hands on the floor and walk out on your hands until your shins are on the ball, keeping your spine in neutral.  Then without allowing your back to round, bend your knees and pull the ball under you, then push it back to the start position.  This exercise is called prone jack knife, and is excellent for strengthening the entire front body as well as the arms and shoulders. 

Any exercises that can be done with a bench and dumb bells can be made more challenging using a stability ball.  There are many resources that have stability ball exercises included, some of the best from Paul Chek, in the form of videos or books. 

The best way to learn stability ball exercises is to hire a CHEK Practitioner or qualified personal trainer who can teach you the exercises and ensure you are doing them correctly.

When purchasing a Swiss ball, be sure that when fully inflated the ball you choose allows you to sit such that your knees are slightly lower than your pelvis. 

The quality balls are two layers thick, so if you roll over a staple they won’t pop.  If you are planning to do heavy duty weight training, ball quality is critical.  Buy the Duraball Pro, as it can take up to 1000 lbs of force.  

If you are wanting one for a desk chair, buy the larger size and only inflate it to the smaller size so that the ball will be soft enough to prevent numb bum.  Using a ball as a chair will keep you moving enough to keep your spine and disks healthy, although you will have to gradually build up your time on it.  Have fun and get fit!

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This is a critically important topic to our health, and as I stated in previous tips, it is one the nutrition pundits have got wrong. They are suggesting we use polyunsaturated vegetable oils for cooking. Now think back to high school chemistry and remember what, by definition, a “polyunsaturated molecule” means. It means that the molecule is unstable – that it has more than one double bond, and would prefer to share those electrons with other atoms to help the molecule become saturated and stable. Oxygen is missing two electrons in its outer shell, and so it is fairly reactive and would be happy to bind with the extra electrons in the polyunsaturated molecule. The more unsaturated the molecule is, the less stable the molecule, and the more reactive it is. So, when polyunsaturated vegetable oils are heated, they react with oxygen, and oxidize, which makes them rancid. This is why a monounsaturated oil like olive oil is more stable and okay for low temperature cooking, and saturated fats are the most stable and therefore the best for cooking.

The kicker is that most of the vegetable oils on the market are heated in the processing in order to get the oil out of the seed. (Can you imagine how difficult it would be to squeeze oil out of a grape seed?) Therefore they are already rancid on the store shelves. They are then deodorized so they don’t smell bad and will fool the consumer.

Polyunsaturated oils like canola oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, corn oil, etc. can be used for salad dressings as long as the bottle says “unrefined” on it. In my neck of the woods in western Canada, I can buy Rapunzel and Spectrum organic unrefined oils. What brands of organic unrefined oils are near you? Please post them here – let’s help each other choose well. Make sure the bottles are dark, and keep them in the fridge.

For cooking, saturated fats are the way to go. They are stable and contrary to popular belief, healthy for the body. So use extra virgin coconut oil (Omega nutrition is a great brand), free-range organic chicken, beef fat or butter, and don’t worry about clogging your arteries. These fats are not the problem. Remember that heart disease was non-existent in the late 1800s when everything was cooked with these saturated fats and had been for centuries. The first heart attack on record happened in 1921, just as the vegetable oil industry was picking up steam, and sugar was becoming more plentiful. Since then saturated fat consumption has plummeted, so it is illogical to blame saturated fat for heart disease.

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