Heal Yourself in 15 Days
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A wonderful article series by Mike Adams, The Health Ranger, offering some down to earth truths about how a holistic app...
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How to Heal Yourself in 15 Days by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
http://www.naturalnews.com Consolidated into 1 article by Pete Adams from A Plan for Peace http://www.a-plan-for-peace.com Can you really heal yourself in 15 days? Without using prescription drugs, vaccines, chemotherapy or surgery? Absolutely! Your body strives to heal itself automatically, every single day. The only thing that really needs to happen for your body to begin healing itself is for you to remove the barriers to healing -the barriers that are holding you back right now. That's why you'll greatly enjoy this 15-part article series by the Health Ranger, published here on NaturalNews over the next three weeks or so. This isn't a rehash of the health tips you already know -- eat right, exercise more, hydrate yourself, and so on -- it's a completely new way to look at how to unleash the healing potential you already possess.
This information was originally planned for a book to be published by a major publishing house. But the time requirements for mainstream publishing meant that this information wouldn't appear on bookshelves for roughly one year, during which time many people would have missed out on the phenomenal benefits of this program. So I've passed on the conventional publishing route and decided to bring this program directly to you right here on NaturalNews. So let's get right to it!
Day 1 - Rethink "health" For many people, the first barrier to healing is found in their mental definition of "health." A lot of people believe that health is defined by having blood certain tests return results within a specific range: Your LDL cholesterol needs to be between X and Y, for example, and your blood pressure needs to be lower than Z. Conventional doctors tend to define health in this way, too, only spreading this misconception even further. Health isn't defined by a range of numbers. It doesn't mean merely shrinking the physical size of a tumor while the patient continues to waste away. Health isn't measured solely by the number of days someone is kept alive on life support equipment... Health means exactly what you intuitively thought it meant before you were subjected to so much influence and misinformation by drug company advertisements, conventional doctors and friends or family members -- health means quality of life. And what is quality of life? Being able to sleep at night, walk without pain, eat and enjoy food, have a working memory, and achieve things in your life that mean something to you. Health means time with family, a walk in the woods, a positive mental outlook and an ability to handle stress without flipping out. Health means treating your body with respect and experiencing the joy of feeling it work well in return. Health means vibrant energy, daily optimism and even good sexual energy, too (and much more).
These are important elements of health and yet none of them are really answered by western medicine. Most of them aren't even considered in the medical textbooks. Modern medicine does not believe it really has any concern about the quality of your life. If you have a problem sleeping, the conventional medical approach is to simply overload your brain with pharmaceutical chemicals that force you to lose consciousness -- and then they call it "sleep." But it isn't really sleep. It's not quality sleep, and it doesn't create quality living. And that's why if you wish to achieve real quality of life, you must broaden your horizons beyond the limiting laboratory numbers of conventional medicine and explore what "health" really means to you. This doesn't mean laboratory tests can't be useful diagnostic tools; it just means to be cautious of letting the chemical measurement approach to health be your one source of answers for attempting to achieve health and happiness in your life. So today, I'd like you to think about this for yourself: How do YOU define health? What would you like to do in your day, or FEEL in your day, or experience day to day that would equate to the concept of "health" in your own mind? Once you have a clear picture of that element, you'll quickly come to realized that pharmaceuticals will never provide that for you. The real answers to health must come from somewhere else... somewhere that's more aligned with the real definition of health that you intuitively know to be more meaningful. In part two of this article series, we'll explore how to unleash your innate healing potential by altering your frame of mind about how healing really works. Check back here on NaturalNews.com to read that in a day or two.
Day 2 - recognizing your innate healing power This article continues our 15-part article series called Heal Yourself in 15 Days. In part one, we looked at why the real secret to rapid healing is to remove the barriers to healing (http://www.naturalnews.com/028053_s...). In part two, we look at why your healing potential is so powerful that you can't even turn it off! When you scrape your elbow, a bit of blood oozes out to clean the wound and wash away bacteria. It then forms a protective scab that keeps out invading microorganisms while your skin has a chance to heal underneath. There, some real magic takes place: Your skin cells innately recognize the need to divide and grow to fill the wound. A cancer-like process is unleashed at the cellular level, activating nearby cells to divide and grow. Your DNA is replicated in the nucleus of each cell with the help of some of the most astounding nanotechnology every witnessed in human civilization. (The best scientists in the world can't even come close to recreating it.) As your cells multiply, nutrients and building blocks are carried to them through a blood supply that adapts to the particular size and shape of the wound. If a blood vessel was destroyed in your accident, the growth of new blood vessels is spontaneously initiated to take their place, and they grow into the tissues within mere hours. As your skin cells fill in the previous wound, the replication effort is delicately turned off, one by one, so that replicating skin cells don't keep replicating beyond what they need to -- a process that would cause the creation of a skin tumor. Your body's cells know exactly when to grow and exactly when to turn off, and when it's all said and done, you're left with a perfect replacement for the skin you previously lost.
Completely automatic healing The truly amazing part of all this is not the cancer-like processes that are delicately controlled by your body wisdom; it's not even the fact that your body has the ability to re-grow lost cells -- it's the fact that all this takes place without any conscious involvement on your part. Healing yourself is automatic, in other words. You don't have to direct blood to the wound,
direct the cells to start replicating, direct the molecular waste products to be carried away and decide when cell replication should be stopped. All this happens without your involvement -even without your awareness! Much of it happens while you sleep, in fact. While your conscious mind is dreaming, your innate body wisdom is working the biochemistry and energetic transformations necessary to repair your tissues. You can't stop this process even if you wanted to. You could try to focus all your mental power on your skin not healing, and yet your skin would heal itself anyway. That's because your body is a powerful self-healing organism. It heals itself automatically, innately, without your conscious awareness or involvement. Your ability to heal yourself is so powerful that you can't stop yourself from healing!
Why we don't always heal If this is true, then why aren't you healing everything else? Why aren't you always in perfect health? The answer, as you've seen throughout this article series, is because we tend to erect barriers to our own healing. And we often misread the symptoms of sickness that are asking for help, "treating" them in a way that makes the situation worse. Fact: Many "symptoms of disease" are actually the result of your body's attempt to heal itself. For example, most people are chronically dehydrated. They don't consume enough high-quality water. Because water is so vital for proper blood composition, when your body lacks sufficient quantities of water intake, it begins to take action to reduce water loss. A significant portion of the water loss experienced by the body each day is lost through respiration -- a bit of water vapor is exhaled with each breath. So to conserve water, your body attempts to reduce water loss during respiration by constricting your bronchial tubes through the creation of histamines. These histamines constrict breathing, making it more physically difficult. Modern (western) medicine misdiagnoses this as a disease called "asthma" rather than the true underlying cause which is often simply dehydration. So instead of prescribing water, which would solve the underlying water shortage and end the body's creation of histamines, western doctors prescribe anti-histamine drugs that force the bronchial tubes to relax and ease air flow. This, of course, promotes further dehydration, leaving the patient in a more severe state of water loss. So you see, the body is attempting to heal itself, and the symptom of histamine production is a mechanism by which the body is attempting to heal, but it is misinterpreted by western medicine and then made worse by misguided interventions.
