Be Well with Michelle

Resonant Frequency Breathing Promotes Wellness

2011-08-21T15:32:00.000-07:00

This is a short (demo) version of a breathing exercise used in our research studies to train the participants to breathe at near resonant frequency (6 bpm) with both visual and audio aids.... You may try this technique when you feel nervous, stressed or anxious, or just want to relax. This program is based on the findings from studies of heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback, and the longer version (15 to 20 min) has been used in clinical studies of treatment of hypertension, panic, asthma, major depression, fibromyalgia, and anxiety disorders....

- Dr Kevin Chen

Living In Balance And Harmony

2011-08-21T15:27:00.000-07:00

When you think of living in balance, how do you perceive that balance? Would your life and lifestyle be pretty mellow with no great highs or lows, similar to driving over a terrain of little hills but no tall mountains or deep valleys? You would experience no great ups or downs; nothing to get upset or angry about, but nothing to get excited about either? You would have no major illnesses; you would feel pretty good but experience the occasional “blah” day?

Many people would consider that to be a balanced life and be pretty satisfied with it because most see balance as an apothecary’s scales or a see-saw where there are little ups and downs, but basically “balanced” means horizontal levelness. Take a moment to consider the things we say to warn people off from imbalance: “Don’t tilt the apple cart;” “don’t tip the scales;” “keep it on an even keel.”

That perceived state of balance really means equilibrium: “A condition in which all acting influences are canceled by others, resulting in a stable, balanced, or unchanging system.” When talking about Dao and balance, we can safely agree that there is nothing about the Dao that is unchanging. It is quite the opposite, changing every minute of every day.

Take a moment to ponder all the things around you that are changing right this minute; depending upon the time of day you are reading this the day is changing to night or vice versa, the summer is changing to winter in the northern hemisphere and winter to summer in the southern hemisphere, at the time of this writing the moon is changing from full to new. On a more personal scale, your body is shedding old skin cells and making new ones, your qi is circulating through your energy channels, and your body chemicals are rising and falling in their own rhythm. Many of these things you don’t pay much attention to or even notice in the course of the day, but they affect you just as profoundly as the recognition of hunger or sleepiness or any of several emotions you may be feeling like anxiety or depression or happiness or contentment.

Can you imagine being caught in an ever-balanced, unchanging life? What would that be like? Would it always be spring or autumn so the length of day and night were equal and the seasons would never change to bring extreme heat or cold? Would your thoughts always progress smoothly from one idea to the next? Would you always be emotionally mellow, feeling neither anger nor joy?

When I present “balance” to you that way, it sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? However, that is exactly the kind of life you create for yourself when you attempt to maintain rigid levels of brain or body chemicals through unnatural measures in an attempt to control unwanted emotions or diseases without getting to the root of the problem to learn why those difficult emotions and diseases are bubbling up in the first place.

In following the Dao, equilibrium is not the sort of balance we are trying to attain.

In his writing “Balance” from the book 365 Tao (1), Deng Ming-Dao reminds us: “Nature does not achieve balance by keeping to one level. Rather, elements and seasons alternate with one another in succession. Balance, as defined by the Tao, is not stasis but a dynamic process of many overlapping alternations; even if some phases seem wildly excessive, they are balanced by others.

“Everything has its place. Everything has a season. As events turn, balance is to know what is here, what is coming, and how to be in perfect harmony with it. Then one attains a state of sublimity that cannot be challenged.”

You can see that balance is not equilibrium, and perhaps that is why equilibrium is so difficult to maintain – it is not natural, it is contrived. If you must spend your energy and attention maintaining equilibrium, you have neither the time nor opportunity to be aware of the cycles which create balance naturally.

In part, the reason equilibrium is so highly valued today is because changes in life come so swiftly and unexpectedly you have little time to adapt to one change before the next challenges you; they come at you like white-capped waves in a stormy sea. Not only is it difficult to keep up with today’s fast-paced technology, but all these labor-saving devices have actually caused American workers to be less productive rather than more productive, and instead of taking less time to complete tasks, it now takes longer. No wonder you become angry, frustrated, and depressed. Life has tossed more complications at you than you can cope with. It is nearly impossible to “know…what is coming, and how to be in perfect harmony with it” as Deng Ming-Dao suggests. You can barely keep up with what’s here and now!

The way to calm the mind and soothe the body is not through chemically forced equilibrium. Generally speaking, chemicals do not help your body to perform natural processes; they supply your body with uniform levels of needed chemicals so your body does not have to perform at all because your natural system has been bypassed. When one body system is bypassed, it affects the performance of a second, related system, and then that second system requires intervention, and so on, in a chain-reaction of chemically-induced stasis which is quite unnatural, and causes more ill-health than it cures.

The correct path to natural balance and wellness can be found in verse 19 of the Tao Te Ching (Peter Merel interpolation (2))

If we could discard knowledge and wisdom Then people would profit a hundredfold; If we could discard duty and justice Then harmonious relationships would form; If we could discard artifice and profit Then waste and theft would disappear. Yet such remedies treat only symptoms And so they are inadequate. People need personal remedies: Reveal your naked self and embrace your original nature; Bind your self-interest and control your ambition; Forget your habits and simplify your affairs.

Here is one interpretation of how this verse instructs you in achieving true, natural balance.

If we could discard knowledge and wisdom Then people would profit a hundredfold;
This does not mean to throw away what you know. It means that the demands for learning that are made upon you may account for the higher levels of stress and anxiety you experience, and may lead to feelings of fear, anger, resentment, and depression. Today, those demands often include becoming proficient in complicated technologies, and learning several jobs so that you are able to cover jobs for other people when they are out sick or on vacation. If the demands made upon you were fewer or less intense, you would not suffer sustained and debilitating levels of energy-draining and disease-causing emotions like anxiety and depression, and you would not require chemical interventions. Yes, you probably would experience these negative emotions, but you would “profit” by having shorter and fewer episodes, and you would have the mind power and the energy to effectively counteract them with techniques such as going for a brisk walk, or doing qigong.

If we could discard duty and justice Then harmonious relationships would form;
Duty and justice are the expectations and laws of other people imposed upon you. Often, that expectation breeds resentment and ill-will, exactly the opposite of harmony. Goodwill cannot be forced or legislated. Harmony comes when you work with others because you want to, not because someone else demands or expects it.

If we could discard artifice and profit Then waste and theft would disappear.
Waste and theft are both products of overabundance. If you live lavishly, opulently, not only is it wasteful, you will likely be a target for thieves. There is an inner angle to this also: waste and theft of your energy. If you put an overabundance of energy into attaining wealth and profit, you suffer burnout. If you are directed to expend your energy on tasks that only cause you anger and frustration, or things that will only profit you outwardly, you effectively “steal” energy from more deserving pursuits.

Yet such remedies treat only symptoms And so they are inadequate. People need personal remedies:
So far, the things that have been discussed either come from or apply to your interactions with other people. Without addressing your inner self and inner needs, any changes will halt the course of imbalance and illness but do not address the issue of how to effect a cure for your health and well-being.

Reveal your naked self and embrace your original nature;
We all wear masks at times. The problem has become that, in order to maintain emotional self-protection, you wear a mask most of the time; no one knows the real you. It may be protective, but it is stressful, too, like being on guard or on alert every moment with never a time to relax. You need to be open and honest with the people around you, and with yourself! Be who you really are, not who you are expected to be.

Bind your self-interest and control your ambition;
Bind in this context means to reduce your self-interest. Basically, don’t make yourself crazy! Sometimes the demands and expectations you put on yourself are worse than those put on you by others. Many challenges can and should be enjoyed, they keep life interesting. However, know your limits and don’t push them past the point of no return. It’s not a good or stimulating challenge if it harms your physical or emotional health.

Forget your habits and simplify your affairs.
“…simplify your affairs.” Much easier said than done, but if you truly desire to return to a state of balanced health and wellness which includes anticipating changes and being in harmony, never doubt that you have the ability and will find the way to do it.

I believe the golden key to unlock the treasure in this case is the phrase “Forget your habits…” How often do you do things out of habit without even realizing it? Many times a day, I guarantee it. The only way to break a habit is through awareness. It is imperative that you watch your thoughts, and watch how your thoughts create your emotions, and watch how your emotions create your health and well-being.

One way to “forget your habits” is to embrace change. Change everything you can about your day. Change your alarm clock so that you arise a few minutes earlier or later. Eat a different breakfast. Drink a cup of tea instead of coffee. Wear your Thursday suit on Monday and your Monday suit on Thursday. Take a different route to work if you walk or drive. If you ride, sit at the back of the bus or subway car instead of the front, or vice versa. Smile and say “Good Morning!” to everyone you see instead of hiding behind the newspaper. If you drive, listen to a different radio station. Smile and say “Good Morning!” to everyone in your office, especially the people who give you a hard time. (They will wonder what you are up to!) Take or buy something different for lunch.

By now I’m sure you are getting the idea. Changing your routine periodically will enable you to better cope physically, mentally, and emotionally with all change whether it is initiated by you or someone else. Do not be overwhelmed by change and attempt to cure it with stasis. Take control of the change, and allow the dynamic ups and downs of the natural world bring you into true balance and harmony.

(1) Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao: Daily Meditations, Harper San Francisco, 1992, ISBN 0062502239

(2) http://qi-journal.com/philosophy.asp?-Token.FindPage=2&-Token.SearchID=DaoDeChing

Are you the Empty Vessel or the Hollow Bamboo?

2011-08-20T15:14:00.000-07:00

Imagine that the water pouring through the bamboo and into the pot is Love, Light, Source, or Universal Consciousness….God if you will. Take a moment to consider how the bamboo and the pot function, and what happens to each as the water of Consciousness continuously flows.

Many traditions around the world embrace the core concept of the Empty Vessel. The foundation of the practice is that as you become full with ideas, knowledge, or ego, you must give up or give away that which has filled you so that you may attain innocence and egolessness and therefore experience Oneness.

In the Daoist tradition that I follow, there is much talk about being an Empty Vessel. There are even books and magazines and CDs about it. This idea comes from many sources, but one of the originals is Verse 11 of the Dao De Jing (Derek Lin translation) which says:

Thirty spokes join in one hub
In its emptiness, there is the function of a vehicle

Mix clay to create a container
In its emptiness, there is the function of a container

Cut open doors and windows to create a room
In its emptiness, there is the function of a room

Therefore, that which exists is used to create benefit

That which is empty is used to create functionality

This teaching shows that only when it is empty can a cup function to hold the liquid you want to drink; only when it is empty can a room contain the furniture for your comfort. Carried into the realm of spirituality, only when it is empty can your mind contain universal consciousness and be filled with Divine Oneness.

Eventually, however, the vessel becomes full again, and either spills over uncontrollably or must be emptied by revisiting the same methods (or trying some new methods) that you used to empty it the last time.

However, if you embrace the paradox of diversity within oneness and are interested in helping others as well as being filled with divine consciousness yourself, the Hollow Bamboo is the way to go. Take a look at the bamboo again: as a channel for universal energies and divine consciousness, it is always full, as well as always sharing this fullness with others.

Here is a lovely metaphor for it, found again in Derek Lin's translation of the Dao De Jing. In the chapter below, the Valley Spirit represents the receptivity of earth. When the heavenly energies settle onto the earth, like the water through the bamboo, they flow to the lowest places. The valley, being the lowest place, collects the most heavenly energies.

Chapter 6

The valley spirit, undying
Is called the Mystic Female

The gateway of the Mystic Female
Is called the root of Heaven and Earth

It flows continuously, barely perceptible
When utilized, it is never exhausted

Just ponder the profound truth of that for a moment: It [heavenly energy and consciousness] flows continuously……When utilized, it is never exhausted.

Isn't the same true of Light, Love, Divine Consciousness? As it pours into you from the universe, and as you allow yourself to be a channel that it may flow through you to provide the same for others, do you not participate in the paradox of diversity while at the same time being always and completely filled with Light, Love, and participating in Universal Oneness?

Of course you do!

So, maybe it's better to be a piece of Hollow Bamboo and to remain full of Light and Love, and leave the Empty Vessel to others.

Derek Lin's online translation of the Dao De Jing may be viewed on his True Tao website Follow the links to the translation of the Tao Te Ching (Dao De Jing).

Minset can improve vision

2011-08-19T10:36:00.000-07:00

I found this article while browsing. . . see “Believing Is Seeing” reprinted below.

Read the article on how people's vision improved just by believing that a particular activity would improve their sight.

Your beliefs are a very powerful creative force. If you focus on positive beliefs, you will have positive experiences. Just think what you could do to create your physical health if you were to listen to your personalized Affirmation Meditation with statements telling you of your complete health and wellness!

Believing is Seeing: How Mindset Can Improve Vision
posted May 2, 2010 http://www.physorg.com/news192043428.html

(PhysOrg.com) -- How you see isn't just about how good your eyes are - it's also about your mindset, according to a study published in Psychological Science. For example, in one experiment, if someone was told that exercise would improve their vision, they saw better after doing an athletic activity - jumping jacks - than an unathletic activity with the same effect on heart rate - skipping.

The researchers, led by Ellen Langer at Harvard University, were interested in how the mind and body connect, particularly how mindset affects the body's performance. Langer has studied this kind of connection for decades. "Many of the things that we think we can't do are a function of our mindset rather than our abilities to do them," she says. In this case, she was interested in whether what we think affects how well we see.

People expect to see only the first few lines on traditional eye charts. Volunteers in an experiment who read a eye chart arranged in reverse order (the letters got progressively larger, with the giant "E" in the last row) saw a greater proportion of the smallest letters than when they viewed a traditional eye chart.

Another experiment took advantage of the belief that pilots have good eyesight. College students in the ROTC were brought into a flight simulator, given army fatigues to wear, and told to fly the simulator. They did simple flight maneuvers, then did an eyesight test by reading markings on the wings of planes ahead - actually lines from an eye chart. A control group of ROTC students was put in the same conditions, but they were told the simulator was broken, and that they should just pretend to fly the plane. The people who had performed like pilots, as opposed to those who just pretended, saw 40 percent better.

These findings suggest that visual acuity is influenced by mindset and might be improved by psychological means. Just being aware of this might help people improve their eyesight, says Langer - if they pay attention to when they can see well and when they can't, for example, or simply believe that they can see better when they aren't sitting in a dark room at the optometrist's office. These findings along with others from Langer's lab lead them to question how many of our limits are of our own making. The research is part of a larger inquiry into the psychology of possibility.

Provided by Association for Psychological Science (news : web)

Mantra

2011-08-16T15:48:00.000-07:00

Sounds of the first chakra by Harish Johari in MP3 format.

Muladhara Chakra, the first chakra.

A mantra is a chant. It can be as simple (and simply profound) as repeating the single syllable Aum, or it can be almost like a song of many words as is the Great Compassion Mantra. The mantra is found throughout the world both as a meditation practice and as a healing practice.

As a spiritual practice, mantra chanting began with the Hindus and was adopted by Buddhists and eventually other religious groups. It is believed that the idea for chanting the "Ave Maria" was brought back to Europe by Crusaders who learned the practice of using strings of beads (which we now call rosaries) to count prayer repetitions from the Arabs who had received their instruction in the practice from Tibetan monks and Indian Yogi masters.

The originators of the mantra practice discovered that repeating certain sounds with the voice created a particular vibration within the body. This, by the way, connects to the origins and original use of the chakras. Chakras are much more related to sound than to color, especially the rainbow-body stuff of today which was invented in the 1970's by Christopher Hills.

