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If you were to sit down and list the stuff that stresses you out, and then analyze your list, I am fairly certain that pretty much everything on your list would be chronic social or psychological stressors, like money problems, relationship problems, work-related problems, time-management problems etc. Perhaps some of you may have a chronic physical stressor on your list, like always being hot, or always being cold, or possibly being in chronic pain. Other possible chronic stressors may be poor nutrition, inadequate hydration, and/or sleep.  However, I would bet my bottom dollar that no one would have an acute physical stressor on your list, because if it were very acute, (like your house is burning down, and you have to get yourself and the kids out right now) you wouldn’t have time to write it down – you would be trying to save your skin.

Our body’s stress response was designed primarily to save our lives in times of acute physical stress. When we were hunter- gatherers, that might have involved trying to avoid being eaten by predators – the typical fight or flight response. These sorts of stresses tended to be relatively short-lived, and then we were either dead, or our parasympathetic system (the rest and repair side of the nervous system) took over, bringing all our systems back to their relaxed state. Hunger may have been a somewhat chronic physical stressor, but once food was obtained, our stress levels would have normalized also.

There are two major parts to our stress response – the sympathetic nervous system secretes epinephrine and norepinephrine, two neurotransmitters, which cause increased heart rate, increased blood pressure by constricting blood vessels, and which cause the movement of the blood out of the digestive tract and into the limbs so we can run or fight. Often memory and sensory awareness improves – all very useful to saving our lives. In addition to that, our adrenals secrete glucocorticoids, like cortisol and glucagon in order to elevate blood sugar, so we will have the fuel we need immediately to fight or run.

So, what happens if you are constantly in a state of gut-wrenching worry over, say, your teenager who may be hanging out with the wrong crowd? Physiologically speaking, your bodymind responds as if you are about to be killed – you have the same stress response described above. Even though in actuality your life is not being threatened – it is only your worried thoughts that have activated the stress response. The problem is that the worry may not be a short-lived thing.  Maybe you are a chronic worrier – you are always worried.  That means that your sympathetic system is overactive, your parasympathetic or rest and repair system is suppressed, your heart is working harder than it should be, your blood pressure remains too high, your digestion is effected because blood is prioritized to the muscles, your libido goes down (sex isn’t important if your brain thinks you are about to die), initially you have too much cortisol pumping through you trying desperately to help you cope with all the stress, until over time the adrenals get exhausted and simply can’t pump out anymore cortisol.  Then you begin to feel extremely tired, coping becomes more and more of an issue, you get sick very easily – it is as if your immune system has gone on strike, and depression may set in.  Then, over time, you may get cardiovascular disease, colitis, irritable bowel, ulcers, or even cancer.

So, even though our stress-response system can be lifesaving, if our stress is chronic, it becomes a health robber. Using Paul Chek’s analogy of the body being a giant stress bucket, and if the bucket is overflowing with stress, we are hurting or unwell, anything we can do to poke holes in the stress bucket will help, including eating the best quality food we can afford, drinking adequate water, sleeping enough hours in the dark, etc.  Because most of our stress these days tends to be psychological/emotional, learning how to think differently about our problems can be hugely stress-reducing. Often our minds run the same stressful stories over and over again. So, when that happens, bring your mind back to the question: is the situation within my control or not? If it is, then what can I do to alter the situation to my satisfaction? If not, then there is nothing I can do about it, so I may as well accept the situation as the reality that it is, and not make myself sick fretting about it. Much easier said than done, I fully admit. But if you keep forcing yourself to come back to the question, you can actually train yourself to react differently.

Related tips:
Adrenal Fatigue
The autonomic nervous system and fat loss
Mind and body; psyche and soma
Recognize your reality
Learn to let go

Sapolsky, Robert M. Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: An updated guide to stress, stress-related diseases, and coping WH Freeman and Company, New York, 1998
Katie, Byron Loving What Is Three Rivers Press, New York NY, 2002.
Chek, Paul; How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! Chek Institute, San Diego, CA, 2004.
Pert, Candace PhD, Molecules of Emotion Scribner, New York, NY, 1997.