Blood pressure Another good example of this is high blood pressure. High blood pressure is often caused by something I refer to as "sludge blood" -- blood that's too thick and viscous to flow freely through the body's small capillaries. So in order to make sure good circulation is taking place, the heart has to pump harder, thereby raising blood pressure. This is the body's way of making sure this thick blood reaches all the cells throughout the body (cells that don't receive blood will die, and that's bad). But healthy blood shouldn't be so viscous. It should flow more freely, with less friction. When blood is properly hydrated and nourished with the right fatty acids (more omega-3s in particular), the heart does not need to work as hard to pump it throughout the body, so blood pressure automatically drops. (It's like the difference between sucking water through a straw versus sucking honey through a straw... the more sticky and thick the honey, the more pressure it takes to move it.) Western medicine completely misdiagnoses this situation and says that "high blood pressure" is itself a disease. And this high blood pressure is attacked with drugs that artificially lower blood pressure by forcing artery walls to relax. As you might have guessed, this then immediately causes circulation problems because the thick sludge blood is no longer reaching all the cells it needs to reach. That's why people who take high blood pressure medications very often end up with circulation problems. Their
underlying problem of "sludge blood" remains unresolved. Symptoms such as high blood pressure as your body's way of communicating with you to address the underlying causes. In the majority of cases, patients with high blood pressure simply need more water, more living nutrients (such as raw living plant juices), more omega-3 fatty acids and a sharp reduction in the consumption of animal products. Within as little as five days after embracing such changes, blood pressure normalizes as the blood itself becomes more hydrated and free to flow throughout the circulatory system. Your body knows all this. Western doctors know none of it. High Blood Pressure is treated as a disease unto itself with virtually no thought given to what underlying causes might be creating this measurable symptom.
Your body is trying to heal itself all the time Both "asthma" and "high blood pressure" are fictional diseases. In other words, they don't really exist as self-contained, standalone diseases. They are merely symptoms of something else that your body is attempting to balance. In order to activate your body's innate healing potential, you must learn to listen to what your body is really asking for and give it those things instead of intervening with chemical medications, surgeries and toxic therapies like chemotherapy. Western medicine misinterprets virtually all expressions of physiology. If you wish to be healthy, you must learn to reinterpret your body's messages in alignment with the true principles of health. Difficulty in breathing, for example, may simply be a sign of dehydration. High blood pressure may be a sign of dehydration or poor diet. Cancer is a sign of cellular miscommunication. A tumor is a sign that cells in your body aren't getting the right message of when to stop dividing. (A tumor is merely a wayward cell that keeps dividing.) Cellular communication can be reestablished through changes in diet, environment, mental state and proper exposure to sunlight (among other things). So keep in mind that your body is always trying to heal itself. "Symptoms" of disease are often just cries for help from your own biology. The wise patient listens to those cries for help, attempts to understand what they mean, and addresses them through self-care. The unwise patient attempts to silence symptoms through chemical intervention: Pain killers, chemical pharmaceuticals, surgery and other interventions. Western doctors are not trained in proper symptom interpretation and rebalancing. They are only trained in symptom "management" which means reducing symptoms through artificial intervention.
Why you are such a self-healing miracle Your body is one of Mother Nature's most miraculous accomplishments. You possess unbelievably complex nanotechnology in your immune system. Your neurology exceeds the capabilities of the most advanced supercomputers in the world. Your sensory systems contain technology so advanced that even the most well-funded laboratories in the world don't have machines that can match what you have right in your nose. Your reproductive system is a miracle of life; your bones are astounding structural engineering feats (or feets!); and your internal organs such as your heart and liver actually store their own memories and emotions. We know this because organ donor recipients often take on the memories and experiences of those from which the organs were originally harvested. In other words, you are a miracle of nature, and your body has such powerful healing potential available to itself right now that the only way you can even stop the healing is to interfere with it (with pharmaceuticals, for example). And yet, sadly, that's what most people do: They numb their bodies with painkiller medications. They shut down their immune systems with chemotherapy. They shock their neurology with vaccines containing inflammatory chemicals. They interfere, override and interject all sorts of
artificial chemicals, procedures and unnatural therapies. This is what shuts off healing. This is what leaves patients unable to heal in the way they are capable of healing -- automatically, unconsciously and with zero effort. So if you really want to heal yourself, first recognize that you are a miraculous self-healing organism. And secondly, recognize that if healing is not happening, it may very well be because you have inadvertently interfered with the healing process by introducing artificial chemicals or other elements that hold your healing potential prisoner.
Attaining health requires allowing healing to take place Healthy people aren't healthy just because they eat superfoods and drink living juices all day long. They are healthy because they avoid poisoning their bodies with pharmaceuticals, artificial sweeteners, MSG and other processed food ingredients. They avoid the chemicals in cosmetics, personal care products, household cleaning products and lawn care products. They avoid consuming meat from animals who have been pumped full of hormones and antibiotics. They keep their bodies as free from pollution as possible, and as a result, their innate healing powers are always working for them! You have exactly the same healing potential as I do. Your body can heal itself from cancer, from diabetes, from heart disease and from other "made-up" disease names like asthma and high blood pressure. All that's really required is for you to embrace the healing potential you already possess, and then avoid all those things that interfere with it. If you believe in God and Creation, then take comfort in the idea that your body is created in God's image, meaning that you are a perfect healing being as is He. If you believe in evolution and Darwinism, then take comfort in the idea that your body is the result of millions of years of evolution that have given you a successful, proven DNA blueprint for preventing sickness and disease -- long before vaccines and western medicine ever came along. No matter what your philosophical approach, either way you still believe that your body is an amazing self-healing organism. And that's good news because it means you already have the blueprint for powerful healing. Now simply activate it! This article series "Heal yourself in 15 days" continues in part three, right here on NaturalNews.