The authentic Hindu chakras (see picture above) have a letter representing a sound in the center (called the seed sound) and on each petal; the sounds are meant to be chanted, enabling the practitioner to attain spiritual states of consciousness, which it does when practiced regularly. The mantra for the Crown chakra, the 1,000 Petal Lotus, is actually the full compliment of sounds from all the petals of all the chakras, which comes to 50 sounds, making it a 50-syllable mantra.

You usually begin by chanting aloud, and then your voice softens until it is no longer heard, but the vibration continues in the mind. Indeed, the word mantra comes from a combination meaning "mind-tool," and it is the use of the voice that harmonizes the chanter's energies. When the energies have become harmonized, the voice may rest, but with dedicated practice, the chant may end but the energy pulses on.

The proof of that is found in a research titled "Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice" During the research, scientists observed that "mental training involves temporal integrative mechanisms and may induce short-term and long-term neural changes." In plain English: The long-term meditators' EEG-measured brainwave activity was higher – often in the Gamma range of 40Hz – and it stayed that way well beyond the duration of the meditation; the changes may even have been permanent. Long-time meditators do, literally, vibrate at a higher level.

(The Gamma state of brainwave activity is linked to higher states of consciousness, perception, problem solving, and those inspirational "Ah-ha!" moments. This rate has also been recorded during the REM sleep cycle, the deepest level of sleep (also associated with dreaming), which just goes to show why a good night's sleep is really important!)

Anyone who has ever attended a political demonstration where hundreds or even thousands of people are chanting the same slogan will attest to the power of the mantra to alter the consciousness. Personally, I believe that the number of participants may make a difference in groups new to the practice; the more people chanting together, the more energy that will be generated, and the more rapid and deep the change to the consciousness will become. However, for spiritualists long trained in the practice, large numbers of participants are probably not necessary (maybe not even desirable) to achieve an altered state.

Mantras are probably the first-ever demonstration and practice of entrainment, the physics principle that states two different vibrating bodies will mutually influence each other and both will adapt until their vibrations are synchronized.

A small study was done to see if chanting a rhythmic formula (such as a mantra or the "Ave Maria") had an effect on the cardiovascular system, see if it would synchronize breathing and heart rate, and if it would affect the body's ability to maintain steady blood pressure. Their stated result: "Both prayer and mantra caused striking, powerful,and synchronous increases in existing cardiovascular rhythms whenrecited six times a minute. Baroreflex [your body's mechanism for maintaining steady blood pressure levels] sensitivity also increasedsignificantly…" Their conclusion: "Rhythm formulas that involve breathing atsix breaths per minute induce favourable psychological and possiblyphysiologicaleffects." Source http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7327/1446

Ten breaths per minute is the respiration rate of a relaxed individual. Six breaths per minute will slow the heart rate and lead to even deeper relaxation. When I am doing standing qigong, I usually breathe at a rate of four or five respirations (inhale and exhale) per minute, and doing this for thirty or more minutes at a time has induced an altered state of consciousness even though chanting is not part of that practice.

In part, the reason that chanting has this relaxing and mind-altering effect is that performing the chant also regulates the breathing. The words and syllables in mantras for spiritual awakenings were created to (or were discovered to) also regulate the respiration. It is not just the sound, but the sound together with the regulation of the breath that causes the heart rate to synchronize, and the blood pressure to respond. This is why it is often said that it doesn't matter whether you chant "Aum," "Ave Maria," or "My Name Is Michelle," if you can hum the sound and create the vibration, the rate of respiration is slow and entrains the heart rate, you will likely achieve an altered state of consciousness if that is your goal. You will certainly achieve a state of very deep relaxation!

If you choose to create your own mantra, in order to be effective the words or syllables you chant should be sounds you can draw out like the mmmmmm of an M, or nnnnnnnnn of N, or ssssssss of S, or vvvvvvvv of V. Almost any vowel will work because you can almost hum them. (The ancient Greeks considered vowels to be sacred, possibly just for the reason that chanting them created altered states of consciousness.) Whatever sound you choose, make sure it is sustainable. K doesn’t work well, the sound is too hard and short. Neither does T or B because you can't elongate or hum them, you can only stutter them and you just don't get the same result.

Research shows the use of Affirmations overcomes anxiety and depression

2011-08-15T10:28:00.000-07:00

Attributions and affirmations for overcoming anxiety and depression.
Psychol Psychother. 2009 Jun;82(Pt 2):153-69. Epub 2008 Dec 16.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19091166
Kinnier RT, Hofsess C, Pongratz R, Lambert C.

Division of Psychology in Education, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287-0611, USA. Kinnier@asu.edu

Individuals who struggle with anxiety or depression often turn to experts for help in overcoming these disorders. In this study, we consult three expert 'populations': the popular self-help literature, well-respected therapists, and individuals who believe that they have successfully recovered from either anxiety or depression for their recommendations to those who are currently anxious or depressed.

In Part I, we content-analyse recommendations from 10 current self-help books on anxiety and 10 on depression. In Part II, we asked 17 respected therapists and 18 individuals who believed that they have recovered from anxiety and 23 individuals who believe they have recovered from depression what they believe are the 'keys' for recovery. We also asked them to rate the efficacy of seven popular affirmations. Through content analysis and descriptive statistics, we summarize their collective wisdom.

Among the main findings are the recommendations for anxious and depressed individuals to actively seek help from multiple people and interventions, as well as to being open to trying innovative self-tailored interventions. Affirmations relating to 'not being crazy' in relation to anxiety and that the depression will subside in time were deemed most helpful for recovery. Discussion focuses on practical application.

Reducing negative thinking and depressive symptoms in college women.
J Nurs Scholarsh. 2000;32(2):145-51.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10887713
Peden AR, Hall LA, Rayens MK, Beebe LL.
College of Nursing, University of Kentucky, Lexington 40536-0232, USA. arpede01@pop.uky.edu

PURPOSE: Although cognitive-behavioral interventions have been successful in treating depression, no studies were found that focused solely on reducing negative thinking via group intervention as a means of preventing depression in at-risk groups. The purpose of this randomized controlled trial was to test the effectiveness of a cognitive-behavioral group intervention in reducing depressive symptoms, decreasing negative thinking, and enhancing self-esteem in young women at risk for depression.

DESIGN: A randomized controlled trial with 92 college women ages 18 to 24 who were at risk for depression was conducted.

METHOD: Participants were randomly assigned to either the control or experimental group. The experimental group participated in a 6-week cognitive-behavioral group intervention. Data on self-esteem, depressive symptoms, and negative thinking were collected via self-report questionnaires from control and experimental groups at baseline, 1 month after the intervention, and at 6-month follow-up. Data were analyzed using mixed-model methodology and the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel chi-square test.

FINDINGS: Compared to those in the control group, women who received the intervention had a greater decrease in depressive symptoms and negative thinking and a greater increase in self-esteem, and these beneficial effects were maintained over 6-months.

CONCLUSIONS: The findings document the effectiveness of this cognitive-behavioral group intervention and indicate empirical support for the beneficial effects of reducing negative thinking by the use of affirmations and thought-stopping techniques on women's mental health.

Bruce Lipton ' The Power Of Consciousness'

2011-06-20T16:05:00.000-07:00

Bruce Lipton is one of my favorite authors, and his work in the field of epigenitics (the science that shows we control our genes, our genes do not control us) is ground-breaking and mind-bending, showing just what powerful, masterful creators we really are when it comes to our wellness.

Enjoy this interview with him from Conscious.tv and if you would like to buy his book, you may order that by following this link to the Be Well With Michelle aStore

Pharma Not in Business of Health, Healing, Cures, Wellness

2011-04-10T20:42:00.000-07:00

Something I've been saying for years; medicine in the US is not about wellness, it's about selling drugs that don't cure anything, just mask symptoms while they cause even more due to detrimental side effects. Here's a lady who was on the inside, speaking out on the secrets of a pharmaceutical saleswoman.

'Green' exercise quickly 'boosts mental health'

2010-05-28T09:17:00.000-07:00

This is a reprint from BBC News. The original may be found at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8654350.stm

Of course this makes a lot of sense! Getting outside into fresh air and sunshine (without the sunscreen, if you please!) is wonderfully uplifiting mentally, not to mention all the great things it does for you physically.

Mentally, the quiet alone reduces stress and worry reducing levels of stress hormones, and the sounds of the birds and animals is enjoyful which raises levels of good hormones. Just breathing fresh air is uplifting! Water sounds are always soothing - they often take us back to that primal water sound we were so comforted by in the womb.

Physically, natural Vitamin D from sunshine supports many health functions in the body, and fresh air can do worlds of good in making sure your body is properly oxygenated.

Can you imagine just how great it would be to meditate or do qigong (Chinese moving yoga) in a beautiful, restful outdoor setting?! It sure would do a lot more than "boost mental health"!

Enjoy the article!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Just five minutes of exercise in a "green space" such as a park can boost mental health, researchers claim.

There is growing evidence that combining activities such as walking or cycling with nature boosts well-being.

In the latest analysis, UK researchers looked at evidence from 1,250 people in 10 studies and found fast improvements in mood and self-esteem.

The study in the Environmental Science and Technology journal suggested the strongest impact was on young people.

The research looked at many different outdoor activities including walking, gardening, cycling, fishing, boating, horse-riding and farming in locations such as a park, garden or nature trail.

The biggest effect was seen within just five minutes.

With longer periods of time exercising in a green environment, the positive effects were clearly apparent but were of a smaller magnitude, the study found.

Looking at men and women of different ages, the researchers found the health changes - physical and mental - were particularly strong in the young and the mentally-ill.

Green and blue

A bigger effect was seen with exercise in an area that also contained water - such as a lake or river.

Study leader Jules Pretty, a researcher at the University of Essex, said those who were generally inactive, or stressed, or with mental illness would probably benefit the most from "green exercise".

"Employers, for example, could encourage staff in stressful workplaces to take a short walk at lunchtime in the nearest park to improve mental health."

He also said exercise programmes outdoors could benefit youth offenders.

"A challenge for policy makers is that policy recommendations on physical activity are easily stated but rarely adopted widely."

Paul Farmer, chief executive of mental health charity Mind, said the research is yet further evidence that even a short period of green exercise can provide a low cost and drug-free therapy to help improve mental wellbeing.

"It's important that people experiencing depression can be given the option of a range of treatments, and we would like to see all doctors considering exercise as a treatment where appropriate."

Mind runs a grant scheme for local environmental projects to help people with mental illness get involved in outdoor activities.

Relaxation Response Helps Cure and Prevent Genetic Stress-Related Illness

2010-04-08T11:26:00.000-07:00

Below are two research reports showing that the invocation of the Relaxation Response can not only prevent illness, but reverse it as well.

Recent information states that 80% of all chronic illness is brought on by stress. It also has been shown that genetic-related illnesses are very frequently stress-related. When you have an "at risk" genetic marker, it does not mean that you will manifest that disease. That gene has to "express" first, it has to kick into the "on" position before the disease appears. Chronic stress is frequently the finger that presses the "on" button that causes chronic disease to manifest.

How to avoid chronic illness: No stress, no finger hitting the "on" button, no disease. Get it?

Your genes do NOT control you. You - and your lifestyle as it relates to stress - control which genes express and which ones do not. By reducing stress or by practicing meditation techniques like the Relaxation Response, you make the choice for wellness.

Enjoy the research reports below!

The therapeutic use of the relaxation response in stress-related diseases.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12601303

Med Sci Monit. 2003 Feb;9(2):RA23-34.

Esch T, Fricchione GL, Stefano GB.

The Mind/Body Medical Institute, Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. tesch@aregroup.harvard.edu

The objective of this work was to investigate a possible (therapeutic) connection between the relaxation response (RR) and stress-related diseases. Further, common underlying molecular mechanisms and autoregulatory pathways were examined.

For the question of (patho)physiology and significance of RR techniques in the treatment of stress-related diseases, we analyzed peer-reviewed references only. The RR has been shown to be an appropriate and relevant therapeutic tool to counteract several stress-related disease processes and certain health-restrictions, particularly in certain immunological, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative diseases/mental disorders.

Further, common underlying molecular mechanisms may exist that represent a connection between the stress response, pathophysiological findings in stress-related diseases, and physiological changes/autoregulatory pathways described in the RR. Here, constitutive or low-output nitric oxide (NO) production may be involved in a protective or ameliorating context, whereas inducible, high-output NO release may facilitate detrimental disease processes.

In mild or early disease states, a high degree of biological and physiological flexibility may still be possible (dynamic balance). Here, the therapeutic use of RR techniques may be considered particularly relevant, and the observable (beneficial) effects may be exerted via activation of constitutive NO pathways. RR techniques, regularly part of professional stress management or mind/body medical settings, represent an important tool to be added to therapeutic strategies dealing with stress-related diseases. Moreover, as part of 'healthy' life-style modifications, they may serve primary (or secondary) prevention. Further studies are necessary to elucidate the complex physiology underlying the RR and its impact upon stress-related disease states.

Genomic counter-stress changes induced by the relaxation response.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18596974

PLoS One. 2008 Jul 2;3(7):e2576.

Dusek JA, Otu HH, Wohlhueter AL, Bhasin M, Zerbini LF, Joseph MG, Benson H, Libermann TA.

Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, United States of America.

Comment in:

BACKGROUND: Mind-body practices that elicit the relaxation response (RR) have been used worldwide for millennia to prevent and treat disease. The RR is characterized by decreased oxygen consumption, increased exhaled nitric oxide, and reduced psychological distress. It is believed to be the counterpart of the stress response that exhibits a distinct pattern of physiology and transcriptional profile. We hypothesized that RR elicitation results in characteristic gene expression changes that can be used to measure physiological responses elicited by the RR in an unbiased fashion.

METHODS/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We assessed whole blood transcriptional profiles in 19 healthy, long-term practitioners of daily RR practice (group M), 19 healthy controls (group N(1)), and 20 N(1) individuals who completed 8 weeks of RR training (group N(2)). 2209 genes were differentially expressed in group M relative to group N(1) (p<0.05) and 1561 genes in group N(2) compared to group N(1) (p<0.05). Importantly, 433 (p<10(-10)) of 2209 and 1561 differentially expressed genes were shared among long-term (M) and short-term practitioners (N(2)). Gene ontology and gene set enrichment analyses revealed significant alterations in cellular metabolism, oxidative phosphorylation, generation of reactive oxygen species and response to oxidative stress in long-term and short-term practitioners of daily RR practice that may counteract cellular damage related to chronic psychological stress. A significant number of genes and pathways were confirmed in an independent validation set containing 5 N(1) controls, 5 N(2) short-term and 6 M long-term practitioners.

CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This study provides the first compelling evidence that the RR elicits specific gene expression changes in short-term and long-term practitioners. Our results suggest consistent and constitutive changes in gene expression resulting from RR may relate to long term physiological effects. Our study may stimulate new investigations into applying transcriptional profiling for accurately measuring RR and stress related responses in multiple disease settings.

Statin Crazy: Don't Be Duped by Their Newest "Benefit"

2010-03-30T10:03:00.000-07:00

It is known, though not well known, that one of the reasons your liver makes and sends additional cholesterol to accumulate in your arteries is because there is potential arterial damage afoot. Cholesterol acts like a bandage on an area of arterial inflammation. Removing cholesterol without addressing the cause of inflammation is like removing the bandage from an open wound leaving it vulnerable. (By the way, typically, you ingest 20% or less of your cholesterol from food. If your cholesterol is high, one of the reasons could be because your liver is working to protect your arteries. Statin drugs subvert the normal, natural function of your liver as it works to protect your arteries.)

Here, briefly, is how statin drugs work. The following paragraph was taken from an interview posted at the Mayo Clinic website: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/statin-drugs/CL00035 with Mayo Clinic cardiologist Gerald Gau, M.D.