Copyright 2005-2007 Vreni Gurd

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With only a chapter or two to go in the book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Dr. Weston A. Price, I figure this book must be one of the most important books ever written on the subject of nutrition geared to the lay person. If you are interested in your own nutrition and health, if you are a medical doctor, dentist, psychologist, speech therapist or a dietitian or if you do any nutrition counselling at all, this is an absolute must read. I have known about the research of Dr. Weston A. Price for years and have written about it in previous tips, but nothing prepared me for the overwhelming evidence he provides through not only his studies of primitive cultures, but also his examination of skulls and teeth of thousands of years ago compared to those of today. The photos provided make it obvious to anyone of the underlying truth to what he is suggesting – the need to eat nutrient-dense foods and to stay away from foods that have been stripped even partially of their nutrition, so as to avoid the physical and mental degeneration that he discovered occurs within one generation of eating poor quality food. I would be surprised if one could possibly read this book and not be changed by it. If you are a healing professional of any kind, it will probably alter your practice, or at minimum, give you different insight into what may be contributing to the ailments of your patients (or yourself!) I thought the book would be a tough slog, but I actually found it to be surprisingly engaging. And I am left once again astonished at how it is possible that we are being told to avoid foods that are so vital to our health. Modern science misses the obvious by examining the minutia. Only by backing up and examining the big picture does the truth come into sharp focus.

Today our motive to eat, other than social interaction, is mostly to satisfy our hunger. When we are hungry, we grab something that tastes good to fill us up. Often, not much consideration is given to the potential health benefits/consequences of our choice beyond possibly “a bran muffin may be a better choice than a cakey kind of muffin".  One of the big differences Dr. Price noticed between primitive cultures that he studied and today’s modern world, is that primitive cultures never selected foods based on energy requirements alone, but rather sought out nutrient-dense foods.  As the years go by, the nutrition knowledge of the past is being forgotten.

Even a generation ago, more attention was given to providing nutrient-dense foods to our children.  Cod-liver oil was a must for most kids growing up in the 40s and 50s.   Families ate organ meats far more frequently than we do today. Fermented foods like sauerkraut were more common.  Oatmeal was soaked over night before cooking.  It wasn’t about what we liked – I wasn’t much of a liver fan, but I was forced to eat it as a kid because it was good for me.  I think we need to go back to that – if you don’t like a food that is nutrient dense, find another recipe or learn to like it.  The average person eats the same thing for breakfast each day, often a variation on the same thing for lunch, and only eats about 12 different foods in total.  Continually avoiding foods that we may not be very familiar with or dislike despite their known health benefits and overeating other foods that we like, narrows our food variety and reduces our ability to obtain all the nutrients and phytonutrients required for optimal health.  Why not try a new whole food each week? It is frequently the fat-soluble vitamins like A, D, E and K that we become deficient in, due to our saturated-fat-and-cholesterol-phobic society.  And it was precisely these vitamins that Dr. Price found were displaced in primitive cultures by modern foods, and their lack, in combination with the added sugar that created the degenerative problems he was seeing.

By eating foods that are nutrient-dense, we are satisfied sooner and therefore we don’t require as many calories.  This is part of the problem with foods high in processed flour and sugar – they are nutritionally empty, so we get hungry sooner, and wind up consuming more calories which then get converted to fat.  As a society, we are over-fed but under nourished, and Dr. Price proves beyond a shred of doubt how this under-nourishment leads to physical and mental degeneration, as well as to degenerative diseases.  So, what are the nutrient-dense foods we should consume?  To get adequate fat-soluble vitamins, regularly include in your diet each week some of the following:  pasture-fed raw butter, pasture-fed, organic raw cream and/or whole milk, free-range eggs,  fish roe, shell fish, high-vitamin fish liver oils (they come flavoured or in capsules now, so no excuse!) and organic organ meats including liver, kidney, sweetbreads, brains, and/or heart.  Organ meats are far more nutrient-dense than regular meat and poultry. An easy way to introduce organ meats to your family is to start with chicken hearts or beef heart, grind it up in your food processor and add it to some ground beef if you are nervous, and make a spaghetti sauce, serving it over spaghetti squash.  It is unlikely that anyone will be able to tell that it is anything other than a yummy spaghetti sauce.  For more recipes and ideas on how to incorporate organ meats into your family’s diet, buy Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon.

Other nutrient-dense, low glycemic foods include above-ground vegetables – green leafies like kale, chard, mustard greens, spinach etc., broccoli, peppers, tomatoes (I know – tomatoes are a fruit), beans, asparagus, etc.  Fermented foods like sauerkraut, fermented whole grains and legumes, yoghurt or kefir from pasture-fed whole raw milk etc. are also nutrient dense. A good rule of thumb is to avoid any food that is shrink wrapped, or starts with a capital letter (Corn Flakes, Oreos, Triscuits, Pepsi), or has a health claim listed on the packaging, as that is pretty much a guarantee that it is not good for you!  Stick to whole, unadulterated small-letter food.

To know how much fat, protein and carbohydrate and the kinds that are most appropriate for you, get yourself metabolically typed by finding a metabolic typing advisor near you.