Day 3 - You are what you absorb In part two, we explored your innate healing potential and saw how powerful your self-healing abilities really are (http://www.naturalnews.com/028060_s...). Here in part three, we look at a powerful principle of nutrition: You aren't what you eat; you are what you ABSORB. Many people suffer from poor digestion. In fact, you might say that most people aren't able to absorb the nutrients they swallow, so they remain in a state of nutritional starvation even though they're taking supplements that would otherwise be quite helpful. These people tend to scratch their heads, wondering why all the nutrients they're swallowing aren't having the positive effects they had hoped for. The answer to this conundrum is found in enhancing the absorption of those nutrients. Strong stomach acid is good for you Pharmaceutical pill pushers have convinced many people that stomach acid is bad for your health. By promoting diseases like "acid reflux" or GERD, they misinform consumers into believing that heartburn and stomach pain are caused by too much stomach acid. But the truth is that in most
(but not all) cases people actually suffer from weak stomach acid and they need stronger stomach acid to properly digest foods. It's easy to test this by swallowing a teaspoon (or so) of vinegar with your meal and asking yourself whether it feels better or worse. For a surprisingly large percentage of people, the extra vinegar halts the pain they might normally feel after such a meal. This is a strong indication that they lack proper stomach acid production and could benefit from stronger acid. Vinegar is acidic, you see. Not as acidic as stomach acid, but far more acidic than most foods or beverages. Consumers have been persuaded by drug advertising to swallow over-the-counter antacid tablets -- products that are actually very alkaline and therefore lower the acidity (i.e. raise the pH) of the liquids in your stomach. What most people don't realize is that minerals require an acidic digestive environment to be properly digested and absorbed. If you lack proper stomach acid, you won't be able to properly absorb minerals even if you swallow them! And this can lead to mineral deficiencies that promote the development of diabetes, cancer, chronic pain, arthritis and even heart problems (among other things). So how do you encourage the production of healthy stomach acid? In my experience, drinking fresh vegetable juices each day -- especially celery and cabbage juices -- greatly boosts stomach health, ultimately supporting healthy stomach acid production. Digestive enzymes from living foods Digestion is a complex process. It requires biochemical and physical processes to break down ingested substances into their nutritional components. This process is significantly aided by digestive enzymes which exist naturally in living foods (fresh, raw vegetable and fruit juices, for example). Heating foods (cooking them) destroys all digestive enzymes. This is one reason why cooked foods steal life away from people while raw, living foods impart life. Living foods usually come with their own digestive enzymes, aiding your digestive processes in breaking down and absorbing nutrients. Dead foods -- which include anything pasteurized -- stress your liver, pancreas and gallbladder by requiring these organs to produce extra digestive enzymes that are missing from the foods themselves. Because many people suffer from poor digestive organ function, they have difficulties absorbing the nutrients they've swallowed. Probiotics Many people suffer from serious intestinal flora imbalances. Western medicine, for the most part, remains astonishingly ignorant about the importance of intestinal flora to overall health, but those who study more holistic medicine understand the important role that these "inner bacteria" play in your health: The bacteria in your gut actually digest and transform nutrients you eat into other nutrients. They are, in essence, nutrient transformers that operate inside your body, producing nutrients needed for your health. That's why people who take antibiotics often suffer serious digestive side effects in the days that follow: They've wiped out all the friendly intestinal bacteria that were providing essential nutrients! It's easy to remedy this imbalance: Take probiotic supplements on a regular basis. This will feed your digestive tract the friendly bacteria you need.
And don't fall for the marketing sham of eating yogurt, thinking it's loaded with probiotics. Virtually all store-bought yogurt is pasteurized, and pasteurization kills the friendly bacteria. This makes most "probiotic yogurt" products nothing more than a dishonest marketing gimmick. By the way, if you want healthy intestinal flora, it's also important to reduce your consumption of dietary sugars. When you consume more sugars, you alter the bacterial population in your gut, causing a shift toward bacteria that feed on sugars. As you alter your diet to exclude refined sugars, the population of bacteria in your gut follows suit, shifting towards a non-sugar bacterial population. References Everything I've said here is supported by quotations on the website www.NaturalPedia.com where I've assembled over one million unique web pages covering tens of thousands of natural health topics. For those looking for more specific scientific references, simply use Google.com or Google Scholar to search for the topics described here. You'll even find many of them right here on NaturalNews if you use the search box at the top of this page. (I'm often amazed when some people demand references for things that can be easily found with a simple Google search. The classic use of article references dates back to the era of library card catalogs when finding information was a laborious task. But today, not even 20 years later, finding information is virtually effortless on the 'net. If you want to find information about how eating sugars alters the bacteria in your gut, for example, just search Google for "eating sugars alters the bacteria in your gut". When I run that search on Google, I get over 70,000 page results... Coming up next: This "Heal Yourself in 15 Days" article series continues tomorrow, when you'll learn how to change your health by changing your blood...
Day 4 - transforming your blood This article continues part four of the 15-part article series called Heal Yourself in 15 Days. In part three, we explored how you are what you absorb, not merely what you eat (http://www.naturalnews.com/028067_s...). Today, in part four, we take a closer look at how to transform your health by changing your blood. Your blood is a useful focal point for exploring your health. Whatever health outcome you are experiencing today, it is largely a result of what's in your blood. Think about it: Your blood bathes your cells in nutrients 24 hours a day. Blood not only brings vital nutrients to your cells; it also carries away metabolic waste products. It is the superhighway of nutrition and detoxification that reaches into (virtually) every organ and cell in your entire body. It stands to reason, therefore, that altering your health outcome depends largely upon altering the composition of your blood. If you want to make someone really healthy for a short time, for example, you can give them blood from a healthy person. Research has already documented that when you take blood from people whose bodies prevent cancer and then inject that blood into people who are suffering from cancer, the anti-cancer benefits of the blood are immediately reflected in the cancer patient (through tumor shrinkage, for example). There is such a thing as anti-cancer blood. And if you eat an anti-cancer diet, you're making anti-cancer blood every single day.
I eat a very strong anti-cancer diet. Most vegans do, too. They could theoretically help heal cancer patients by simply giving them some of their blood. The anti-cancer effects would be immediate and powerful. The FDA, not surprisingly, prohibits you from selling your own blood as "medicine," so don't think you can make money by eating a healthy diet and then selling your blood for $1,000 / pint (although it might very well be worth that much in a truly free market). The other limitation with this idea is that the benefits from receiving donated blood are shortlived. If the blood recipient does not alter his or her lifestyle in some meaningful way, the anticancer properties of the "healthy" blood will, within just a few days, be erased and overpowered by the blood that person is manufacturing on their own. And this leads me to the important question: How is your blood made? How your body makes your blood A typical human red blood cell only survives about 4-5 months. Your body is constantly producing new blood and releasing it into the bloodstream to do important work -- the work of carrying nutrients, hormones, water, chemical messages and even information throughout your body. Blood is primarily made of three things: Red blood cells (oxygen carriers), white blood cells (immune function) and blood plasma (a liquid solution that carries everything else). When more red blood cells are needed, your body (with its infinite healing wisdom) automatically generates new ones. Naturally, it must create those red blood cells using the materials that are available: Materials that are circulating in your blood at the time. Got that? So the blood cells you make TODAY, which circulate throughout your body for the next four months, are made out of the materials being carried in your blood right now. So what's in your blood right now? Your blood is largely comprised of the things you ate, drank and absorbed over the last several months. So if you ate a McDonald's cheeseburger today and chased it with a large Coke, the blood cells your body generates today are going to be made, in part, of materials from that cheeseburger and Coke. If you think about where cheeseburgers really come from -- with all the cruelly slaughtered, hormone-injected animals, the ammonia-injected beef parts, the refined white flour in the bun, the processed cheese "food" substances, and so on, it's not exactly the kind of thing you probably want coursing through your veins for the next few months. If, on the other hand, you spent the last several days consuming fresh living juices, superfoods and clean, energized water, then guess what your new blood is going to be made of? It will be super blood that's energized with the elements and vibes of all the good stuff you've been consuming! Bad blood leads to bad health results. It leads to angry, moody mental function and chronic disease. But good blood results in happy, healthy outcomes. Good blood improves your sleep, your sex, your moods and cognitive function. Good blood keeps your body free from cancer, youthful, energized and actively healing itself at multiple levels. Once you understand all this, it only seems natural to work consciously towards creating good blood every single day.