"Dr. Gau: Statins work directly in the liver. There is a system in our liver that produces cholesterol. Cholesterol is necessary in our body, and the statin mechanism, it creates bile — it's one of the mechanisms of bile creation — and bile is necessary in our digestion and absorption. So the liver makes cholesterol to make this happen. It can also remove cholesterol from the blood for this purpose. Statins work by attacking in the liver the enzyme system that produces the cholesterol in the liver. And that forces the liver cells to pull it from the blood and thereby lowers your cholesterol. And so our cholesterol comes down because we stop the production in the liver."

I ask you, Is this what God and Nature intended? Sure isn't holistic, and sure hasn't addressed the reason for the high cholesterol in the first place, and sure has not admitted that high cholesterol really is not a marker for heart disease anyway (see information from the Framingham Study http://bewellwithmichelle.blogspot.com/2009/03/high-cholesterol-from-your-food-not.html ), and that the side-effects of the drugs can be worse than having high cholesterol.

There is an enormous mound of misinformation on the high-cholesterol vs statin-drug topic, and I hope that the article below will help clear up some of those points. Enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Statin Crazy: Don't Be Duped by Their Newest "Benefit"

Reprinted from Bottom Line Secrets newsletter of March 26, 2010

By Mark A. Stengler, NMD
La Jolla Whole Health Clinic

Statins have gotten a lot of press. Researchers made headlines when they found that rosuvastatin (Crestor), a cholesterol-lowering drug, reduced the risk for heart attack and stroke in people who had normal cholesterol and high levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a sign of inflammation. The recent JUPITER trial (which stands for Justification for the Use of Statins in Primary Prevention: An Intervention Trial Evaluating Rosuvastatin) was lauded as a breakthrough. The findings were found to be so positive that the trial was cut short -- to allow even the placebo group to receive the purported cardiovascular benefits of the drug. We are accustomed to thinking about statins in terms of lowering cholesterol, but this study caused some cardiologists to think statins -- already a best-selling class of drugs -- should be prescribed even more widely.

Ready to get a prescription? Hold on. In my opinion, the researchers duped other doctors and their patients. In terms of statistics, Crestor did reduce the risk for a heart attack or stroke by half, but in terms of real-world risk, only one person out of 120 actually would benefit from the drug as the trial indicated. Worse, 25% more patients taking Crestor developed type 2 diabetes compared with the placebo group, a fact that was not widely reported.

If there is anything useful resulting from this study, it is that mainstream medicine recognized the importance of CRP and the role of inflammation in heart disease. This is a topic that holistic physicians have been talking about for years. I wrote about inflammation and heart disease in the very first issue of Bottom Line Natural Healing back in 2005.

Statins may reduce symptoms of heart disease by lowering cholesterol and inflammation, but they do not address the source of the inflammation, as natural therapies do. Although statins have a place in the conventional treatment of patients, including those with a history of heart attack or very high CRP levels, they are expensive -- costing hundreds of dollars a year -- and can cause serious side effects, such as muscle pain and damage, fatigue, liver and kidney damage, diabetes and memory impairment. They may even increase cancer risk.

Important: Most of us can lower CRP levels naturally by losing weight if we need to and by exercising if we don’t already do so. But perhaps the most powerful factor influencing inflammation is what we eat. We also can supplement with specific nutrients to further reduce inflammation.

The Inflammation Connection

About 10 years ago, Harvard University physicians demonstrated that chronic low-grade inflammation throughout the body could damage blood vessels and was a better indicator of risk for cardiovascular disease than cholesterol. The researchers developed a laboratory test for CRP to measure low-grade inflammation in the body. An elevated CRP level doesn’t just affect the heart. It hurts the whole body. Several years ago, a health author whom I know and respect, Jack Challem, wrote The Inflammation Syndrome. He described how "every disease, every ache and every pain... revolves around inflammation... " and how many inflammatory diseases are related to one another. For example, having periodontal disease (which inflames the gums) or rheumatoid arthritis or psoriasis increases heart disease risk. Similarly, being overweight or having type 2 diabetes increases CRP levels and heart disease risk.

Diet Comes first

To reduce inflammation, it’s best to start with what you eat. Your body makes both inflammation-promoting and inflammation-fighting substances called eicosanoids, compounds derived mostly from the fats you eat. Consuming a lot of sweets and unhealthful oils, such as corn, safflower and soybean oils, and trans fats found in partially hydrogenated vegetable oils ramps up the body’s inflammatory eicosanoids. In other words, junk food increases inflammation.

However, if you consume fish (the best choices are cold-water types, including salmon, trout and sardines), free-range meats and health-promoting cooking oils (such as extra-virgin olive oil, macadamia nut oil and avocado oil), you can increase your body’s production of anti-inflammatory eicosanoids. Eating a lot of vegetables, such as romaine lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower, and fruits, such as blueberries, raspberries and kiwifruit, also helps maintain normal CRP levels. These foods are high in fiber and rich in antioxidants, nutrients that neutralize harmful molecules called free radicals.

Make sure that the vast majority of foods you eat are fresh -- not out of a box, can or jar. You’ll be avoiding packaged foods, most of which have been adulterated with added sugars, salt, refined carbohydrates and unhealthful fats.

Supplements THAT HELP

For many people, healthful eating habits are not enough to lower CRP levels. Some of my patients have greater needs for specific anti-inflammatory nutrients.

First step: Insist that your doctor measure your CRP level annually. Ask for the high-sensitivity CRP (hsCRP) test, the newest form of the test. It’s a simple blood test and relatively inexpensive (about $25 to $50). Some insurers will cover the test.

Multivitamin. Several studies have found that taking a multivitamin can lead to impressive reductions in CRP. One study conducted at the Cooper Institute in Dallas showed that a daily multivitamin lowered CRP by 14% after six months.

Many individual vitamins, including vitamins C and E, have been shown to reduce CRP. Niacin (a form of vitamin B-3) also lowers CRP.

Important: While many individual vitamins are beneficial, I recommend a multivitamin because it contains numerous vitamins that can reduce inflammation.

Omega-3 fish oils. The omega-3s form the biochemical basis of some of the body’s anti-inflammatory eicosanoids. They benefit cardiovascular health in a number of ways, including mildly thinning the blood, slowing the heart rate, lowering levels of triglycerides and improving blood vessel flexibility. Look for fish oil that contains both eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).

One good choice: Krill oil, a type of fish oil made from shrimplike crustaceans. Krill oil contains the antioxidant astaxanthin, which also is good for the heart.

Gamma-linolenic acid (GLA). This essential fatty acid in plant oil is the principal anti-inflammatory compound in the omega-6 family of fats. It works by shifting a major part of the omega-6 biochemistry from inflammatory to anti-inflammatory activity. In the process, it increases production of anti-inflammatory eicosanoids. GLA and fish oils are synergistic -- they work better together than either on its own.

Curcumin. This extract of the spice turmeric, common in South Asian cuisines, blocks inflammation. More than 2,000 studies have documented the benefits of curcumin for such inflammatory diseases as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis. It also may prevent cardiac hypertrophy, a type of enlarged heart. Given the anti-inflammatory nature of curcumin, research is likely to uncover more heart-healthy benefits.

Pycnogenol. This proprietary ingredient, extracted from the bark of French maritime pine trees, has powerful anti-inflammatory effects. It has been shown to improve circulation, to work as a mild blood thinner and to reduce the need for angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor drugs that are used to treat high blood pressure and congestive heart failure.

Vitamin D. Half of Americans are deficient in vitamin D. A recent study in Archives of Internal Medicine found that men with low vitamin D levels were two and one-half times more likely to die during the next eight years than those with the highest levels.

Red yeast rice extract. This is one of my favorite supplements because it can lower levels of CRP and LDL (bad) cholesterol. It is sold at most health-food stores and contains trace levels of a naturally occurring statin compound. In these small quantities -- a fraction of what’s in drugs -- statins are safe. Studies have found that red yeast rice extract can lower CRP levels by up to 50%. Statins (perhaps even natural ones, such as red yeast rice extract) are known to deplete coenzyme Q10, an antioxidant necessary for heart health. If you take red yeast rice extract, supplement daily with 100 mg of coenzyme Q10.

About the author:Mark A. Stengler, NMD, a naturopathic medical doctor and leading authority on the practice of alternative and integrated medicine. He is editor of Bottom Line’s Natural Healing newsletter, author of The Natural Physician’s Healing Therapies (Bottom Line Books), director of the La Jolla Whole Health Clinic in La Jolla, California, and adjunct clinical professor at the National College of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon. To learn more about his work, visit www.drstengler.com and www.lajollawholehealth.com.

Type D Personality and How To Overcome theHealth Risks of Chronic Anxiety, Negativity, and Stress with Affirmations, Meditation, and Qigong

2010-03-09T10:33:00.000-08:00

Are You a Type D Personality?

The article below is reprinted from Bottom Line's Daily Health News email newsletter of March 9, 2010

What I love best about it is that it advocates the use of Meditation and Qigong (related to both tai-chi and yoga) to regain health and wellness. Affirmations would also work well in this situation, especially if you have a recording on iPod or CD that you listen to at night while asleep. These are very powerful techniques time-tested and study-proven to facilitate self-healing.

Are You a Type D Personality?

You’re probably aware of whether you tend toward a type A or type B personality, since those labels are part of our lexicon. What you may not know, however, is that there is a third type -- type D -- and it’s not a great category to find yourself in. The D stands for distress, and a growing body of research links this personality type with a variety of health risks and even early death -- so it may be especially important for these inhibited and gloomy folks to do everything they can to lighten up.

Remember Eeyore -- the sad, self-conscious donkey character in Winnie-the-Pooh? To my mind, he is a perfect illustration of the type D personality. He always expected the worst and therefore, that’s what he usually got. Traits associated with this personality type include social inhibition, a negative self-image, depressed mood, hostility, tension, chronic anger and a tendency to overreact to stressful events.

Type D & Death Risk

It’s already known that having this type D personality elevates risk for people who have had heart attacks, cardiac bypass surgery and/or stent implants. In new research from the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands, scientists set out to determine the impact of these characteristics on people with a common condition called peripheral artery disease (PAD), a circulatory problem in which narrowed arteries reduce blood flow to the limbs. People who have PAD have four to five times greater risk for heart attack and stroke.

Researchers asked 184 patients (average age 65) diagnosed with PAD to fill out a 14-item personality questionnaire to assess character traits, such as negativity and social inhibition. They rated statements such as "I would rather keep people at a distance" and "I often find myself worrying about something" as false or true on a scale of zero to four. During the next four years, 16 patients (9%) died -- six of cardiovascular disease, seven of cancer and one each from emphysema, pneumonia and acute pancreatitis. After factoring in other variables such as age, gender, diabetes and kidney disease, investigators learned that those with type D personalities were more than three times as likely to have died as those who were Type A or B.

How Distress Raises Risk

There are numerous pathways linking this particular personality type with poor health outcomes, I learned from study coauthor Johan Denollet, PhD, a professor of medical psychology at Tilburg University. Some are physical, other behavioral. For instance, Type D individuals tend to...

•    Experience chronic anxiety and negativity. Living in such a state has a variety of physical effects on your body, none beneficial. Chronic stress drives up levels of inflammatory proteins called cytokines, which leads to increased oxidative stress and contributes to disease. The adrenal glands respond to stress by pumping out cortisol, the hormone that helps us meet perceived threats. Having high and prolonged levels of cortisol in the bloodstream causes serious problems, including blood sugar imbalances, reduced immunity, slower wound healing and increased abdominal fat.

•    Have poor health habits. Research has shown that people with type D personalities often neglect their health by eating improperly, not having medical checkups and being sedentary.

•    Are unlikely to be proactive in seeking medical care. Perhaps because they are unable to express their emotions and are tense, insecure and uncomfortable in social situations, type D individuals are often slow to seek the medical help they need. In one study, type D patients with chronic heart failure experienced more cardiac symptoms and worried more about them than other people but, paradoxically, were less likely to discuss them with health-care professionals. Other research demonstrates that heart failure patients with "inadequate consultation behavior" face a six-fold increased risk for impaired health.

What Can Help

Generally speaking, you can’t change your personality -- but if you recognize these traits in yourself or a loved one, there are plenty of things you can do to address the issues and minimize the impact on your health. For example, Dr. Denollet notes that type D personalities are more likely to experience anxiety and depression -- and points out that these can be managed to a significant degree with counseling and/or medication. Other strategies include...

•    Adopting healthier lifestyle behaviors, such as better diet and regular exercise.

•    Participating in programs or counseling to conquer addictions, such as smoking or alcohol abuse, or to improve social skills and learn to relax.

•    Using techniques such as guided imagery, breathing exercises, meditation, tai chi and yoga to help manage stress and mood and learn to control anger and hostility.

While you can’t change who you are, if you have a type D personality, you can take these concrete steps to make yourself healthier and, I’ll bet, happier.

Source(s):

Johan Denollet, PhD, professor of medical psychology, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.

* * * End Quote * * *

If you would like help applying Affirmations, Meditation, or Qigong (Chi Kung) practice to this debilitating health issue, contact me at bewellwithmichelle@gmail.com

Mammogram Blackmail: HRT meds held hostage

2010-03-07T19:39:00.000-08:00

This is not a joke, and is certainly not to be taken lightly by anyone, patient or physician.

Here is the story, and I have to say I honestly would not have believed myself it if I had not heard it first-person from the woman who was the blackmail victim!

Last week in Bend, Oregon my friend went to her doctor to pick up her bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy prescription. The woman behind the desk at the physician's office waved the prescription in the air in front of my friend's face and told my friend that she would get the prescription as soon as she had a mammogram!

Now, as far as I know, there is no medical reason to have a mammogram when picking up a prescription for bio-identical hormone replacement therapy. There is nothing in a mammogram that measures blood levels of hormones, and my friend is not at risk for breast cancer, so withholding medications was unjustified to say the least, and possibly criminal.

My friend went and had the painful, unnecessary, and cancer-causing* mammogram, and did finally receive her medications. She is not happy about this, and I certainly don't blame her a bit.

Ladies, if you are ever in a similar situation, I suggest the following monologue to your (ahem) health care practitioner: "Thank you for your suggestion. I will have my attorney contact you regarding the withholding of my prescribed medications. I will also inform the AMA regarding your choice to withhold my medications. I will also inform you as to where to send my medical records for I will never again step foot into this office. Have a nice day."

Then, WALK OUT AND DON'T LOOK BACK! If your health-care provider is going to blackmail you into unnecessary and expensive and lethal tests, that is one person you do not need in your life.

If you live in Bend, Oregon and you have likewise been blackmailed, I urge you to report it, and change health-care providers immediately. I very sincerely hope that the woman who withheld the prescription from my friend is soundly reprimanded.

* Here is a link to an article on the cancer risks associated with mammograms. Please feel free to have a glass of wine while reading it. http://bewellwithmichelle.blogspot.com/2008/04/alcohol-v-mammogram-as-breast-cancer.html

Genetic Disease Isn't Caused By Defective Genes

2010-03-02T10:24:00.000-08:00

This information is – finally! – seeping into our knowledge base and into our consciousness. More and more, it's being proven that your mind and emotions are in control of your physical wellness. Rather than genetic dysfunction, disease is really an indication of imbalance in your mind-body-spirit.

The article below is reprinted from Mercola.com, but there is also an excellent report written in 2008 by Dr Roger Jahnke, founder and director of the Institute of Integral Qigong and Tai Chi, demonstrating how the practice of qigong can control the genetic expression of disease. To read that report in Adobe Acrobat format, follow this link: Researching the Benefits of Mind-Body Practice by Investigating Genetic Expression

Here is Dr Mercola's article on this emerging understanding of the role of the mind-body consciousness and connection in determining how we manifest disease.