Related tips:
Food Guide Fallacy
Eat – Food, our raw material
Saturated Fat, the misunderstood nutrient
High Cholesterol does not cause heart disease

Price, Weston A. Nutrition and Physical Degeneration Price-Pottenger Foundation, La Mesa CA, 2000.

Fallon, Sally Nourishing Traditions, Revised 2nd Ed. NewTrends Publishing Inc., Washington DC, 2001.

Chek, Paul; How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! Chek Institute, San Diego, CA, 2004.

Copyright 2005-2007 Vreni Gurd

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Pain is the number one reason people go to their doctors, and pain is usually the result of inflammation. Inflammation is the body’s natural response to injury or infection, resulting in redness, swelling, warmth, frequently pain, and loss of function.

Inflammation is vital to the healing process of the injured tissue, as the circulatory system and immune system deliver what is necessary to the damaged site to fight infection and repair injured tissues. Controlling swelling at the time of an acute injury can do much to reduce pain, and the easiest ways to do this is to RICE – Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation.

Rest the injured tissue, ice it, put some compression on it by using a clean gauze pad and applying some pressure, and elevate the injured tissue above the heart. However, once the threat of infection is over, the inflammation response should stop by itself.

Chronic or systemic inflammation is an inflammatory immune response of prolonged duration that can last weeks, months or years, causing tissue damage, and is therefore a whole other issue entirely. Testing for C-reactive protein (CRP) is useful as a blood marker for inflammation, as it is commonly elevated in those that have various chronic inflammatory conditions.

Chronic inflammatory conditions are therefore systemic rather than local in nature, and it is possible that biochemical individuality may determine what kinds of tissues are affected in a particular individual. It is worth noting that primitive cultures that ate their traditional diet without consuming any "white man’s food", did not seem to suffer from chronic inflammatory diseases.

Tuberculosis became a problem only when they began eating white sugar, white flour products, canned vegetables and vegetable oil products. For more on this, read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price.

Many disease states are as a result of chronic inflammation, such as rheumatoid arthritis, atherosclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, and tuberculosis for example. Chronic inflammation frequently results in chronic pain.

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) are the number 1 over-the-counter drugs sold for inflammation and pain, but they are only a band-aid solution – they do reduce inflammation, but they don’t get at the cause of what is creating the inflammation in the first place. Therefore, rather than resolving the condition, the condition is being "managed".

Not only that, but NSAIDs are known to result in many adverse gastrointestinal issues including ulcers, GI bleeding, anemia, renal damage, and impaired wound healing. There are more deaths due to NSAID use than AIDS annually.

Generally our current diets are HIGHLY inflammatory, so it is no wonder inflammatory diseases are so prevalent. What would an anti-inflammatory diet consist of? Eat no refined polyunsaturated vegetable oils (omega 6 fatty acids promote the Cox 2 pathway, which equals inflammation – why take Cox 2 inhibitors when you can encourage the Cox 1 anti-inflammatory pathway through diet?).

Consume low-mercury fish and shellfish frequently, or take up to 4000mg of omega 3 fish oils a day. Make sure you eat some quality saturated fat (pasture-fed butter, whole milk or cream, eggs, meat or poultry) so that you can actually utilize the omega 3 fatty acids that you consume, and so you get adequate amounts of vitamin A.

Green leafy vegetables are frequently high in magnesium, which may help to relax muscles. Get yourself metabolically typed so you know what ratio of fats, proteins and carbohydrates you should be consuming. Sugar, and refined flour products are highly inflammatory because of the glycation they cause, and should be avoided at all costs.

Avoid caffeine. Another cause of inflammation are the toxins found in processed food, such as MSG, textured vegetable protein, soy lecithin, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, pesticides, colourings, flavourings etc.

After getting your vitamin D levels checked and if you are low, spend some time in the sun without sunscreen, so that your body can synthesize vitamin D. Sunblock also blocks vitamin D production, and low vitamin D levels are associated with inflammation. Do NOT let yourself burn however, as sunburns raise your risk of skin cancer.

Getting adequate dark time each night increases melatonin levels which reduces inflammation, as melatonin is a free-radical scavenger.

There may be some deeper seated causal issues as to why someone may be suffering from chronic inflammation, including adrenal fatigue, food sensitivities, candida albicans, parasites, mold, and/or heavy metal toxicity which may need to be explored if improving diet, sun exposure and dark time don’t work.

If, while searching for the cause of your chronic inflammation issues, you want some symptom relief without resorting to pharmaceutical drugs, try using tumeric and ginger.  Both these spices are natural Cox 2 inhibitors. The herb bosweilla, although not a Cox 2 inhibitor, also has anti-inflammatory properties.