Amazing facts about your red blood cells
• A whopping one-quarter of the human cells in your body are red blood cells. But most cells in your body are actually non-human cells (bacteria). • A red blood cell circulates around your body in about 20 seconds. The same red blood cell makes tens of thousands of trips around your body, transporting oxygen to cells, before it is recycled by your own immune system. • Red blood cells in humans are molecularly quite similar to chlorophyll cells in plants. • Your red blood cells are made partially of cholesterol. Although the drug industry has tried to label cholesterol a villain, in truth you couldn't survive without it! Check out this amazing real-time animation of a red blood cell in a human body: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:E... Cleaning your blood Having good blood means keeping it clean! Your blood is cleaned primarily by your kidneys and liver, but some additional "cleaning" functions are also accomplished by your lungs (through respiration) and even through your skin. Ask anyone on a dialysis machine and they'll tell you what a huge difference it makes to keep your blood clean. Your kidneys normally do this for you, but in many people, kidney function is impaired and kidney cells don't work as well as they should to remove waste products from the blood. (Drinking sodas can impair kidney function, by the way...) Hence the thinking behind an occasional kidney cleanse or liver cleanse. Keeping these organs functioning smoothly and efficiently helps keep your blood clean, and that translates into improved health for both body and mind. The two best cleansing product lines I know of are offered by Ed Group's Global Healing Center (www.GlobalHealingCenter.com) and Baseline Nutritionals (www.BaselineNutritionals.com). How to create good blood You are your own blood bank. You manufacture and distribute all your own blood. Given that your life depends on your own blood, doesn't it make sense to manufacture the healthiest, most life-giving blood possible? In fact, you can! You have conscious control over the qualities of the blood you manufacture. Because your blood is made of what you eat, drink, breathe and absorb, you can alter the composition of your blood by consciously choosing healthier things to eat, drink, breathe and absorb. Here are some of the most powerful pointers for making healthy blood: Healthy blood needs healthy fats You must consume healthy fats in order to create healthy red blood cells. This means consuming healthful omega-3 fatty acids. From the world of plants, healthful fats come from coconuts, avocados, flaxseed, Chia seeds and other similar sources. From the animal world, the best source for omega-3 fatty acids is, in my opinion, the green-lipped mussels oils in Moxxor, which come from a pristine marine environment. To learn more about Moxxor, check out Jonathan Landsman's Moxxor page at: http://moxxbiz.com/clients/getVideo...
There are other quality sources, too, including fish oil supplements from companies like Nordic Naturals or Carlson Labs. Some people take krill oil to get their omega-3s, and companies like Living Fuel (www.LivingFuel.com) offer high-end fish oil supplements. This isn't a complete list of good sources for omega-3s. Do your research and use what works best for you. The more healthful omega-3 fatty acids you take, the healthier your blood will be (to a point, of course). Consuming damaging fats will harm the health of your blood. Damaging fats include trans-fatty acids and fried fats (such as those used in fried foods). Making healthy blood also requires the right minerals. Red blood cells themselves need iron, but you'll want all the trace minerals, too, so they can be delivered by your blood to your cells. When you lack sufficient quantities of minerals like calcium, magnesium, zinc and selenium, biological functions start to go awry. Healthy blood also needs plenty of water, of course. Water is the primary fluid of your blood plasma -- it's a solvent that can dissolve and transport all sorts of crucial building blocks for health including water-soluble vitamins like Vitamin C. Without adequate water, your blood turns to sludge blood -- sticky, gooey blood that your heart can't easily pump through your circulatory system. The forceful pumping required to push this blood through your system is frequently diagnosed as high blood pressure. Human blood also needs many other elements, all of which can be found in a plant-based diet (including the proteins needed for blood). You can make what modern science can't When thinking about the health-enhancing qualities of your blood, remember this astonishing fact: Modern science cannot make human blood. But YOU can. Sure, they can try to make artificial blood. But clinical trials have shown that artificial blood doesn't work very well. It carries only a fraction of the oxygen of real blood, and it's no long-term replacement. YOU can manufacture blood that's more technologically advanced than anything ever invented by modern medicine. The only question you need to ask yourself is: What kind of blood will I make today? (And tomorrow...) Will you manufacture blood out of trans fats, Gatorade, pharmaceuticals and junk food proteins? Or will you make your blood out of living fruits and vegetables, healthful omega-3s and positive energies from Mother Nature? It's your choice, each and every day. You can have good blood or bad blood, and the health results you get will directly reflect the quality of your blood. Want to transform your health? Transform your blood and your health results will automatically follow.
Day 5 - Heal yourself with the Health Ranger's living juice recipe Today we focus on cleansing your digestive tract and energizing your cellular energy with the help of some living foods. This is in preparation for part six in the series, which we'll get to tomorrow. Here's the cool part about this: You don't need a juicer to do this step. All you really need is a blender and a nut milk bag (a fine mesh bag used to squeeze out the juice). Of course, a proper juicer really helps, but it's not required. Below, I'm going to give you an absolutely delicious live foods juicing recipe that I think you'll really enjoy. I'm using special ingredients in this juice that help mask the more bland tastes of the green ingredients, so even if you've tried fresh living juices in the past and didn't like them, check out what you'll read below... Raw living foods offer one of the greatest secrets to disease reversal and lasting health, and nothing beats fresh living foods right out of the garden. So if you can grow any of your own ingredients for this when Spring comes around, definitely make an effort to do so. Otherwise, buy them at a store or farmer's market. Here's what you'll need (always choose organic): • • • • • •
1 1 1 1 1 2
container of Blackberries (use all the blackberries) bunch of Parsley (use all the parsley) bunch of Kale (only use 2-3 large leaves in this recipe) bag of Carrots (only use 3 large carrots for this recipe) bunch of Celery (use 2-3 stalks for this recipe) Pears (use both pears)
If you can't find these ingredients, substitute something close. It's crucial to have some berries in the mix, however. They are part of the recipe for making it all taste good. After proper preparation (washing, etc.), push all these ingredients through a juicer to generate the fresh juice. If you only have a blender, then blend all these ingredients with water, then pour the juice into a nut milk bag and squeeze out the juice from that. With either method, you'll end up with a container of fresh juice. This juice will be extremely potent, so mix this with water (add an equal amount of water to the juice). You may also wish to add some stevia if you'd like to sweeten up the taste a bit. Health benefits of the fresh living juice
• The blackberries will mask the bitter tastes of the other ingredients with their acidity. This acidity greatly improves the overall taste of the recipe. It also improves digestion of the minerals in the vegetables (you need an acidic digestive environment to absorb minerals). • Blackberries also have a powerful anti-cancer effect through your entire digestive tract, from your mouth and gums down through your colon. • Parsley is a super digestive cleanser. It will help eliminate toxins while providing your body with a burst of chlorophyll that will help cleanse your blood and liver. • Kale contains potent anti-cancer phytonutrients. It also contains healthy plant-based proteins and lots of chlorophyll. • The carrots are used primarily as a sweetener here (they really do sweeten up the juice), and