Radical New Understanding of Genetic Disease

Posted by: Dr. Mercola March 02 2010

The theory of the genetic origin of diseases is one of the most firmly upheld doctrines of today's medicine.

Medical science claims that cancer is brought on by "mistakes in DNA replication," causing cells to gradually change from normal to "abnormal" and eventually to "malignant" cells.

Studies in the science of Epigenetics show that genes are by no means 'set in stone' but that they can alter themselves in response to a person's environment.
In short, the DNA and thus the biology of an organism are constantly adjusting themselves to signals from outside the cells, including energetic information arising from thoughts and beliefs.

Diseases such as cancer are not caused by defective genes, as claimed by mainstream geneticists, but rather by non-genetic factors that alter the expression of genes without changing the DNA sequence.

Your brain controls all processes in your body. By comparing brain CT scans with medical records and personal histories, it becomes evident that emotional trauma or "conflict shock" leaves a visible mark in precisely the same area of the brain that controls the disease process.

In fact, diseases are not senseless "disorders" but in reality meaningful biological processes trying to save an organism rather than to destroy it. Your whole organism is engaged in facilitating a conflict resolution. The conflict-related organ responds with functional changes to assist the individual on the physical level during the unexpected distress.

A positive attitude, letting go of anger, feelings of trust and forgiveness can significantly reduce the intensity and duration of a conflict and therefore the "disease"-symptoms.

German New Medicine shifts or rather elevates "prevention" and "healing" to a level where the biology of human beings can be understood as intimately connected with spirituality and a chance for spiritual growth.

An understanding of GNM and the Five Biological Laws has in itself a healing effect as it liberates your mind from fear and inspires trust in the creative wisdom of Mother Nature.

Sources:

Learning GNM 2009

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

If you have not yet heard of epigenetics, I’d like to introduce you to it right now. Epigenetics is probably the most important biological discovery since DNA -- and it is turning the biological sciences upside down.

Where it was once taught (and still largely believed in many conventional medical circles) that you are a victim to your genes, helpless to the whims of the genetic roadmap you received from your parents, it’s now known that your genes in no way are the final arbiter of your health.

It is important to realize that you are in control of your genes … and are changing them often -- daily and perhaps even hourly -- based on the foods you eat, the air you breathe, and the thoughts you think. It’s your environment and lifestyle that dictates your tendency to express disease.

The problem is, once you understand that –your health is not dictated by your genes and that they don’t control themselves but are controlled by environmental influences that tell them to be expressed or not expressed -- it just blows everything out of the water.

It’s now known that your habits are more important than your genes! But please realize that, depending on your choices, the changes you influence can be good or bad. It works both ways.

Your Mind is at the Helm

Epigenetics literally means "above the genes." And what is above the genes?

Your mind!

Bruce Lipton’s “New Biology” is another school of scientific thought that adds to this “new” way of thinking about disease.

In his book, The Biology of Belief, Dr. Lipton explains the foundation of epigenetics, and how the true secret to life does not lie within your DNA, but rather within the mechanisms of the cell membrane. In this way -- which is contrary to conventional medical science -- it is actually the cell’s membrane -- operating in response to environmental signals picked up by the membrane’s receptors -- that control the “reading” of the genes inside.

The Biology of Belief

What does this mean?

Again, it means that you are not controlled by your genetic makeup. Instead, your genetic readout (which genes are turned “on” and which are turned “off”) is primarily determined by your thoughts, attitudes, and perceptions!

German New Medicine

Another eipgentic model is German New Medicine (GNM), which operates under the premise that every disease, including cancer, originates from an unexpected shock experience.

This experience does not necessarily have to appear traumatic to others, however; it’s simply shocking and unexpected to you. Someone else may not react or deal with it the same way when put in a similar situation.

According to GNM, the resolution phase -- the healing phase -- is as long as the trauma phase, which is why you are recommended to always deal with your emotional trauma as swiftly as possible. The faster you resolve your trauma, mentally and emotionally, the faster your body can proceed through the healing phase.

Now, why is this important?

You want your healing phase to be as short as possible, because GNM also claims that all “diseases” are in fact your body going through the resolution phase, meaning what appears to be a disease is in fact your body healing itself.

Serious trouble can arise if your trauma phase was quite extended, as your body will need the equal amount of time to heal – which will appear as a “disease” -- as it took for the initial damage to take place.

Why do Diseases Run in Families?

If you are not a slave to your inherited genes, then why is it that diseases often run in families? The answer to this appears to be hiding in plain sight.

As German New Medicine explains:

“Since families share the same cultural and social conditioning, the same indoctrinations, the same beliefs, and so forth, they often experience the same type of conflicts, causing the same "diseases."”

Dr. Hamer uses the example of Lou Gehrig's (ALS) and Huntington Disease (HD) as "genetic disorders" that are passed on through generations. GNM continues:

“According to Dr. Hamer's discoveries, the biological conflict linked to the muscles is "not being able to escape," "feeling tied down," or "feeling stuck," resulting in muscle paralysis during the conflict-active phase.

A daughter or son of a parent with such a muscle "disorder" is naturally much more susceptible to experience a "stuck"-conflict. We must also keep in mind that any biological conflict shock can be experienced with or for another person, particularly when the distress concerns a close loved one.”

But the distinction here is that diseases may run in families due to similar emotional experiences … but they need not. As GNM states:

“Even if members of a family or generations of families experience the same type of conflicts, the conflict shock itself is still a highly personal event which in that instant involves solely the brain, or rather the brain-relay, of the person suffering the conflict at that particular time.

This is why diseases cannot be passed on to future generations nor can they be genetically inherited from a family member or ancestor, either genetically or "epigenetically."”

You are Now Free to Go on With Your Life

The major problem with believing the myth that your genes control your life is that you become a victim of your heredity. Since you can’t change your genes, it essentially means that your life is predetermined, and therefore you have very little control over your health.

The new science reveals that your perceptions control your biology, and this places you in the role of Master, because if you can change your perceptions, you can shape and direct your own genetic readout.

It places YOU in the power position, for better or worse.

So if you have been living in fear of an inherited disease, this “new” research sets you free.

But, these ideas are not really new.

Bruce Lipton, much like Dr. Hamer, has been at it for more than 20 years. The only “new” aspect here is the fact that they are finally able to provide overwhelming, and in many cases indisputable scientific proof of HOW it actually works -- even down to the cellular level.

As it turns out, this is not a popular truth.

People are not embracing these facts with open arms, jumping for joy at being told, “You are completely in charge of your health!” For most, it’s a frightening proposition, despite its promise of ultimate freedom.

But please realize that this is not only an abstract realm … you can use this information in practical ways.

How to Heal Your Emotional Traumas

If your thoughts and emotions play such a significant role in modifying your biology and your health (and I believe they do), then treating your emotions becomes an essential part of optimal health.

Terms like “energy medicine” and “energy psychology” are terms that have sprung up in response to these shifts in perception of reality, and I’ve long been an advocate of energy psychology tools to address underlying emotional traumas that can trigger disease, or keep you locked in a disease pattern.

Meridian tapping technique (MTT) and emotional freedom technique (EFT), for example, which work on several levels of your collective mind-body-spirit simultaneously, can help you get a better handle on your emotions and buried pain, including the stress from unexpected tragedies.

Optimal health might really hinge on dealing with, and resolving your emotional traumas as quickly as possible; not letting old emotional wounds linger and fester.

So if you have old or new emotional wounds that you have not yet dealt with, please take the time to give MTT/EFT a try.

And in the meantime, as you make a conscious effort to eat healthy and exercise each day, make an effort to control your thoughts and beliefs, as well. Keep your thoughts positive and your feelings will follow suit … likely to great benefit within your body.

Creative Health Tip March 1 2010 Choose your reaction

2010-03-01T07:39:00.000-08:00

Today's tip is about making choices.

Whatever is going on around you or in your life, Choose to find the good in it.

A lot of times, bad things happen to good people, and people often feel that you are at the mercy of the circumstances.

You may not be able to change the circumstances themselves, but you have absolute power over how you react.

If you react well, consider it as a learning experience, consider it as a way to gain knowledge, consider it as a way to take your power back, and not let all of these outside things just wash over you and cause you to tumble and fall and break. You will go a long way to creating excellent health for yourself.

If things happen and you let them make you crazy and stressed out, you are going to create illness for yourself. All that stress is just not going to sit well in your physical body, and eventually it will come to roost somewhere. You don't want that.

So, take back your power, make your choices good, and make the good choice to find the good thing in everything. There is always something good, even if it's just a learning experience or a way to help someone else out of a problem. If you can help someone else, you will often feel good about your own problems, and also find ways to help solve them, too.

Have a great week!

Michelle

P. S. Therapeutic Tea Time is still free! If you would like to get together on the phone, online, or in person to chat about your health challenges and holistic alternatives, let's set a time to get together! Write to me at bewellwithmichelle@gmail.com to make an appointment.

To receive Creative Health Tips via email, subscribe to the group by sending an email to stressrelieftips+subscribe@googlegroups.com and remember to respond to the verification email!)

Creative Health Tip February 22 2010 Intuition

2010-02-22T08:31:00.000-08:00

To receive Creative Health Tips via email, subscribe to the group by sending an email to stressrelieftips+subscribe@googlegroups.com and remember to respond to the verification email!

So much is written about intuitive healing these days; you can buy dozens of books telling you how good and effective it is, and visit intuitive healers who will tell you what you need to do to be healthy. What I find humorous (and somewhat sad) about all this is that you are told you must consult someone else's intuition when it is your own you should be cultivating and listening to!

The following is a true and somewhat scary story, but it illustrates the importance of listening to your intuition for your good health and wellbeing. This incident occurred about a year ago to the friend of my friend.

My friend's friend – I'll call her Mary – experienced the accumulation of fluid in her body. She had what was thought to be a seizure and was taken to the hospital where the doctor wanted to perform a CAT scan. At first, Mary refused to recline on the bed of the machine. She had very strong feelings that if she did, she would die. She told the doctor this, and argued with him for almost an hour before he finally convinced her that she was in the hospital, she would be safe. Against her intuition, Mary reclined on the bed of the machine and immediately died. Luckily, the doctor was able to revive her, and she is presently recovering from her illness.

Your experiences with intuition may not be as dramatic as Mary's but they are every bit as important if you are to live in harmony which cultivates happiness which creates health in the physical world.

Knowledge of yourself is not something you must be taught, it is something you can sense. Mary didn't study medical books to learn that she would be in danger if she reclined on the bed of the CAT scan machine. Her intuition told her, and it was right on; she knew her life would be jeopardized if she reclined on the bed, but she was talked out of listening to that intuitive inner voice and almost paid a dire consequence.

The more you learn, academically speaking, the more you become separate from inner knowledge. In fact, you are often taught that intuition is false and unreliable, a teaching to which I think Mary in the hospital would most vehemently disagree! Your most important lessons come from observing nature, both inner and outer, and living in harmony with yourself and all that surrounds you.

When calm and connected, your mind works for the health of your body, not to mention seeking harmony with your surroundings, through the process of intuition, knowledge of nature and natural process without instruction.

Your emotions manifest in the physical world, and for good or ill, your ongoing emotional state will eventually be reflected in your physical body. In order to be physically healthy, you must first cultivate mental and spiritual calmness and harmony and one way to do that is to listen to your intuition. It will always steer you down the path that leads to health and wellness.

Creative Health Tip February 15 2010 Affirmations

2010-02-15T07:59:00.000-08:00

Today's Creative Health Tip is about Affirmations

An affirmation is a positive statement that you repeat when you want to create a certain thing or a certain condition in you life. If your life has been chaotic lately you might say an affirmation like "I live in perfect balance and harmony."

I've discovered that people either love or hate affirmations depending on how well the method has worked for them. If you repeat "I live in perfect balance and harmony" fifty times a day, and your life has changed for the better, you no doubt will be enthusiastic about the technique. If you still feel trapped in the depths of chaos, you probably aren't going to be a real fan of affirmations.

I have discovered that there is a key to the use of affirmations that you must have before they will work for you: Belief. You must believe that the statement made in your affirmation is attainable.

The repetition process of using an affirmation is supposed to help change your belief. For example, if all your romantic relationships have ended badly and you feel unlovable, repeating "I am lovable and attract only the right people into relationships" is supposed to change your belief from unlovable to lovable.

It isn't always that easy, though. We all have beliefs about ourselves that may be hidden. Rooting out these conflicting beliefs is a process that may need to be done before affirmations, as the practice stands now, will work for you.

However, the method can be tweaked in such a way that it may work for you even if you have a hidden belief that conflicts with your statement. I learned this from Tiffanie, a young woman whom I consider to be a spiritual daughter of mine.

Instead of finding or creating an affirmation statement that says "I can . . . :" or "I Have . . ." or "I (followed by the verb of your choice)," change it around so that it starts with a positive feeling for the thing or condition you want to create.

Say, "I am grateful and thankful now that I . . ." and then add your affirmative statement. For example, for changing the way you feel about yourself and your relationships, you would say "I am grateful and thankful now that I am lovable and attract only the right people into relationships."

The reason this works is this: if you are feeling negative about yourself and believe that your relationships always end badly, when you say your simple affirmation of "I am lovable and attract only the right people into relationships," your core belief (that you are not lovable, which came from the feelings generated by your previous experiences of relationships ending badly) is going to respond with a sarcastic, "yeah, right."

It's all about feelings; and feelings create beliefs! At some time in your life, you have felt thankful and grateful for something, and you know how good that feels. Instead of repeating that simple affirmation of "I am lovable. . .," put your energy into recreating and re-experiencing feeling grateful and thankful, and aim those feelings at the change you invite into your life, "I am grateful and thankful now that I am lovable. . ." the good feelings will override the negative belief and replace it with a positive one, and manifest the condition you are trying to create with your affirmation!

Have a great week!

Creative Health Tip February 8 2010 Breathing to enhance your mood

2010-02-08T08:38:00.000-08:00

Today's tip comes under the heading of incredibly powerful but almost too simple to be true practices. Did you know you could change your mood by changing your breathing?

No doubt you already know that you tend to breathe shallowly when you are stressed, and that deep breathing will help you feel less stressed, more energized and relaxed both physically and mentally.

Here is a quick and easy way to help transform your mood from depressed, fearful or angry to happy and grateful.

The right hemisphere of the brain shows the most activity when you are feeling anger, fear, or depression. When you are feeling happiness and appreciation, this most often appears as left hemisphere brain activity.

Breathing through one nostril activates the opposite side of the brain: breathing through the left nostril activates the right hemisphere of the brain, and breathing through the right nostril activates the left hemisphere.

The next time you are feeling negative emotions like anger, fear, or resentment, and you want to improve your mood to one of happiness, and gratitude (which, of course, will improve your health!), close off your left nostril and inhale through only the right nostril to activate the left brain hemisphere associated with those positive emotions. By activating the left side of the brain, you activate positive emotions and feelings, too! You may enhance the practice by imagining that you are inhaling joy, appreciation, or love with each breath you take in.

You may exhale either through your nose or your mouth, but be careful to inhale only thorough the right nostril for eight to ten breaths. I suggest that you not imagine you are exhaling the anger or depression you are transforming because that will only bring your attention back to it. Don't even think of what you are trying to transform or release, just pay attention to the joy and love you are bringing in.

After eight to ten breaths through the right nostril, release the closed nostril and take a couple balancing breaths, inhaling through both nostrils and exhaling through the mouth.

Consider one cycle of this practice to be eight to ten right-nostril breaths followed by two or three balancing breaths. It may take a few cycles to change your mood, but if you stay with it for at least five minutes, I guarantee you will see improvement, and you'll certainly feel better for it!