Kava Kava has muscle relaxation properties, and can be especially beneficial when mixed with magnesium. Proteolytic enzymes containing enteric-coated trypsin and chymotrypsin combined with bioflavinoids and vitamin C seem to work as well as NSAIDs at controlling pain and swelling, as long as there is no underlying irritation in the GI tract.

Related tips:
Dealing with health issues
Essential Fats: Omega 3 to Omega 6 Ratio
Sugar – the disease generator
Processed food is taking over our supermarkets
Adrenal Fatigue

Chek, Paul, Oliver, Clifford, Remsen, Julie, Optimum Health and Fitness Through Practical Nutrition and Lifestyle Coaching Chek Institute, 2002.
Online at Inflammation – Wikipedia
Online at Chronic Inflammation – Wikipedia
Fries, JF NSAID gastropathy: the second most deadly rheumatic disease? Epidemioloy and risk appraisal. J. Rheumatol. 1991, Suppl 28, 18:6-10
Bjarnason I et al. Intestinal permeability and inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis: effects of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs Lancet 1984:2(8413): 1171-1174.
Anjelkovic, Z
Disease modifying and immunomodulatory effects of high dose 1 alpha (OH) D3 in rheumatoid arthritis patients Clin Exp Rheumatol. 1999 Jul-Aug;17(4):453-6
Timms PM et al. Circulating MMP9, vitamin D and variation in the TIMP-1 response with VDR genotype: mechanisms for inflammatory damage in chronic disorders? QMJ 2002; 95: No. 12, 787-796.
Van den Berghe, G. et al. Bone turnover in prolonged critical illness: effect of vitamin D The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism Vol. 88, No. 10 4623-4632, 2003. (This study shows how vitamin D can lower CRP markers)
Reiter R, et al. Melatonin and its relation to the immune system and inflammation Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 917:376-386, 2000.
Ammon HPT et al. Mechanism of anti-inflammatory actions of curcumin and bosweillic acids J. of Ethnopharmacol. 1993:38:113-119.
Backon J. Ginger: Inhibition of thromboxane synthetase and stimulation of prostacyclin: Relevance for medicine and psychiatry Med Hyp 1986; 20:271-8.
Fernandez ML et al. Anti-inflammatory activity and inhibition of arachidonic acid metabolism by flavonoids Agents Actions 1991: 32(3-4: 283-8.
Tarayre JP et al. Advantages of combinations of proteolytic enzymes, flavonoids and ascorbic acid in comparison with non-steriodal anti-inflammatory agents Drug Res. 1977; 27(6): 1144-1149.

Copyright 2005-2007 Vreni Gurd

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In a previous tip I suggested which water bottles do not leach chemicals into the water, and how to tell which bottles are safe to use. I suggested that those extremely popular hard plastic
colourful lexan water bottles with the recycling number 7 on them leach Bisphenol A, a xeno-estrogen and endocrine disruptor, into the water. You can’t taste it at all, so it is easy to think your water is not affected. Synthetic xenoestrogens are linked to breast cancer and uterine cancer in women, decreased testosterone levels in men, and are particularly devastating to babies and young children. BPA has even been linked to insulin resistance and Type 2 Diabetes. Nalgene, the company that manufactures the lexan water bottles also makes #2 HDPE bottles in the same sizes and shapes, so we have a viable alternative. Order one at Nalgene.

Unfortunately, most plastic baby bottles and drinking cups are made with plastics containing Bisphenol A. In 2006 Europe banned all products made for children under age 3 containing BPA, and as of Dec. 2006 the city of San Franscisco followed suit. In March 2007 a billion-dollar class action suit was commenced against Gerber, Playtex, Evenflo, Avent, and Dr. Brown’s in Los Angeles superior court for harm done to babies caused by drinking out of baby bottles and sippy cups containing BPA. We need to move away from storing food and water in plastics, and use glass or ceramic instead. If you still use a microwave, remember to NEVER microwave food in plastic containers or use plastic wrap to cover the food, as the plastic will infiltrate the food and you will then be eating it.

Plastics may be convenient, but they are not generally good for our health nor the health of the planet, as they don’t break down easily. Plastics frequently wind up polluting our oceans and waterways, and are very harmful to the sea birds and other marine life that get entangled in plastic bags, fish net remnants etc. Wildlife frequently ingest small plastic pellets thinking they are fish eggs which makes them sick.

And the onslaught of plastics into our oceans continues, year after year. For an insight into that topic read The Plastic Sea to learn what our consumption habits are doing to our home, and the home of our fellow species.

Related tips:
Plastic water bottles
Microwave ovens: convenience vs. health and nutrition

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