they also contain a wide assortment of beneficial nutrients, most notably beta carotene (from which carrots get their name). • The pears are the sweeteners here. I find that pear juice tastes much better than apple juice in these raw living juices, but of course it's your choice of what's best for you. If you're diabetic or want to reduce the sugars in this recipe, reduce the numbers of pears to just one or eliminate them altogether (when I juice here in Ecuador, I don't use pears at all. I just use carrots.) Some people prefer to use oranges instead of pears. The tart taste of the oranges in some ways provides a better overall taste. Try the recipe both ways and see what you like best. In addition to all the benefits listed above, these foods are alive with nutrients and energies. They are live foods, not dead processed foods, and they provide both the nutrients and the energies of life! It's a simple concept, really: If you want to stay alive, eat more living foods. If you want to be dead, eat more dead foods. Your body will thank you The point of today's living foods juice is to both introduce you to the joy of juicing (if you don't already know about it), and to prepare your digestive tract for tomorrow's action item. How much juice should you drink? Just drink whatever amount you feel comfortable with. I recommend an 8 oz. glass of this juice at minimum, but if you only feel like drinking half that much, that's fine, too. Some people will drink as much as 64 ounces of fresh juice in a day! (Juice Feasting) For the purposes of this 15-day experience you can still eat all your other normal food during the day. This isn't about eliminating everything else, it's about adding some fresh, living juice to your day. Ideally, you'll make this a regular part of your diet because whatever your diet consists of -whether it's pure vegan or based on McDonald's cheeseburgers -- it will be helped by adding several ounces of fresh juice. Pointers and shortcuts Don't have time to make your own fresh juice? There are shortcuts, but none of them are as good as actual living fresh juice. You can, if you wish, consume juice from a superfood powder such as EnerFood, VitaMineral Green, Boku Superfood, Delicious Greens or others. These are all reasonable alternatives to fresh juice, but by their very nature they are not as fresh as living foods would be. Do NOT reach for a Naked Juice, or Odwalla juice and make the mistake of thinking they are fresh living juices. All of those juices are DEAD, pasteurized juices made by the big soft drink companies (Coke and Pepsi). None of them are fresh, raw and alive. They still have nutritional benefits, so I'm not saying they're worthless, but they pale in comparison to fresh, raw juices that you make at home. You can drink this juice between meals, or during a meal, or any time you want. Just drink it quickly after making it, because fresh juice oxidizes in mere minutes. The nutritional quality of the fresh juice you make literally starts to degrade with each passing second. Ideally, start to consume it within two minutes of juicing it, and finish it in no more than five. You may feel some "detox" side effects from this juice, especially if you currently pursue a relatively unhealthful diet. But they should be mild. After all, this is just simple juice from simple foods. These aren't drugs or extracts. They are the foods your body was meant to consume.
By the way, I'm not here to push a vegan diet or a vegetarian diet on you. Decide to eat whatever you wish to eat, for your own reasons. Just add this fresh juice to your day and see what happens for yourself. Even if you gobble down pepperoni pizza and diet soda, these fresh juices will improve your health results in a noticeable way. In case you're curious, I drink about 16 ounces of this fresh juice each day, right from my own garden. Except I don't use the pears, and I add in fresh aloe vera gel from fresh leaves that I grow myself here in Ecuador. I grow all my own fresh berries, kale, carrots, parsley, broccoli, cucumbers and more, and these go right into my juice. Just so you know how powerful this is, I just finished a 90-hour fast. Aside from a raw coconut food bar a friend gave me, I didn't eat any solid food for 90 hours. I did, however, drink one glass of fresh, living vegetable juice each day. If I had been consuming a junk food diet, my energy would have collapsed within the first 24 hours. I would have been dead tired, detoxing in bed and probably suffering through it all. But because my daily diet is so clean, I was able to eat virtually nothing for nearly four days and still have the energy to write these articles, to go hiking up the mountains behind my house and generally get along with a normal day. (Yes, it got difficult on the fourth day, which is why I ended the fast at 90 hours.) Fresh living juice is such a powerhouse of nutrition and energy that even when you eat virtually nothing for several days in a row, the juice you had before the fast keeps you alive, healthy and energetic. That's been my experience, at least. What about the pulp? I've added this section to the article because people are asking why they shouldn't drink the pulp and fibers of the fruits and veggies instead of juicing them. Here's my take on it: First off, I don't want vegetable fibers, and I don't need 'em. The fruit fibers, on the other hand, are very good for your digestive health. Fruit pectin even helps prevent cancer according to many naturopaths. So if you want more pulp in your juice, then do this: #1) JUICE the vegetables to get pure juice while tossing out the fibers. #2) BLEND the fruits to keep the fruit pulp. Then pour in the veggie juice and add water. To me, this is the best "pulpy" juice. It's easy to remember, too: KEEP the fruit fiber, TOSS the vegetable fiber. But for those who are using juice therapeutically to treat disease under the care of a naturopathic physician, for example, they will probably want no fiber at all. That's because the fiber makes it more difficult for your body to absorb the juice. So for people who are fasting, or treating cancer, or detoxing or whatever, it's often recommended that they discard all the fiber and go for the pure juice. There's no absolute right or wrong about this. What's important is what works for you! Try it both ways and do what makes you feel healthier and happier. Tomorrow I'll talk more about fasting. For today, enjoy your juice!
Day 6 - Heal yourself in 15 days by fasting for 24 hours Today we focus on not doing something. In particular, I'm talking about not eating for 24 hours. It sounds simple in theory, of course: Refrain from eating anything (or drinking any beverages other than water) for 24 hours. Your body has plenty of calories stored to carry you through those 24 hours, and the pause from digestion will give your body a chance to focus its healing energies on other parts of your body. Note: Be sure to check with your naturopathic physician about the safety of fasting. While fasting is safe for most people, it's not for everyone. People in a weak state of health or those suffering from diabetes should take special precautions to make sure fasting is safe for them. Why fasting? Fasting has been used from Biblical times through the modern world to help purify and heal the body. It can help detox your liver, kidneys and digestive tract. It also encourages you to rethink your eating habits. When you fast for just 24 hours, and you're really committed to it, you'll be shocked to discover how many times you habitually reach for food. People habitually reach for food in all sorts of circumstances that have nothing to do with actual hunger: • • • • • •
When they're bored... When they feel emotionally stressed... When they watch television or movies... When they're traveling in their car... When other people are eating around them... At social events, parties or gatherings...