Creative Health Tip February 1 2010 Listen to your body

2010-02-01T07:04:00.000-08:00

I have a question for you today. Are you running on autopilot or are you paying attention?

The reason I ask is because very frequently, because we all live busy lives, we don't pay attention to what we're doing for ourselves.

We're busy doing our jobs, or we're busy taking care of our family, and we just let ourselves disappear in the shuffle. That, however, is when illness creeps in.

So, you need to pay attention to yourself. Here's a great way to do that:

When you go to bed at night, or at some time during the day if you have twenty minutes that you can sit and put your feet up and relax, I want you to check in with your body. Listen to your body!

Start at your feet, or start at your head, and go right up the whole body, check in, feel how you're feet are feeling, feel how your ankles are feeling, feel how your calves and shins are feeling, check in with your knees and see how they're doing.

"Hey, knees, how's it going? You feeling OK today?"

When you find a spot that is not feeling OK, it's achy, it's tense, it hurts, it's in pain, here's the trick: Give it love.

Do you remember when you were a little kid, or when you had little children, and somebody got hurt, they got a "boo-boo" and they went to mommy, and mommy kissed it and made it all better? The reason it got all better is because mommy gave it love.

You can to that for yourself! If you feel a tension, a pain, and ache, or anything, just stop and give it love. I will bet you that if you do this every day for the next three weeks, you will notice a huge difference (improvement!) in how you're feeling.

Avoid genetically-modified foods with these NON-GMO Shopping Guides

2010-01-30T22:25:00.000-08:00

These printable guides, compiled by the Center For Food Safety, help you avoid foods made with genetically-modified organisms (GMOs).

To learn more about the risks associated with GMOs, visit the Center For Food Safety website at www.centerforfoodsafety.org

The guides are organized by food group, and list the brands of foods stated by the processor to be free of genetically-modified ingredients as well as the brands that may contain GMOs. I printed my guide and keep it in the car so it's handy when I go shopping. Of course, I buy organic as much as possible, but the guides are very handy when organic products are not available.

This booklet is small print, eight pages
http://truefoodnow.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/web_new-ge-booklet.pdf

This booklet is large print, sixteen pages
http://www.responsibletechnology.org/DocumentFiles/144.pdf

Creative Health Tip January 25 2010 Beliefs and Creative Power

2010-01-25T10:59:00.000-08:00

I have a couple of quotes today to share about your power to create your health.

First is Napoleon Hill from the book Think and Grow Rich. He said, "Whatever the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve."

How many of you believe that statement as you apply it to cars, homes, jobs, or relationships? I imagine most of you do.

How many of you believe that statement as you apply it to your physical body, to your health and wellbeing? Not as many, I'll bet.

You have been indoctrinated to believe that your mind has no power over your body. Now, I know the word "indoctrinated" carries a negative connotation, but all it means is: "to instruct in a doctrine, principle, ideology, etc., esp. to imbue with a specific partisan or biased belief or point of view." (Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2010.)

You have been taught from infancy that your body operates on its own power and own agenda, and you don't really have a lot to say about it. That is a pretty biased belief, and nothing could be further from the truth.

It has been proven that your thoughts and emotions can control which of your genes is turned on and off, thereby controlling the expression of any at-risk genetic tendencies like heart disease, osteoporosis, and cancer. Basically, this means that if you are at risk for any disease that is linked to genetic traits or "runs in families," you can control whether that disease manifests or not.

For more information, see my post "You Control Your Genes, Your Genes Don't Control You" http://portal2creativehealth.blogspot.com/2009/09/you-control-your-genes-your-genes-dont.html

We hear about medical miracles every day: how a woman with mortally traumatic injuries recovers to walk and talk again after being told she might not survive her injuries; how cancer spontaneously goes into remission after a person has an experience that changes his or her whole outlook on life. There are even stories of children who have lost a limb and that limb has begun to grow back until they hear their parents being told, "Your child isn't re-growing a limb, that's not possible, they can't do that!" Not knowing any better, the child accepts that doctrine as the truth, and the belief is set.

That brings us to the second quote in today's Creative Health Tip that tells you that your only limitation to healing is your beliefs.

This quote is from the Daily Quote emailed from the Abraham-Hicks Publications. You may subscribe to the Daily Quote on this webpage:
http://www.abraham-hicks.com/lawofattractionsource/dqsubscribe.php

The Daily Quote for January 24, 2010 reads:

Someone asked us recently, "Is there any limitation to the body's ability to heal?" And we said, "None other than the belief that you hold." And he said, "Then why aren't people growing new limbs?" And we said, "Because no one believes that they can."
--- Abraham

Excerpted from the workshop in San Rafael, CA on Saturday, February 27th, 1999 #329

Our Love,
Jerry and Esther

©1997-2009 Abraham-Hicks Publications.

Science is discovering this very thing. We know that you can lose 75% of your liver and it will grow back. It once was believed that if you lost a portion of your brain, you were out of luck. We now know that brain cells grow back. A doctor in India discovered that heart cells grow back, too. (See link to article below.)

There is an article on the CBS News website (see link below) that in part says, "Dr. Atala, one of the pioneers of regeneration, believes every type of tissue already has cells ready to regenerate if only researchers can prod them into action. Sometimes that prodding can look like science fiction.

"Emerging from an everyday ink jet printer is the heart of a mouse. Mouse heart cells go into the ink cartridge and are then sprayed down in a heart shaped pattern layer by layer.

"Dr. Atala believes it's a matter of time before someone grows a human heart.

""The cells have all the genetic information necessary to make new tissue," Atala explained. "That's what they are programmed to do. So your heart cells are programmed to make more heart tissue, your bladder cells are programmed to make more bladder cells.""

In my opinion, what the doctors and scientists have not yet figured out is that you don't need technology nor any sort of intervention to prod your cells to regenerate. The Abraham-Hicks quote has told you how to do it: all you need is the belief that you can!

Heart Cells Grow Back:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life/health-fitness/Heart-cells-grow-back-finds-Indian-doctor/articleshow/4352633.cms

Medicine's Cutting Edge: Re-Growing Organs
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/22/sunday/main3960219.shtml

Creative Health Tip January 18 2010

2010-01-18T06:31:00.000-08:00

Today's tip is something we can learn from our nomadic cousins around the world: don't carry around a lot of baggage.

In spite of their seemingly (to us) harsh lives filled with change and instability, nomadic peoples are some of the healthiest people on the planet.

There are many reasons for that, but I believe there is one especially important reason: they carry only what they need and don't tote around a lot of baggage.

By baggage, I mean two things; "stuff," as in physical things, and "stuff" as in emotional things. Carrying around a lot of physical items is a great metaphor for toting around a lot of emotional baggage too, and both types of baggage can wear you down to the point you will manifest illness.

In the mind-body creation process, you know that the relationship between your thoughts and emotions will eventually manifest in your body. Harmonious thoughts and emotions create a healthy body. Emotional baggage is the inner conflict between the thoughts and emotions which manifests as illness.

Sometimes it's relatively easily to identify the conflict by examining the nature of your illness. Sometimes it's not so easy, and I can help you through the processes that are available to unearth the conflict. Once you identify the source of the conflict, you can begin the release and healing process, and create the wellness you desire and deserve!

Creative Health Tip January 11 2010 How Eight Pieces Brocade builds bone density

2010-01-11T06:28:00.000-08:00

I say this without any hint of sarcasm, honest, but I really love it when science catches up with three-thousand year old Chinese medicine. That can be a great motivator to people who want to try a holistic health modality but aren't sure if it works.

I have here a pamphlet sent out as an invitation to subscribe to "Prevention," a magazine dedicated to health and wellness.

One of the articles is titled "The 60-Second Bone Builder." The article does not mention Chinese medicine, but the advice given in how to build bone density is the very essence of one of the movement positions in Eight Pieces of Brocade Qigong, a practice proven to increase bone density!

The article Says, "…..high impact exercises put strain on your bones, stimulating new bone growth." A little further down it says, "You need to subject your bones to more impact than what they're used to," agrees an MD at Stanford University. So if you're inactive, start walking. And if you're already walking, add a simple 60-second jog."

The reason for jogging is that bones, because they are so dense, need the additional impact as resistance. Just as you build muscles with resistance training by lifting weights, you build bone density with resistance of high-impact exercises.

In the Eight Pieces of Brocade Qigong, there is a position that includes exactly this type of high-impact training. (See the end of the article for results of a study of qigong on bone density.)

The practice is this: Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, letting your arms hang loosely and naturally at your sides. Rise up on your toes for a count of three and then drop so that your heels hit the ground with a thud. Do this for one minute. When done, stand still and breathe deeply for about a minute.

There you have it: a high-impact, bone-building practice that is so simple you can do it any time and any where.

Squeaky Clean and More Likely to Get Breast Cancer?

2010-01-05T08:59:00.000-08:00

The following article is from Bottom Line's Daily Health News newsletter of January 5, 2010. Here's where to subscribe: http://www.bottomlinesecrets.com/el/bls_signup.html

This is a topic I've covered before, the need to be vigilant and monitor the ingredients in the products we use in order to protect ourselves from disease due to exposure to too many toxic chemicals. Here are two of my previous articles on this topic:

Hormone Experts Worried About Plastics, Chemicals.
http://bewellwithmichelle.blogspot.com/2009/06/hormone-experts-worried-about-plastics.html

Health Hazards of Housework and Chemical Cleaners; this article also includes a list of non-toxic substitutes for cleaning your home.
http://bewellwithmichelle.blogspot.com/2007/11/health-hazards-of-housework-and.html

Many of the things we consider "household necessities" like glass and oven cleaners, floor cleaners, scented soaps and shampoos and hair conditioners, have been around for such a short period of time that our generational exposure to them has been too small to study the long-term, long-range effects. Now, we are learning that "better living through chemistry" is not better at all, and in fact may be extremely harmful, even deadly in the long run. At the end of this article, I hope you will click through to my article on Health Hazards of Housework and Chemical Cleaners. I will repeat the link at the end.

I myself have given up using most common household chemicals because they cause me to have breathing problems; for example, when using glass cleaner, it feels as though my throat closes up and I am suffocating. I also purchase unscented personal-care products, and search out products that are as organic and natural as possible, including the packaging. (It continues to bemuse me that organic food is sold in plastic bags. . . you go to all the trouble to buy organic, and it's contaminated by the packaging!)

Here's today's reprinted article:

Squeaky Clean and. . . More Likely to Get Breast Cancer?

Are you using personal-care and household products that are linked to breast cancer? While cancer experts estimate that 5% to 10% of breast cancers are hereditary (associated with the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes), the majority of women who get breast cancer have no family history and no known risk factors for the disease. In an effort to explain the breast cancer epidemic, health experts are looking for clues in the environment... and in the bathrooms, kitchens and pantries of our own homes.

According to medical sociologist Sabrina McCormick, PhD, American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow in the National Center for Environmental Assessment at the Environmental Protection Agency and author of No Family History: The Environmental Links to Breast Cancer, dangerous chemicals found in many of the everyday products we use -- cosmetics, lotions, shampoos, household cleaning products and food packaging -- may be associated with as many as 90% of breast cancer cases.

Scientific Evidence

Dr. McCormick’s theory is based on the association between two parallel trends in the same time frame -- the rise of breast cancer over the past 60 years (from a lifetime risk of one in 22 women in 1940 to one in eight women in 2008) and the mass production and widespread usage of toxic chemicals that occurred during that period. "As more people have been exposed to carcinogenic chemicals, and as they accumulate in their bodies over time, studies show that several different kinds of cancers have emerged -- in particular breast cancer," she said. Throughout her book, Dr. McCormick cites studies that support the link between toxic chemicals and breast cancer -- for example, there is evidence of increased breast cancer risk in the vicinity of polluting facilities. In fact, regional breast cancer rates are highest in the Northeast, which also has the longest history of industrial development and toxic exposure.

Is Estrogen the Culprit?

How do exposures to toxic chemicals raise one’s risk for breast cancer? Estrogen seems to be the common denominator, according to Dr. McCormick, who explained that the more estrogen a woman is exposed to over her lifetime, the higher her risk for breast cancer and other reproductive cancers (such as ovarian and uterine cancer). The "estrogen disruptor hypothesis," which purports that xenoestrogens, chemicals that mimic or disrupt estrogen (found in an abundance of modern-day products), can cause breast cancer is widely accepted in the scientific community. The fact that several of the known risk factors for breast cancer (early onset of menstruation, late menopause, and excess weight) are themselves related to estrogen lends credence to the hypothesis. A number of animal studies provide further support by demonstrating that xenoestrogens cause mammary tissues to grow and also can disrupt sexual and neurological development. In addition to xenoestrogens, other chemicals known or suspected to be carcinogens are found in a variety of everyday products and also could raise one’s risk for breast cancer and other cancers.

What Not To Use...

A wide range of personal-care products, household-cleaning products and food packaging contain chemicals that may cause breast cancer or cancer in general. These have been classified by the Breast Cancer Fund, an environmental health advocacy group, as Animal Mammary Gland Carcinogen (AMGC), Human Carcinogenic Risk Classification (HCRC), known Endocrine Disruptor (ED) and other categories described below. To access the Breast Cancer Fund charts by category, go to http://www.breastcancerfund.org. Following is a list of some of the more worrisome substances ...

Cosmetics and Personal-Care Products

• Parabens, which are chemical preservatives used in cosmetics, deodorants, lotions, ointments and shampoos, are known endocrine disruptors, said Dr. McCormick. While the European Union regulates the use of many parabens in their products, the US does not. (ED)
• Dibutyl phthalate (DBP), which among other purposes is used to make plastics softer, is an ingredient in children’s teething toys, nail polish, perfumes, moisturizers and cleaning solvents. (ED)
• Ethelyne Oxide, a compound that adds fragrance to shampoos. (AMGC, HCRC)
• Dioxane, a compound found in shampoos, body washes and sudsing products. (AMGC, HCRC)
• Petrolatum (PAH), which is what petroleum jelly is made of... also used in lipsticks, lotions and oils. (AMGC, HCRC, ED)
• Formaldehyde, benzene and toluene, all found in nail polish and nail polish removers.
• Urethane, found in hair-care products, such as mousses, gels and sprays, and in sunscreens, mascara and foundation. (AMGC, HCRC)
Making matters worse, notes Dr. McCormick, many cosmetics also contain ingredients that act as skin penetrators, which makes it even more likely that these dangerous substances will be absorbed into the skin. Also, beware of products marketed as "youth enhancers" that contain estradiol, estrone or estriol... all forms of estrogen that can be absorbed into the skin that should be used only with medical oversight.
For an up-to-date listing of dangerous cosmetics and personal-care products, visit the Environmental Working Group’s online cosmetic safety database (http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com).

Household Products

• Polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a plastic that leaches phthalates, found in cling wraps, plastic bottles, detergents, window cleaner bottles and vinyl shower curtains. Many houses also contain pipes made of PVC, which is a Carcinogen By-product of Manufacturing (CBM) and Hormone Disruptor (HD).
• Diethylene Glycol Monoethyl Ether, found in floor finish, tile and grout cleaner, and microwave oven cleaners. This substance affects the central nervous system and is a reproductive toxin.
• Nonylphenol Ethoxylate, found in cleaners, degreasers, foaming cleaners, air fresheners, spot and stain treatments and metal polish. (ED)
• Nitrilotriacetic Acid, found in carpet-care products, is classified as a Reasonably Anticipated Carcinogen (RAC).
• Tetrachloroethylene, found in spray polish and laundry spot removers.