Try fasting for 24 hours and you'll see for yourself just how many times you habitually reach for food. This will teach you many important things about your own eating habits, and that's the point of this exercise. Just pick a day -- preferably a weekend when nothing big is going on -- and fast for 24 hours, drinking nothing but water. In accomplishing this, you will realize three very important things: 1) You didn't die from starvation in 24 hours. In fact, most people have enough spare calories to go 30 days or more without eating. 2) You found the self-discipline to achieve 24 hours without eating. This is a milestone accomplishment in self control. 3) You learned to observe yourself and recognize the numerous situations in which you habitually reach for food. This can be extremely educational in helping you reform your eating habits in the future. On top of all that, of course, you gave your digestive system a break and encouraged more rapid healing throughout your body. You may notice some detox effects (like bad breath) or a difference in your energy levels. This is all a normal part of the fasting process, and it indicates your fasting is working!
My own fasting experience I recently fasted for 90 hours, then I had food for 24 hours followed by another 48-hour fast. The experience was quite enlightening. I had virtually no negative side effects, most likely due to the fact that I consume a very cleansing, healthy diet on a day-to-day basis. Typically, the worse your diet, the more detox side effects you may experience when fasting. If you want to make your fasting more tolerable and more cleansing, you also have the option of drinking an 8-oz. glass of fresh vegetable juice in the middle of your fast. I did this during my fast, and it not only gave me more energy to make it through the fast; it also greatly enhanced the cleansing effects of my fast. I further enhance my own fasts with products from Ed Group's company, Global Healing Center (www.GHChealth.com). I especially like the Oxy Powder and Paratrex products. I take them with every fast. Naturally, the choice is yours on how to approach this. You also have complete freedom to decide WHEN you want to do this. It doesn't have to happen on Superbowl Weekend. Pick a nice, easy Saturday or Sunday when you don't have anything big going on, and make that day your 24-hour fast. You'll feel better for it, and you will have achieved an important new milestone in your journey toward improved health. Once you fast for just 24 hours, you'll then know that you can choose to avoid food at any particular time you want. You will discover new flexibility in your food consumption. You'll realize that you can say no to food any time you choose, and you won't die from lack of calories. You'll eliminate that fear and gain a new level of maturity in your relationship to food. What to do if your fast fails If you can't make it 24 hours without feeling like you're going to pass out and die, you probably have some rather serious blood sugar imbalances. These can be caused by poor food choice on a day-to-day basis, or even by prescription drugs such as antipsychotics or SSRIs (which imbalance blood sugar metabolism). So if your fast fails, don't fret. Simply take the next 30 days to improve your eating habits, making them healthier and supported with more fresh food rather than processed food. Work to get safely off all prescription drugs (with the help of your naturopathic physician, of course). Drink more superfoods and fresh juices. Then 30 days later, try the 24-hour fast again and see if you can make it through the entire thing. If you ever feel extremely weak, ill or you think you might pass out, that's a sign to stop the fast and get some calories. This isn't some sort of "no pain no gain" situation. Fasting should be tolerable and not dangerous. Again, the healthier your diet to start with, the easier your fast will typically be. I have a friend who fasts for 24 hours each week, every week. He's extremely healthy and looks fit and trim well into his 50's. Other people I know (like David Rainoshek) go on 90-day juice fasts / feasts where they drink nothing but fresh living vegetable juice for 90 days. Personally, I feel really good on a 72-hour fast, and a 48-hour fast is relatively straightforward because I can do it over the weekend. A 24-hour fast is now a no-brainer. A few years ago, I never could have even entertained the idea of not eating for 24 hours. The thought would have terrified me. If you're in that camp right now, stop to consider what this means: You are a slave to food, just as I was! Fasting helps free your mind from the enslavement of thinking you have to eat every few hours. It gives you new options, new freedoms and new self discipline. It's about much more than simply
not eating food for 24 hours; it's also about self observation and spiritual mindfulness. Why do you think nearly all the great spiritual figures throughout world history fasted as part of their spiritual practice? They did that because food messes with your head while fasting clears your head. Fasting gives you the opportunity to clear the food-induced cobwebs and see things with improved clarity. Now, just as a disclaimer here, please know that you're not going to see God after just a 24-hour fast. When spiritual leaders fast, they often fast for weeks at a time. Some go as far as 40 days. Some "breatharians" claim not to eat food at all, ever! But those are more advanced topics for another day. For today, just focus on picking a day where you fast for 24 hours and observe the changes in your own mind and body. You'll be a wiser, healthier and more enlightened person for doing so.
Day 7 - Rejecting the crowd by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor (NaturalNews) This article continues with part seven of our 15-day "Heal Yourself" series. It begins with the idea of observing the poor health of the mainstream crowd: Do you want to be as diseased as they are? If so, simply do what they do! Let's face it: The "mainstream consumer" isn't very healthy. People who follow mainstream health information from the mainstream media are the most diseased people of all. They eat processed junk foods, they take lots of dangerous pharmaceuticals, they routinely get vaccinated and they completely fail to protect their health with nutritional supplements, superfoods or fresh living foods. These are the people supporting the pharmaceutical industry, the cancer industry, the diabetes industry and the heart disease industry. Through their suffering and death, they keep the medical system alive and profitable. And if you want to be healthy, these are precisely the people you need to reject in order to be safe and healthy yourself. Don't follow the crowd off the edge of the cliff The mainstream crowd, you see, isn't very well informed when it comes to health. Crowd psychology tells us that people tend to follow whatever the crowd is doing for no reason other than the fact the crowd is doing it. The human mind figures, "Well, if the crowd is doing that, there must be a good reason for it," and so people just go along with practically anything as long the crowd supports it. This is how people end up drinking sugary sodas, eating at fast food restaurants, drinking pasteurized milk and living on processed junk foods. This is how they end up eating microwaveable popcorn, or drinking diet sodas or consuming "processed cheese food." This is what causes people to get vaccines that they don't need or take dangerous prescription medications that might harm them (or kill them). Crowds as a whole aren't very intelligent -even when individual members of the crowd might be highly intelligent on their own! And if you follow the mainstream consumer crowd without thinking for yourself, you can only expect the same outcome the crowd is experiencing: Degenerative disease, pharmaceutical dependency and medical bankruptcy. That's why achieving lasting health means distancing yourself from the mainstream crowd and in many cases doing the opposite of what they do.
You'll be healthier by doing the opposite of the mainstream When the mainstream crowd rushes to get vaccinated against a hyped-up, non-emergency "pandemic", just do the opposite and don't get vaccinated. When the mainstream crowd rushes to get free chicken at KFC because Oprah announced it on her show, do the opposite and go drink a smoothie or something. When the mainstream crowd rushes to be subjected to mammography radiation (which actually promotes breast cancer), do the opposite and get a far safer thermograph (or just take a healthy dose of anti-cancer vitamin D and stop living your life in fear of cancer). When the mainstream crowd pops pills for depression, cholesterol and high blood pressure, do the opposite and take nutritional supplements that nourish the body instead of poisoning it. Basically, watch what the mainstream consumers do and make a conscious effort to do the opposite (in most cases, anyway). Don't leap from one mindless crowd to another While you're doing all this, be careful not to leap from one mindless crowd to another. In rejecting the mainstream crowd, in other words, don't fall blindly into following another crowd, even if it's a "healthy" crowd. In my view, you should never follow any crowd just because it's a crowd. That includes the raw food crowd, the yoga crowd, the vegetarian crowd, etc. Instead, think for yourself about what makes sense to you. And then, if your conclusions match their conclusions, it's okay to join that group (or hang out with that crowd) as long as you continue to invoke a reality check from time to time. Make sure that what the crowd is doing always makes good sense to you and you won't be blindsided by crowd stupidity. Crowds usually aren't very smart. But YOU are! You have the ability to think for yourself, to change your mind at any time, to improve your decisions, to upgrade or downgrade your lifestyle, etc. Exercise these gifts where appropriate, and don't be afraid to try out new eating habits, new exercise schedules and new approaches to self care. Find out what works best for you, regardless of whether a "crowd" exists that practices the same thing. Don't be a mindless health nut, in other words. Be mindfully health conscious and go with what works best for you rather than what's popular or cool. Check in with yourself from time to time Most of all, if you ever find yourself going along with the mainstream crowd -- like waiting in line at a crowded vaccine clinic -- it might be a good idea to pinch yourself and engage in a little lucid thinking by asking questions like, "Should I really be here? Does this really make sense? Is there a safer, more natural alternative that I could explore instead?" Think about this the next time you're about to get your breast pancaked at the mammography clinic. "Does irradiating my breasts really make good sense?" Of course it doesn't. People only do it because they are going along with the mainstream crowd. And the crowd is clueless about breast health, ionizing radiation, vitamin D or cancer prevention. So be smart. Be an individual. And be brave enough to reject the crowd and do something different that's probably a whole lot safer and healthier. Getting sunlight on your skin to generate vitamin D is rejecting the crowd. And yet it's the very
best way to prevent cancer for FREE!
Day 8 - Stop making disease by embracing the recipe for health by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor (NaturalNews) It also seems too simple: In order to achieve lasting health, simply stop making disease. But the concept is foreign to most people: Making disease? Why would I be making disease? 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.
Day 9 - Correcting your "nature deficiency" by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor (NaturalNews) Do you suffer from a "nature deficiency?" If you'd like most people in modern society, you spend most of your 24 hours of the day indoors. You work under artificial fluorescent lights, you eat and sleep inside a house or apartment, you commute in the artificial environment of a car, bus or train. You rarely get outside and even when you do, it's not real nature -- it's some artificial "planned" park with concrete sidewalks and maintained lawns. 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
• Sunlight Sunlight 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!
Day 10 - Cleaning Up Your Skin Exposure (NaturalNews) Continuing with our 15-day self healing series, today we focus on cleaning up your skin exposures. By "skin exposures," I mean all the things your skin comes into contact with... and the sheer quantity of those things will probably surprise you. 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 cancercausing 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, cancercausing 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.
Day 11 - Heal Yourself in 15 Days by eating MORE (not less) (NaturalNews) Can you really heal yourself by eating more food? It seems counterintuitive, but in this article -- part eleven of our 15-day self-healing series -- I'm going to share with you how eating more food can actually be a powerful tool in accelerating your body's own natural healing potential. 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 conventionallygrown 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. :-)
Day 12 - "Attitude of Gratitude" (NaturalNews) So far in this 15-day self healing series, we've talked about healing yourself through many innovative methods that help protect you from threats to your health while activating the inner healing potential you already possess. Today, in part twelve of this series, we're going to explore the power of gratitude in accelerating your healing even further. 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.
Day 13 - Heal yourself in 15 days with the people around you (NaturalNews) Continuing with our 15-day self-healing article series, today we venture into the realm of what I call social healing. I wouldn't have believe this even two years ago, but I have since come to realize that WHO you are living with is just as important (or perhaps more important) than WHERE you are living. Living among healthy-minded, high-energy individuals who remain engaged in the pursuits of health and happiness has an extremely powerful rubbing off effect on you. These people can lift your spirits, inspire you to embrace positive changes and serve as shining examples of the health results you wish to achieve. That all sounds fine, you might say, but what about the people around you who aren't on board with your desire to live a more healthful life? This is the challenging part: What do you do about family and friends who consistently pursue a comparatively unhealthy lifestyle... and who tend to drag you down along with them? That's the tough part, and the closer the people are to you, the more difficult it can be. The classic situation I see from talking to readers is a middle-aged woman who is genuinely attempting to pursue a more healthful lifestyle but whose husband is a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy who wants nothing at all to do with salads, superfoods or nutrition.
So what do you do in these cases? Here's a simple, three-step approach that you may find valuable: Three steps to uplifting the health of those around you Step 1) Keep your goals private (at first). Even though you may have a goal of losing a certain number of pounds, or overcoming a specific disease, or improving your health in some noticeable way, don't necessarily announce that to the people around you. Why? Because if they're not aligned with your health goals, they will immediately dismiss the idea or even attack you for daring to pursue such a thing. By keeping your goals private (at first), you'll be able to keep them present in your own consciousness while you experiment with new choices in food and lifestyle habits to find out what's working for you -- without the pressure of everybody watching over your shoulder to second guess what you're doing. Step 2) Pursue your health changes with an attitude of enjoyment. Simply start making the dietary changes you have decided are good for you -- and the exercise changes you might need -- and when you're asked by anyone why you're making these changes, just answer, "Because I enjoy doing this." Or you can say, "I like this!" You don't have to explain more. Simply enjoying it is reason enough. Step 3) Be the example that others admire. As you pursue these new health habits for yourself, changes will begin to occur over time. You may notice improved skin, a reduction of excess body fat, enhanced energy or stamina, improved mood, a reduction in the symptoms of degenerative disease and so on. As this happens, the people around you will take notice. That's the point where they will begin to get curious about what you're doing that's working so well. And at some point they will ask you questions like, "Hey, you're looking younger and more energetic these days. What's your secret?" Everybody loves to hear a secret. Especially if it's a secret that makes them look better or feel better. So you can say something like, "Do you really want to know the secret? Because it's so simple, and so easy, and anybody can do it, and it's really working. But are you sure you want to know it?" At that point, no one can resist the temptation to learn the secret. So they'll lean in and say, "Yes! I want to know the secret!" That's when you whisper in their ear, "Juicing" or "daily walking for one hour" or whatever your secret has been. At this point, they will tend to greatly value the information you're sharing with them. You see, if you came out and simply told them all this without waiting for them to ask first, they might have discounted the information. But because they noticed something in you that they wanted to experience for themselves, and because they asked you, they will now value the information so much more. So the secret here is to refrain from pushing information onto others. Let them come to you and ask, and then be ready to give them good information about what's working for you so that they can try it out for themselves. The positive ripple effect In time, as this phenomenon unfolds in your life, impacting your circle of family and friends, you will actually begin to see a ripple effect of positive health changes in the people around you. This, in turn, will translate into mutual support for your healthy lifestyle choices, and you may even find some people who you thought could never be interested in health suddenly turning around and becoming interested. You may also find that those who might have criticized you at first (if you had shared your plans with them up front) will suddenly come to you when they are in need of a health solution. They