Food Packaging

Many food packages and containers are made with compounds that have been linked to breast cancer, most especially when the package is heated...
• Bisphenol A, used in the linings of cans and water bottles. (ED)
• Polystyrene, found in Styrofoam food containers, disposable containers, egg cartons and plastic cutlery. (CBM)
• Polycarbonate, found in plastic water bottles and metal food can liners. (ED)

Consumer Tips

While it may be impossible to avoid all of the products that contain known or suspected breast carcinogens, Dr. McCormick suggests that whenever possible we should use simple, natural personal-care products and buy organic food products to minimize exposure to pesticides and chemicals. She advises using nontoxic cleaning and household products whenever possible, and notes that any household cleaners should be used only in well-ventilated areas. Other precautions include installing a water filter to rid water of contaminants... and avoiding packaging that uses plastics and plastic derivatives.

Source(s):

Sabrina McCormick, PhD, author of No Family History: The Environmental Links to Breast Cancer (Rowman & Littlefield) is a Fellow at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in the National Center for Environmental Assessment at the Environmental Protection Agency and is an assistant research faculty at the School of Public Health, George Washington University. She was previously a Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If that all makes you think twice about your exposure to chemicals, read this and consider using the non-toxic substitutes listed at the end of the article.

Health Hazards of Housework and Chemical Cleaners; this article also includes a list of non-toxic substitutes for cleaning your home.
http://successstressrelief.blogspot.com/2007/11/health-hazards-of-housework-and.html

Creative Health Tip December 21 2009

2009-12-21T08:24:00.000-08:00

Today's tip is about breathing mindfully

Almost everyone gets stressed out during this busy holiday season. However, stress suppresses the immune system, so the last thing you want to be during the holidays is stressed because it leaves you vulnerable to illness.

There is one very simple thing you do all the time, and when done mindfully, can reduce stress. You can do it anywhere, anytime, for a couple minutes or even a half-hour. It's simple, easy, effective……have you guessed what it is?

Yes, it's breathing.

Breathing mindfully is one of the best and fastest ways to reduce stress whether you are caught in traffic or a long line at the checkout counter of the department store or have just arrived home at the end of a hectic day.

Breathing mindfully means paying attention to your breath, to follow the breath as you inhale and exhale. You need not intentionally breathe deeply though you may find that you are breathing more deeply as you practice, and that's good because it can help relieve muscular tension. Breathing shallowly deprives your muscles of much-needed oxygen and they become tense as a result. Just breathing slowly and deeply can relieve a lot of tension in your legs and back and shoulders.

To practice: as you inhale (through the nose only, please) follow the path the air takes, and feel the coolness in your throat as the air travels to your lungs. You may pause to enjoy the sensation if you like, but pausing isn't required. As you exhale, you will pay attention to the breath as it leaves your lungs and warms the throat, and here you may exhale through the mouth if you like.

To add an extra mind-body dimension of stress relief and relaxation, as you exhale, set the intention to relax simply by repeating "I am relaxed" as you practice, and may even be a little playful by emphasizing different words as you say it, first emphasizing "I" then "am" then "relaxed." If you are a visual person, you may also visualize the release of all your tensions, just watch them leave your body as thought they were riding the crest of a wave of breath, and say good-bye to each as they leave: "Good-bye, work stress, good-bye traffic jam," and so on.

The more fun you have with this practice, the more stress it will relieve and the faster you will feel better!

Creative Health Tip December 7 2009

2009-12-07T07:03:00.000-08:00

We all know how feeling happy is one creative way to wellness, and that feelings of gratitude are very powerful creators of wellness as well as happiness. It seems that some scientists have confirmed it: Gratitude increases happiness

This is an article that was run in Bottom Line Secrets Newsletter of November 19, 2009

Science Discovers the Secret to Happiness
By Robert A. Emmons, PhD
University of California, Davis

Surprise: Research suggests that becoming more grateful could make each of us 25% happier -- and that being happy is the key to a longer, more successful life.

Our lives do not just seem better when we are happy -- they actually become better, according to a 2005 analysis of hundreds of psychological studies. Happy people tend to have longer, more loving marriages... are healthier... live an average of seven to nine years longer than chronically unhappy people... and have more successful careers. According to one study, happy college graduates had annual salaries $25,000 higher than unhappy graduates 16 years after graduation.

While an endless procession of self-help gurus have claimed to know the path to happiness, psychological studies generally have failed to confirm that proposed happiness strategies actually work.

One notable exception: Research conducted in the past decade appears to indicate that we can become happier by feeling more gratitude.

Bottom Line/Retirement asked psychology professor Robert A. Emmons, PhD, of the University of California, Davis, for more information...

What is "gratitude" to a psychologist?

In simple terms, gratitude is our affirmation of a benefit that we have received and our recognition that this benefit has come to us from outside of ourselves.

You say that becoming more grateful will make us happier. How do we know that it isn’t the other way around -- happiness creates gratitude?

Our research suggests that increases in happiness do not lead to increases in gratitude, but that increases in gratitude do in fact increase happiness. We designed a study to test this. Participants were divided into two groups, each of which were initially equally happy. Members of one of these groups were asked to write in a journal the things that they were grateful for, which made them more conscious of and grateful for the good fortune that came their way. At the end of the study, the journal-keeping group was 25% happier than members of the group that did not keep gratitude journals.

Why does feeling gratitude make us happier?

Primarily, I believe, it is because gratitude increases our sense of connection to other people. Having strong relationships is the single best predictor of happiness, and our relationships become stronger when we acknowledge the support we receive from those around us. Acknowledging the support we receive from others provides us with confirmation that we have value in other people’s eyes. Gratitude also buffers us from envy, resentment and regret, emotions that inhibit happiness.

Why do people often have trouble being grateful for what they have?

Lots of reasons. Most of us are fortunate to have pretty good lives, so our default reaction might be to take the benefits that come our way for granted. Consumerism and other cultural pressures can foster a sense that we deserve even more than we have. Our desire to see ourselves as self-sufficient makes it difficult to admit that someone else has helped us. And admitting gratitude can create uncomfortable feelings of indebtedness.

Can we consciously choose to become more grateful and thus happier?
Yes, I do believe it is a choice. Chronically unhappy people do not greatly differ from happy people in terms of their life circumstances -- they just approach life with a different set of attitudes. Unhappy people tend to see themselves as victims of their past, and feel entitled or exaggeratedly deserving when good fortune comes their way. Happy people are thankful that good things happen to them -- even though their lives might be no better than those of the unhappy people next door. We cannot always alter the events of our lives, but we can alter our attitudes.

What, specifically, can we do to become more grateful?

Make an effort to speak about your life using words of gratitude even if you do not feel very grateful. Though it seems counterintuitive, we can become more grateful by forcing ourselves to feign gratefulness that we do not initially feel. Speak in terms of gifts and givers, not regrets and setbacks. Refer to yourself as blessed or fortunate, not deserving or lacking. Say that you live in abundance, not in need. For example, say "I feel so grateful when I can sleep through the night," rather than "Most nights I wake up every few hours."

Keeping a gratitude journal also seems to encourage gratefulness. Every day or every week, write down five or more things for which you are grateful. Be specific -- "I’m grateful for my spouse" is little more than a cliché, but "I’m grateful that my spouse picked up my dry cleaning this afternoon" reminds us that we are grateful to our partner today for a particular reason. Try not to repeat entries -- gratitude journals are most effective when we think of new items each day.

Incidentally, if you are struggling to get to sleep at night, don’t count sheep, count your blessings. Grateful people sleep better and longer than ungrateful people, and wake feeling more refreshed.

What is the secret to being grateful in the face of struggle or tragedy?

The secret is not to wait until tragedy strikes. Become more grateful while your life is running smoothly, so that gratitude becomes an ingrained part of your "psychological immune system." That will make it easier to view difficulties as temporary and surmountable setbacks, or even as opportunities in disguise.

A grateful person mourns the passing of a close friend, but he/she also feels lucky to have known the friend as long as he did, and is glad that he has so many other friends remaining.

Many prayers are expressions of gratitude. So, do religious people have an advantage when it comes to actually feeling gratitude and being happy?

Yes, to some degree. One of the foundations of virtually every religion is that people should give thanks to God and to each other. Religious texts and religious teachings typically provide models of how to be grateful, such as prayers of gratitude and rituals of giving thanks. Spirituality appears to be particularly helpful for maintaining a grateful outlook in the face of suffering and adversity.

Bottom Line/Retirement interviewed Robert A. Emmons, PhD, professor of psychology, University of California, Davis. A leading scholar of positive psychology, he is author of Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier (Houghton Mifflin).

That's the end of the article.

So, if you want to be happy which leads to wellness, one of the things you can do is start a gratitude journal and before you go to sleep at night, record two or three things for which you are grateful. You will sleep better, feel better, and feed that happiness that creates wellness!

Have a Great (and Grateful!) Week.

Michelle
Providing a source of inspiration and wellness through the unity of Mind, Body & Breath.

Creative Health Tip November 16 2009

2009-11-16T09:50:00.000-08:00

Today's tip is about using Imagination and Inspiration

Do you realize that there isn't one thing we have today that was not first created in someone's imagination. Just think about that for a minute…..every single man-made thing we have, from spoons and forks to space shuttles, started as a gleam in someone's eye! Here is the best part: once the eye "saw" the creation, the mind opened to the inspiration of how to accomplish the idea or manifest the project.

I call this the "Ah-ha! Instruction Manual." It's the inspiration that delivers into your mind all the diagrams and instructions on how to manifest your idea into physical reality.

You can do this with wellness, too. Your body is the creation of your mind and emotions.

Use this creative connection to spend time every day imagining your increasing wellness. I do not advise trying to go from where you are, presuming you are unwell, to imagining perfect health. For one thing, there really isn't any such thing as "perfect health!" Every moment of the day, your body is regenerating, disposing of used cells, creating new ones, and your immune system is working to protect you from whatever bacteria or virus you've just been exposed. You never reach perfection; health and wellness is an ongoing process!

So, each day, spend time using your imagination to create wellness. You may even use a statement or affirmation that you repeat (and say it out loud, please!) that goes something like, "Every day, I feel happier and become more healthy and strong." Repeating your statement out loud gives it even more power and believability than just reading it.

Here is the Inspiration part: once you have made this statement and commitment to your wellness, it will "suddenly occur" to you to do things. This may include changing your diet to organic foods, or eliminating dairy, or eating more whole grains. You may also be inspired to start walking outdoors for 15 or 30 minutes a day, or to go swimming twice a week, or visit with friends more often, go to lectures at the library, or engage in some other activity you enjoy, some activity that makes you Happy!

I stress happy because feelings are a crucial aspect of how this Imagination/Inspiration program works and how you create wellness. You simply can't create wellness when you are feeling fear, depression, anger or other negative emotions. When you feel unhappy, your body reacts with stress which immediately undermines the immune system and produces a host of other unhealthy physical reactions. Happiness restores immune system strength and helps your body to engage in health-restoring activities, both inner activities like the increase of revitalizing hormones, and outer activities like choosing good nutrition and lifestyle habits.

For a little while every day, remember to use your imagination to create wellness, and let inspiration be your guide on how to there from here!

Creative Health Tip November 2 2009

2009-11-03T20:51:00.000-08:00

This article about Tonglen was originally published on one of my blogs back in January 2007, but I have known of and have successfully used the practice since 2005.

Tonglen is an ancient healing practice that is getting some much-deserved publicity these days and deserves another “day in the sun” here. Though I wrote this over a three and a half years ago, and originally sent it to an email group I once belonged to, I do continue to use the practice when in need of self-healing. I hope you find it useful!

Tonglen (sometimes spelled "tonglin" for folks who would like to do some research of their own) is apparently a practice that comes to us from Tibet.

It is practiced entirely through breathing. As the fellow in the book (cited below) says, "If you can breathe in and out, you can practice tonglin."

As you inhale, you think of people you want to help who are suffering. You can visualize those people if you know them, or think of their names and locations if you do not. You may work on specific problems, or do general work.

As you think of them, you inhale and bring into yourself their pain and suffering. Do not worry that you will somehow be contaminated by their problems; you will transform and exhale the problems almost immediately.

You exhale, and send with the outgoing breath healing, relief, or compassion. (Compassion is one of the most powerful emotions in the universe.) When you exhale, imagine and see your breath as flowing expansively outward, reaching all the people whom you are trying to help.

It's not a forceful practice (you don't "suck in" as much air as you can and then force it across the room as you exhale), but it is deliberate; you should pay attention to each inhale and exhale, and breathe with the intention and purpose of accepting suffering of, and sending healing to, others.

And here is a very interesting point about this practice if you are doing it for yourself. If you can breathe in the suffering and pain of other people who are experiencing the same thing as you, you are sharing the burden of your suffering and thereby reducing it ("a burden shared is a burden lessened" as they say). As you breathe out healing, you heal not only others with the same affliction, but yourself.

I believe the key here is to set aside the "I" and merge with the "us." It is not recommended that you work on just yourself; you should include others who are experiencing the same thing you are. You need not do this on an individual or personal basis (you may not know the name or location of a person with the same problem), but there are 6 billion people in the world today: whatever you are experiencing, you are certainly not alone.

To work on yourself, when you inhale, say or think or intend something like "I breathe in the suffering of all of us who have a pain in their left arm" (or whatever your problem is.) Your problem need not be physical, this practice may be used to relieve anger, sadness, grief, or other emotions.). Exhale and say/think/intend "I offer (or send) healing to all of us."

If, at the end of your practice for the day or session, you should feel that you are still connected to someone else's suffering or problems, disconnect by saying "I am done now," or simply "Good-bye!" Repeat if necessary. (Sometimes, if we are working on an emotional problem that triggers us, it will bring up troubling things which we must dismiss for the time being. You could always work on it again during another healing session if needed.)

FYI, I learned about this in a book by Andrew Weiss titled Beginning Mindfulness, New World Library, Novato CA, 2004, ISBN 1577314417. The book presents a ten-week mindfulness course, and the practice for the tenth week is tonglen. There is a Buddhist slant to the material, but the author incorporates other practices as well.

A couple of anecdotal stories:

I used the tonglen method four days ago (Thur, Apr 14, 2005) on my arm; I have carpal tunnel, and have had pain of one kind or another in my hands every day for the past three years. (I am having massage therapy for the condition. That helps quite a bit, but sometimes I move the wrong way, or grasp something the wrong way, and it aggravates the condition.) The other day, my left arm, from the heel of the hand to the shoulder, was just about killing me. I did this tonglen practice for ten to fifteen minutes, and my left hand has been completely pain free ever since....and I do mean completely pain free which is nothing short of a miracle! It may start bothering me again, but the last four days have been heaven as far as my left hand is concerned! :-)

As an update (Sunday, May 22, 2005) I'd like to add here that I have been having some carpal tunnel problems lately (mostly because the keyboard is at the wrong height again...will have to fix that!), but a few minutes doing Tonglen relieves the pain admirably.

Further update (Monday, June 13, 2005): in the past couple of weeks I've also used this method to relieve an annoying tooth problem. I walk every evening for 10 to 15 minutes, and I practice this healing method while I walk, breathing in pain and breathing out healing. It's an incredibly wonderful practice.

Here is some of the feedback I received on this post:

Massage therapy helped my carpel tunnel without surgery too. Due to neck & back problems from a fall from a tree when I was a child, I had been going to the chiropractor 2-3 times a week, then got it down to once a week or less....then realized my Buddhist practice, which includes some tonglen, relieved me of having to go to the chiropractor. I had learned of tonglen practice from reading Pema Chodron. She also has a CD which explains tonglen.

I like your version/explanation of tonglen best..... :-)......much more simplified than Pema Chodron's. However, if someone wants to read/study Pema Chodron's, I recommend her CD which, for me, was easier to understand than her book. Her book is "Start Where You Are". The CD, book & daily inspiration cards are in a set titled "The Compassion Box.”

~SB~

================================================

I just wanted to Thank You for this Tonglen Healing. This morning coming in from watering, I slipped on the tile and twisted a muscle in my shoulder blade. I thought, good excuse to go and do the Tonglen Technique. I did, I sat and did the breathing and letting it heal through. I like that you add others into the technique as well. It made me feel real good… The muscle now barley has any little twinge left in it at all. I am just taking it easy and continue to do the breathing. Thanks again and I will definitely add this easy technique to my list of uses!

~J~

================================================

I tried Tonglen once, on my stomach ache, and it really did work!
Thanks for sharing with us that wonderful technique. :)

~ASP~

Have a great week!

Creative Health Tip 19 October 2009

2009-10-19T08:21:00.000-07:00

I have a wonderful teaching for you today about Nature. The direction this came from is somewhat unusual, but that’s the thing about Wisdom; you just never know what direction it’s going to come from, so always keep your eyes and ears open!

I am doing some editing for a friend of mine who I’ll call Richard since that’s his name. Richard is a retired Doctor of Chiropractic who now devotes his time to his Golden Bridge Seminars where he shares the wisdom Abraham as channeled by Esther Hicks who writes books and travels with her husband Jerry.

One of the main teachings of Abraham is to “go with the flow,” or “go downstream.” To get what you want out of life, to be where you want to be and in the circumstances and relationships and prosperity and places that are right for you, you do not need to struggle. Struggling is considered to be going upstream. You paddle and paddle and struggle and struggle, and where does it really get you? Nowhere.

Now, the reason I mention Richard today is that I am editing a manuscript for him. There is a miracle described in there, and you are going to have to read the book to learn what that is, but meanwhile….

While working on his manuscript, I came across a simple sentence that leapt off the page and just sort of hit me right between the eyes. I don’t know if this philosophy came to Richard before or after his interest in the Abraham-Hicks teachings manifested, but if it were before, I certainly can understand his attraction to the Abraham teachings and the Law of Attraction.

Richard’s philosophy is simple, and – as these things often are – simply profound: “Nature needs no help, just no interference.”

Just think about that for a moment and how it could relate to your health. Your wellness is in the hands of your immune system. Think about the ways you may be interfering with Nature and compromising your immune system by being exposed to household chemicals, eating an unhealthy diet, and living a stressed-out lifestyle. Certainly, none of those are in alignment or harmony with Nature or her “go with the flow, go downstream” advice.

As a Doctor of Chiropractic, Richard’s main interest was wellness, and his philosophy is a perfect reflection of his belief, and certainly aligns with the Abraham teachings as well!

If you are floating downstream, you are not “helping” Nature by paddling, and likewise, if you are floating you are not interfering with or hampering your harmony with Nature. Floating means letting Nature take its course

In the area of wellness, what this means is that when your body’s immune system, which is Nature’s way of keeping you healthy, is operating at peak efficiency, it can handle any disease to which you are exposed, either externally such as the flu or strep throat, or internally such as cancer or even arthritis. It is only when Nature – meaning your immune system – is compromised that you fall prey to disease.

If you want real wellness, there are two things you should do. First: Expect miracles, for that is how you create them. Second: Don’t get in Mother Nature’s way when she’s working to restore your health! Support your immune system by getting enough sleep, eating healthy, organic foods, and minimizing the stress that suppresses proper immune system function.

Seriously, I am going to post this statement where I can see it and be reminded of its wisdom every day, and I hope you do, too!

Remember: “Nature needs no help, just no interference.”

Thank you, Richard, for that!

Have a great week!

Creative Health Tip 12 October 2009

2009-10-12T16:57:00.000-07:00

Today’s tip is an excerpt about the healing power of love.

This is a quote from pages 285 – 287 of the book Spontaneous Evolution by Bruce Lipton, PhD. In this segment, he’s talking about a man who is a medical doctor turned energy healer after receiving the message "Your work is to heal with love" during meditation.

That doctor’s name is Leonard Laskow, and his website where you may learn more about him and his book Healing With Love, as well as read articles, interviews and research papers is http://www.laskow.net/index.shtml

Lipton’s book describes some scientific experiments that Dr Laskow did with cancer cells in Petri dishes and the healing power of love, and that is what I’ll share with you here today.

"Laskow held three culture dishes that contained tumor cells in his hand while maintaining a state of focused healing consciousness. As an experimental control, a non-healer in another room held in his hands three other Petri dishes, inoculated with the same tumor cells. The non-healer was assigned a reading task while holding the cultures so that he would be distracted from influencing the cultured cells with his own intentions.

"Laskow experimented with several different emotional intentions while holding the cells, all of which sought to activate the natural force of coherence in the Universe. The most effective intention, the one that caused the cancer cells to diminish their growth by 39 percent, was "Return to the natural order and harmony of the normal cell line." When Laskow added visual imagery to the intention, the healing effects doubled.

"So, what's love got to do with it? As Laskow reports in his book Healing With Love, his intention was not to destroy the cancer cells but to allow them to exist as part of universal creation. Love, he explained, is the "impulse toward unity, non-separation, wholeness. While love can take many forms, its essence is relatedness." Laskow believes that the opposite of love is not hate but separation. While there are many different modes for accessing and using healing energy, Laskow's protocol involves connecting with the condition instead of separating from it."

"When we experience an illness or a life condition that we would prefer not to have, our first impulse is to cast it out. We tend to think of illness as a foreign invader that attacks us rather than something we co-create. However, when we truly own our participation in the condition, even if we don't understand the reason, we become responsible participants in directing our fate.

"With the awareness that our mind shapes our biology, we can recognize that we have the opportunity to change our minds and, thus, create a healthier biology. Given what we now know about the intelligence and functionality of our cells, maybe we can begin by humbly apologizing to our inner citizens and thank them for putting up with us! When we take the step of consciously loving our cells, we affirm that we are co-creating participants, not victims of life.

"An illness or disharmonious condition occurs when something is misformed or deformed. Healing, therefore, involves transformation to change the dysfunctional form. Here is Laskow's simple four-step transformational healing process:

"Step One: Inform yourself about what has already materialized in form. Telling the truth is the first step toward responsibility.

"Step Two: Conform to the condition by loving it rather than creating separation. Resonating with the form allows us more influence over its organization.

"Step Three: Unform the condition by releasing it. "It is this observer's intent," said Laskow, "that converts particulate matter to its wave form and its wave form back into matter."

"Step Four: Reform the released energy to conform to our purpose and desire. This is the letting go part where we send our intention into he Universe without attachment.

"Even when releasing the diseased condition, there is connection and not separation. Laskow wrote: "When you accept and love the parts of yourself you want to reject or change, you create an opportunity to discover the positive live force behind them." That old Biblical word atonement can be reinterpreted as at-one-ment through which we make ourselves at one with whatever condition we would have otherwise rejected.

"In the quantum Universe where everything is connected, love is the glue that holds things together. Said Laskow, "Love is a universal pattern of resonant energy." In this sense, two or more tuning forks vibrating together are in love with each other, just as two or more humans can resonate in a palpable field of connectedness, joy, and even ecstasy. Love, he said, "is the universal harmonic.”

End quote.

We all have the capacity to do this. I hope that along with whatever healing modalities you use, you will include the healing power of love to bring you back into harmony, happiness, and health!

Have a great week!

Creative Health Tip 05 October 2009

2009-10-05T08:31:00.000-07:00

Today’s tip is about a practice called Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT.

Although I have not used this myself, I was told about it by two psychologists who think very highly of the practice.

EFT was created by Gary Craig. In his manual, he explains it like this: “EFT is based on the discovery that imbalances in the body’s energy system have profound effects on one’s personal psychology. Correcting these imbalances, which is done by tapping on certain body locations, often leads to rapid remedies.”

There are many success stories not only concerning emotional wellness by people who have used the process to overcome anxiety and fear, but many cases where physical pain and illness have been cured as well.

Given what the practice is, I’m not surprised! It appears to be a combination between acupressure, where tapping instead of direct continual pressure is applied to various acupuncture points, and EMDR.

In Chinese medicine, every energy acupuncture channel not only corresponds to bodily organs and physical wellness but emotional wellness, too, so even though I haven’t tried EFT myself, I can see how it would be of great benefit on the principles of Chinese medicine alone.

Another facet of the EFT practice includes eye movements that resemble and possibly are related to a practice called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR. EMDR helps people overcome past experiences that trigger negative emotions and beliefs, and can relieve emotional distress. I have seen EMDR used in several cases involving young girls suffering from emotional traumas, and it did them a world of good. It’s a very effective healing modality.

So, if you are struggling with a physical or emotional issue, give EFT a try! You can download the basic manual for free from the website www.emofree.com

There are also additional materials including DVDs that may be purchased, but the free manual is all you need to get started with this wonderfully easy and holistic wellness technique!

Have a great week!

Creative Health Tip 28 September 2009

2009-09-29T12:16:00.000-07:00

This is a Daoist story about how beliefs create reality, and about attachment, from the Book of Lieh-Tzü translated by Lionel Giles in 1912.

“There was once a man who, though born in Yen, was brought up in Ch'u, and it was only in his old age that he returned to his native country.

”Yen was the northernmost State of ancient China, while Ch'u was bounded by the left bank of the Yangtsze.

”On the way thither, as they were passing through the Chin State, a fellow-traveler played a practical joke on him.

“Pointing to the city he said: 'Here is the capital of the Yen State'; whereupon the old man flushed with excitement. Pointing out a certain shrine, he told him that it was his own village altar, and the old man heaved a deep sigh. Then he showed him a house, and said: 'This is where your ancestors lived'; and the tears welled up in his eyes. Finally, a mound was pointed out to him as the tomb where his ancestors lay buried, whereupon the old man could control himself no longer, and wept aloud.

“But his fellow-traveler burst into roars of laughter. 'I have been hoaxing you,' he cried; 'this is only the Chin State.'

“His victim was greatly mortified; and when he arrived at his journey's end, and really did see before him the city and altars of Yen, with the actual abode and tombs of his ancestors, his emotion was much less acute.”

As you can see, the traveler’s belief that he was in his ancestral town created his reality and generated a lot of strong emotions for him even though it wasn’t true. Before you react to any statements or thoughts that may generate an emotional charge for you, make sure they are a reflection of reality.

Attachment can also generate strong emotions, just as did the attachment of the man to his native land. After he had spent his strong emotions believing the wrong place to be his homeland, his attachment became less and when he did arrive at his destination, he was able to view it with the detachment and calmness that bring about health and wellness.

The tip for this week is two-fold; before you believe something, make sure it’s real, and detachment allows you to maintain your harmony, happiness, and health.

Have a great week!

Michelle

Creative Health Tip 21 September 2009

2009-09-21T08:41:00.000-07:00

Since tomorrow is the Autumnal Equinox, it seems appropriate to talk about balance.

What balance is not, is a state of frozen equilibrium. Balance is all about living in harmony with life’s up and down cycles.

Think back to playing on a see-saw or teeter-totter when you were a child. If you sat there in perfect balance, going neither up nor down, that was no fun. The fun was swooshing up when you pushed off with your feet, and then landing with a bump when you came back down.

Life is a dynamic process, and the fun is often found in the many activities that fuel your busy schedule like work, sports, family outings, and running those seemingly endless errands we all have on our To-Do lists.

However, in order to create or maintain excellent health, you don’t want to be landing with a bump at the end of the day or the end of the week. That’s what robs you of good health.

When you have a few busy days in a row, schedule some down time to relax and rejuvenate, finish reading that book you started, or call an old friend to catch up on the latest news, or go for a leisurely walk in the woods or a park to get some fresh air.

If you have to dine on fast foods while dashing between appointments most of the week, treat yourself to a home-made dinner of fresh foods on the weekend. Don’t look at cooking as a chore, see your meal as a gift to yourself of healthy nutrients!

Take some time out to meditate, even if it’s only a few minutes a day in which you focus on your breathing. The effects of meditation are cumulative; the more often you do it, the longer-lasting are the benefits of improved focus and attention, healthy blood pressure levels, and greatly reduced levels of stress hormones that deplete your immune system and leave you vulnerable.

So, have fun on that teeter-totter because that’s what life is all about; it should be fun, but make sure you are in control of how hard you land!

Have a great week!

You Control Your Genes, Your Genes Don't Control You

2009-09-16T20:23:00.000-07:00

This is an article with two videos from the website of Dr. Joseph Mercola. He, as well as Roger Jahnke, a Master in Taiji and Chinese Medicine, have published several interviews and reports on scientific discoveries and studies that show you are not at the mercy of your genes, and that genetic expression of diseases for which you are "at risk" can be averted when you know that your emotions have far more control over your genetic expression than was ever dreamed possible.

In other words, living in joy and harmony instead of being stressed out and crazy can mean the difference between being healthy and getting cancer!

Here is the latest article from Dr Mercola's website and two videos that accompany it. Enjoy!

The New Biology- From Victim to Master of Your Health

(7 minute 36 second video)

The Four Myth Perceptions of the Apocalypse (www.Mercola.com)

(6 minute 30 second video)

Dr. Mercola's Comments (on the second video):

This is my second interview with cellular biologist Bruce Lipton, PhD., who is one of the leading authorities on how emotions can regulate genetic expression, as explained in his excellent book The Biology of Belief, which was published last year.

Dr. Lipton’s new book is Spontaneous Evolution, which was just published just a few days ago.

In this interview, he discusses “the four myth perceptions of the Apocalypse.” These are the myths that society has bought, up to now, as actual science.

However, over the last two decades or so, leading edge science has shown them to be not only flawed, but entirely false, providing such profoundly different answers that it will undoubtedly change the way we live in the future.

Myth # 1 : You Live in a Mechanical Universe

The first myth perception is that the world, especially biology and medicine, operates through Newtonian physics. It says you live in a mechanical universe.
According to this belief, your body is a physical machine, so by modifying the parts of the machine, you can modify your health.

As a physical machine, your body responds to physical “things” like chemicals and drugs, and by adjusting the drugs that modify your machinery, doctors can modify and control life.

Now, with the advent of quantum physics, scientists have realized that this theory is flawed because quantum physics show that the invisible, immaterial realm is far more important than the material realm.

In fact, your thoughts may shape your environment far more than physical matter.
Einstein himself is quoted as saying: “The field is the sole governing agency of the particle.” What that means is that invisible energy is the sole governing agency of matter (the physical world).

It’s interesting to note that the word ‘spirit’ by spiritualists, and the word ‘field’ by physicists, use the same definition for those two words.

So, the new science is actually taking us back, and shows that your thoughts, your attitudes, your beliefs, and the invisible environment, are more primary in shaping your life than anything in the physical world is.

Myth # 2: Your Genes Control Your Life

In his book, The Biology of Belief, Dr. Lipton explains the foundation of epigenetics, and how the true secret to life does not lie within your DNA, but rather within the mechanisms of the cell membrane. In this way – which is contrary to conventional medical science – it is actually the cell’s membrane -- operating in response to environmental signals picked up by the membrane’s receptors -- that control the “reading” of the genes inside.

What does this mean?

It means that you are not controlled by your genetic makeup. Instead, your genetic readout (which genes are turned “on” and which are turned “off”) is primarily determined by your thoughts, attitudes, and perceptions!

The major problem with believing the myth that your genes control your life is that you become a victim of your heredity. Since you can’t change your genes, it essentially means that your life is predetermined, and therefore you have very little control over your health. With any luck, modern medicine will find the gene responsible and be able to alter it, or devise some other form of drug to modify your body’s chemistry, but aside from that, you’re out of luck…

The new science, however, reveals that your perceptions control your biology, and this places you in the role of Master, because if you can change your perceptions, you can shape and direct your own genetic readout.