may return from the doctor's office one day with a diagnosis of diabetes, for example, or a lump in their breast. And all of a sudden they're really interested in solving their health problem by searching for new answers. So they may turn to you with renewed interest and start asking questions about health and nutrition that never interested them before. That's when it's your time to shine as an example of a healthy, happy person living a healthful lifestyle. You don't have to preach to others, of course, or condemn their current choices in unhealthful foods. Nobody likes to be called an idiot for eating hot dogs and drinking pasteurized cow's milk. But you can simply invite them to explore the possibility that they may experience improved results by making improved choices. And you can guide them in some directions for exploration as rapidly as they are interested in making those shifts. This is how you can work over time to uplift the health of those around you (and thereby create a more supportive community of family and friends that will embrace your own health habits, too). Thinking of moving? There's another way to uplift your supporting community of family and friends: Move to a city that's more into health. I'm from the Kansas City area, which is more famous for Barbeque than health, and when I visit Kansas City, it's always difficult to find places to buy fresh juice or organic vegetables. I was in North Carolina a year ago and noticed much the same thing there, too. I hear Cleveland isn't exactly a health hub of the country either. But other cities like Miami, New York, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Houston, San Diego, Toronto and Sante Fe are great places to find lots of health-conscious people who are totally into the same things you're into! If you feel out of place where you currently live, and you want to surround yourself with more health-conscious people, the general advice is to head to either the East or West coast and you'll find more health-conscious communities there. Moving to a different city may sound a little drastic, but if you've run out of options in the place where you live, and you feel like you would benefit from the support of a community that's more aligned with your goals, then moving can be one of the best decisions of your life! I've found that surrounding yourself with health-conscious people who are aligned with your own lifestyle priorities is one of the most important things you can do to keep yourself on that path, too. So consider this option. Keep your mind open to this possibility, and check out all the options that can help surround you with a supportive, aligned community of people who demonstrate the kind of health-oriented lifestyle you aspire to make your own. Once you surround yourself with those people, before long you'll find yourself becoming one of them and getting the results they're getting, too! Healthy begins to rub off on you rather quickly once you're in the company of healthy, supportive people. Social healing works. And you can make a conscious decision to either uplift those around you, or move to a different location where you can find more like-minded people who will support your lifestyle choices. Either way, you come out healthier and happier. Enjoy!
Day 14 - Heal yourself in 15 days with the joy of exercising in nature
(NaturalNews) In our 15-day self-healing series, we've so far covered everything from juicing and fasting to how to stop making disease. But we haven't yet covered one of the elements most commonly associated with self-healing: Exercise! But don't groan: This isn't going to be some boring rehash of the same old stuff you've always heard about exercise, such as "you have to exercise an hour a day." Rather, I'd like to invite you to think about exercise in a whole new light... about finding the FUN in exercise! In my view, exercise shouldn't be something that's a daily grind. If it feels like work, something's not right with it. I'm all about finding ways to exercise that don't even feel like exercise at all -the kind of things that, when you're finished an hour later, you say to yourself, "Wow, that was exercise, too? Cool!" Obviously, I'm not talking about a treadmill grind here. Sure, a treadmill can burn off the calories and do wonders for your stamina and muscle tone, but to me it still feels a lot like work. That's why I try to find alternative fun things to do. In fact, I don't even call them WORKouts. I call them FUNouts! What's fun? If you think about it, the most fun ways to exercise are things that give your mind something to focus on rather than the exercise. In fact, the "fun" versus "work" factor of exercise is all about your FOCUS. When you mind is focused on the work, every step feels like a mountain to climb, but when your mind is experiencing something else (such as the scenery around you), then suddenly your work is no longer the focus of your attention. That's why the real secret to effortless, joyful exercise is so incredibly simple that you'll probably find it funny. Here it is, just three little words that contain a whole lot of wisdom and experience about making exercise fun: Exercise in nature. That's it: Exercise in nature. And it doesn't even matter what kind of exercise you do, really, as long as it's outside, in nature. You can walk, ride, jump, skip, swim, shuffle, push, pull, roll, lift, surf, sail or do just about anything else that involves moving your bod for an hour or so. Walk along a city park or a nature trail. Toss a frisbee with a friend. Slap a volleyball over the net or hurl some horseshoes on a piece of lawn. Jump rope on the sidewalk or swing on a tree branch. Don't forget how to play Do these things sound silly to you? One thing I've noticed about adults is that too many adults have forgotten how to play like children. We all played like children when we were children, right? But when we grow up, we no longer think it's "mature" to skip along in a game of hopscotch on the sidewalk or toss a frisbee in the park. But in my opinion, we need to relearn how to play like children because "playing" is the best way to get exercise without feeling like it's work. That's why I've found lots of joy in playing for exercise. I like to ride a trike (a recumbent
bicycle with a really comfortable seat) on the sidewalk or do bear crawls in the grass. Neighborhood playgrounds, I've found, are filled with all kinds of useful equipment that even adults can often use, from climbing the ropes to swinging around on the "monkey bars" as we used to call them. Part of this successful habit of playing, of course, involves you rejecting the mainstream crowd and getting comfortable just doing what's healthy and fun, regardless of what the other limitedthinking people might say about it. Just because they forgot how to play doesn't mean you have to limit YOUR fun to THEIR lack of imagination. In fact, "rejecting the crowd" is the topic of part seven of this 15-day series on self healing: http://www.naturalnews.com/028136_s... If you open up your options, there's fun to be found everywhere around you in nature. You can play catch with a baseball, kick around a soccer ball or roll around in the spring grass with your family dog. You can learn to juggle, or spin poi (as I do), or take on a serious hike at an exotic natural destination. I do many of these things on a frequent basis, from juggling and playing catch to walking, hiking and biking. My exercise is always fun... and it never feels like work to me. While indoor gyms can be great places to go (especially during the winters), they are not my first choice for FUNouts. That's why I encourage everyone to follow these three simple steps for finding the joy in your exercise: Step 1) Get outside. Let nature be your playground. Step 2) Learn how to play, and play outside the box! Step 3) Play regularly and with lots of variety. And, of course, don't listen to non-fun people who judge you for playing. Don't be that snooty, stodgy grown-up who has forgotten the simple joys of outdoor playtime. Life can be recess, folks! And you can have recess every single day. Just get outside, have fun, relearn how to play and turn your WORKouts into FUNouts! Day 15 has not yet been published (as of 13th April 2010). Please subscribe to Natural News Newsletter here http://www.naturalnews.com/ReaderRegistration.html to be notified of when the final part is published and to read a summary of the many extremely valuable articles written by Mike Adams, The Health Ranger & his team at Natural News Http://www.naturalnews.com This series of articles was consolidated into one to make it easier for you to read by Pete Adams of A Plan for Peace. Please connect with me to help co-create a world of peace:
In Lak'ech Pete Adams (YogiSinzapatos) www.a-plan-for-peace.com Please connect with me: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/YogiSinzapatos Twitter: @YogiSinzapatos My Vimeo channel: http://vimeo.com/user2285821/videos My You-Tube channel: http://www.youtube.com/yogisinzapatos
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