It places YOU in the power position, for better or worse.

As Dr. Lipton says,

“This is very relevant to the world that we are in because we have to take back a belief that we have power over our lives. Because our current perception is that we are victims, and since perceptions control life, if you believe you are a victim, you become a victim. When we change our perceptions, we can become masters. So we are moving out of “victimhood” into mastery.”

Myth # 3: Life is Based on Survival of the Fittest

The third misperception is the Darwinian belief that life and evolution is based on the survival of the fittest, which is an inherent competition and a struggle for existence that goes on forever.

The new science, however, shows that this is incorrect; that evolution was not based on competition, but rather on cooperation.

This is a profound difference, and it tells us that if we want to evolve as a species, we must stop competing, and begin to recognize our coherence – that we evolved to live as a harmonious community of people, living on this planet as one living “thing” called humanity.

Myth # 4: Life Evolved as a Random Process

This is another Darwinian theory. The significance of this myth is that, based upon it, you have no purpose here, and humans are somewhat disconnected from the environment altogether.

It says that you got here by accident, and since humanity was accidental, humans have no real purpose here on planet earth.

The new biology, on the other hand, reveals that you are in fact an extension of your environment.

In fact, every time an organism is introduced into an ecosystem, its function is to balance it and keep it stable. When viewed from this perspective, you realize that the function of your existence here on earth is to create harmony and stability within your environment.

Says Dr. Lipton,

“… humanity evolved as a compliment to an environment. The very scary situation is, if we destroy the environment that created us, then essentially, we are destroying the foundation of our existence.”

New Solutions for Old Problems

I have long maintained that your emotional state plays a role in nearly every physical disease -- from heart disease, to depression, to arthritis and cancer. Even the conservative Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that 85 percent of all diseases have an emotional element.

If your thoughts and emotions play such a significant role in modifying your biology and your health (and I believe they do), then treating your emotions becomes an essential part of optimal health.

Terms like “energy medicine” and “energy psychology” are terms that have sprung up in response to these shifts in perception of reality, and I’ve long been an advocate of energy psychology tools to address underlying emotional traumas that can trigger disease, or keep you locked in a disease pattern.

Meridian tapping techniques, for example, which works on several levels of your collective mind-body-spirit simultaneously, can help you get a better handle on your emotions and buried pain, including the stress from unexpected tragedies.

Optimal health might really hinge on dealing with, and resolving your emotional traumas as quickly as possible; not letting old emotional wounds linger and fester.

In severe cases you might not be able to perform the techniques satisfactorily on yourself, in which case I would highly recommend you seek out a trained professional. Dr. Patricia Carrington provides a list of certified practitioners across the world, plus helpful advice on how to choose a practitioner that is right for you.

*** end of article ***

I'd just like to add that Affirmation Movies are also a great way to get a handle on your emotions, and work through conflicts in beliefs that are a major cause of chronic illness. To learn more about that, please visit Affirmation Movies.

If you would like to know more about Affirmation Movies, write to me at affirmationmovies@gmail.com

Creative Health Tip 14 September 2009

2009-09-14T09:54:00.000-07:00

Today's tip is about Acceptance.

Your tip this week is actually coming from Eckhart Tolle in his book A New Earth.

I was reading this the other night, and he's talking about the "modalities of awakened doing" which means how we live our lives and do all the things that we do in a conscious manner.

He talks about the three modalities of Enjoyment, Enthusiasm, and Acceptance. While Enjoyment and Enthusiasm probably don't need a whole lot of explanation, Acceptance is really interesting in the way he presents it, and that is what I want to talk about today.

I’m going to read from his book A New Earth, pages 296 to 297.

"Acceptance

"Whatever you cannot enjoy doing, you can at least accept that this is what you have to do. Acceptance means: For now, this is what this situation, this moment, requires me to do, and so I do it willingly.

"Performing an action in the state of acceptance means you are at peace while you do it. That peace is a subtle energy vibration which flows into what you do. On the surface, acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it is active and creative because it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, that subtle energy vibration, is consciousness, and one of the ways in which it enters this world is through surrendered action, one aspect of which is acceptance.

"If you can neither enjoy or bring acceptance to what you do – stop. Otherwise, you are not taking responsibility for the only thing you can really take responsibility for, which also happens to be the one thing that really matters: your state of consciousness. And if you are not taking responsibility for your state of consciousness, you are not taking responsibility for life."

That's the end of our quote.

Remember, every single thing you do, every attitude you bring to those things, is a vibration that you are putting out into the universe.

You are also taking it in to your body and creating your outer physical being as well as your inner physical being.

So, this week, think about Acceptance when you're doing something that is not your "cup of tea" as they say. Just accept that there it is, and that's how it is, and if you don't like it you know it's going to get better!

Have a great week!

Michelle

Creative Health Tip 21 August 2009

2009-08-21T08:48:00.000-07:00

Today's tip is about reliving a joyful or sacred experience.

At least twice in the past week I've heard people talk about a really fantastic experience they had, and end with the lament that they wish they could experience that again. The reason they say they can't is because it was a special time, or those exact circumstances will never be repeated therefore they will never be able to enjoy that experience again.

The fact is, you can go there anytime you desire through your memory and imagination.

You do this a dozen times a day, but usually you tune into past experiences that create feelings of anger or sadness that create poor health, like an argument you had with your mate, or the guy who cut you off on the drive to work. When you think about it later, don't you feel the same intensity of emotions you felt at the time the event took place? Of course you do!

I think people tune into these experiences because they get an adrenaline rush: anger is nearly always rooted in fear, and fear evokes the fight-or-flight response and the rush of adrenaline to fight or flee. It also shuts-down the immune system so all your bodily resources are available for survival. When you experience that feeling of anger or fear, even in retrospect to an experience hours or days after the event itself, your immune system goes on vacation so your body can put all its attention on fighting or fleeing even though you don't have any reason At That Moment to fight or flee.

Your imagination is a very powerful tool, and your body can't tell if the experience in your mind is happening "now" or not. Every thought you have, you are having Now; every feeling evoked by those thoughts is happening Now. To your body, every experience is Now!

Use that as a tool toward health and wellness! Tune in to past experiences that make you feel happiness, joy, and love. You can relive those wonderful and fantastic moments just as easily as you can the moments of harsh feelings.

The only tools you need to re-experience a joyful or sacred moment in your life is your imagination and your willingness to revisit the experience. Not only will you bring those moments alive again and bask in those wonderful feelings, your body will be producing hormones to create excellent health as you do it!

Have a great weekend!

Creative Health Tip 14 August 2009

2009-08-14T08:27:00.000-07:00

This week, I am sharing a video with you from the Abraham-Hicks selection on YouTube. The topic is weight loss, and in terms of Creative Health, the advice given by Abraham through Esther Hicks certainly offers the best in Mind-Body Creation of a healthy attitude toward food and the attainment of your perfect weight: it has to be in the mind before it can manifest in the body!

Here is the description of the video:

"Abraham, translated by Esther Hicks, responds to a question from a woman has tried every diet, done every exercise, and still cannot lose weight.

"Sidestepping the usual - and often frustrating - approaches to the problem, Abraham lays the foundation of a mental attitude that brings to bear the power of Law of Attraction to create the most effective technique ever presented for losing weight.

"Excerpted from the 2 hour and 20 minute program "Think And Get Slim: Natural Weight Loss" which is available on DVD and CD from Abraham-Hicks.

"Recorded September 8, 2006 in San Antonio, TX."

If you are in Bend, Oregon and would like to learn about local Abraham-Hicks gatherings and workshops, please visit the website of Golden Bridge Seminars at http://www.goldenbridgeseminars.com/

Have a great weekend!

Michelle

Creative Health Tip 7 August 2009

2009-08-07T06:02:00.000-07:00

Today's Creative Health Tip is about Awareness

We all tend to gather in groups of like-minded people, so it wouldn't surprise me if many of you are fans of positive thinking, creative consciousness and other "your thoughts and emotions create your reality" techniques.

Maybe you've read books by Louise Hay, Gregg Braden, or Ester and Jerry Hicks. If so, you know they all offer similar advice: be aware of your thoughts for your thoughts are vibrations and whatever you think about with strong emotions is what you will create in your life!

Whether your creation is favorable or unfavorable depends largely on those strong emotions. Emotions like anger, guilt, and fear will create unfavorable life experiences and physical disease, while emotions like hopefulness, happiness, and appreciation will create wonderful experiences and physical vitality.

The important point I want to make this week is that you must be very alert and aware of your thoughts! Several times in the last few days, I've spoken with people who are very knowledgeable in these co-creative processes, say they understand the need for positive thoughts and emotions, and yet all they did was grumble about all the negative events in their lives.

While it sure is ok to vent once in a while, if you spend too much time venting the negative, it gains momentum and comes back to haunt you when you least expect it, and least desire it.

Throughout the day, check in with yourself, and examine your emotions: are you stressed, happy, or bored? Be aware of the path and pattern of your thoughts: do you like what you are doing, or do you wish you were somewhere else, or are you getting ready to take what you're doing and toss it on the trash heap?

When you have a string of negative thoughts or emotions, acknowledge them but don't dwell on them. Instead, try to turn them around into something positive. Doing this will raise your vibration and let you manifest things you like and want instead of attracting all those things you are trying to avoid!

Have a great weekend!

Creative Health Tip 01 August 2009

2009-08-01T07:53:00.000-07:00

The video of today's Creative Health Tip is about 7 minutes long.

Today's Creative Health Tip is: Attitude of Gratitude

Researchers at the Institute of HeartMath explain the connection between heart disease and stressful feelings (published by MSNBC/Today Show on January 26, 2006 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11023208/)

Just consider: this information has been around for almost four years now, and most people haven't yet heard of it!

Begin quote:

An appreciative heart is good medicine
Psychologists once maintained that emotions were purely mental expressions generated by the brain alone. We now know that this is not true — emotions have as much to do with the heart and body as they do with the brain. Of the bodily organs, the heart plays a particularly important role in our emotional experience. The experience of an emotion results from the brain, heart and body acting in concert.

The Institute of HeartMath, a research center dedicated to the study of the heart and the physiology of emotions, has conducted numerous studies identifying the relationship between emotions and the heart. A number of their studies have provided new insight into understanding how the activity of the heart is indeed linked to our emotions and our health, vitality and well-being.

Emotions and the heart
Recent HeartMath studies define a critical link between the heart and brain. The heart is in a constant two-way dialogue with the brain — our emotions change the signals the brain sends to the heart and the heart responds in complex ways. However, we now know that the heart sends more information to the brain than the brain sends to the heart. And the brain responds to the heart in many important ways. This research explains how the heart responds to emotional and mental reactions and why certain emotions stress the body and drain our energy. As we experience feelings like anger, frustration, anxiety and insecurity, our heart rhythm patterns become more erratic. These erratic patterns are sent to the emotional centers in the brain, which it recognizes as negative or stressful feelings. These signals create the actual feelings we experience in the heart area and the body. The erratic heart rhythms also block our ability to think clearly.

Many studies have found that the risk of developing heart disease is significantly increased for people who often experience stressful emotions such as irritation, anger or frustration. These emotions create a chain reaction in the body — stress hormone levels increase, blood vessels constrict, blood pressure rises, and the immune system is weakened. If we consistently experience these emotions, it can put a strain on the heart and other organs, and eventually lead to serious health problems.

Conversely, HeartMath’s research shows that when we experience heart-felt emotions like love, care, appreciation and compassion, the heart produces a very different rhythm. In this case it is a smooth pattern that looks like gently rolling hills. Harmonious heart rhythms, which reflect positive emotions, are considered to be indicators of cardiovascular efficiency and nervous system balance. This lets the brain know that the heart feels good and often creates a gentle warm feeling in the area of the heart. Learning to shift out of stressful emotional reactions to these heartfelt emotions can have profound positive effects on the cardiovascular system and on our overall health. It is easy to see how our heart and emotions are linked and how we can shift our heart into a more efficient state by monitoring its rhythms.

Benefits come from being appreciative
The feeling of appreciation is one of the most concrete and easiest positive emotions for individuals to self-generate and sustain for longer periods. Almost anyone can find something to genuinely appreciate. By simply recalling a time when you felt sincere appreciation and recreating that feeling, you can increase your heart rhythm coherence, reduce emotional stress and improve your health.

For people who may initially find it difficult to self-generate a feeling of appreciation in the present moment, experts suggest that they recall a past memory that elicits warm feelings. With practice, most people are able to self-generate feelings of appreciation in real time and no longer need the past time reference. Dr. Rollin McCraty, director of research for the Institute of HeartMath, says, “It’s important to emphasize that it is not a mental image of a memory that creates a shift in our heart rhythm, but rather the emotions associated with the memory. Mental images alone usually do not produce the same significant results that we’ve observed when someone focuses on a positive feeling.”

End quote

We now know that this does not apply only to a healthy heart, but that all your organs and cells respond to positive feelings! In Chinese medicine, the liver is associated with anger, the kidneys to fear, the lungs to sorrow and grief. Experiencing anger day in and day out for long periods of time can eventually create chronic health conditions of the liver; chronic fear can create chronic kidney disease, and so on.

Your awareness and conscious creation can over-ride these automatic physical responses to emotional conditions.

Adopt the Attitude of Gratitude to create your excellent health!

Visit my blogs for more creative Health, Happiness, and Harmony articles and information:

Believing Is Seeing

Stress Relief for Savvy Women

Be Well with Qigong

Creative Health Tip 24 July 2009

2009-07-24T08:34:00.000-07:00

Today's Creative Health Tip is Your Mind: The Natural Cure For What Ails you!

Why is it that most people have no difficulty believing the mind can cause illness through negative thoughts and emotions, but won’t believe the mind can cause wellness through positive thoughts and emotions? Have you ever heard the saying, “You can do anything you put your mind to”? The natural power of the mind, through the processes of conscious direction and sustained attention, can create anything, including perfect health!

Your mind is a very powerful creator that does not judge its creations as good or bad, it just creates. Illness and wellness are a matter of perception, a matter of how the creation that is the physical “you” is influenced and judged by your emotions. Your thoughts influence your emotions; your emotions influence your physical body. If you are not sure that is true, you can test it right now. Take a moment to think a neutral thought like “the sky is blue.” You have very little reaction to a statement of fact that is not part of your personal creation. Now, think of a sad or angry experience you had and notice how your body suddenly feels tense and uncomfortable. Now, think of a happy experience you had and notice how your body changes to feel relaxed and comfortable.

You have the natural ability to choose illness by thinking negative thoughts and having negative feelings that create disease, or choose wellness by thinking positive thoughts and having positive feelings that create a healthy body. The natural state of your body is health and wellness; it wants to work harmoniously with you to return to that state of good health.

The last four lines of verse 51 of the Daoist philosophical book the Dao De Jing (Peter Merel interpolation) offer some suggestions on how to use your mind to effect your own healing.

“Bearing without possessing,” Carry the illness, but don’t own it. Every time you think or say “my disease” you are holding on to it and confirming it is a part of you. If you have to refer to it at all, call it “the disease.” Do your best to not think of it at all. When you stop feeding the disease with the energy of your thoughts, you will deny it the energy it needs to exist.

“Nurturing without taming,” Take care of yourself without trying to change the nature of the illness. Don’t try to make the illness something you can “live with.” If, in your mind, you decide you can live with it, you won’t cure it. Always try to nurture yourself back to perfect health.

“Shaping without forcing,” Shaping in this sense means creating your healthy body without resistance. Self-doubt is resistance, disbelief is resistance. If you must work so hard to convince yourself of the healing power of your mind, all your energy goes toward the convincing and none toward the healing. Making statements like “I’m going to do this or else!” is resistance which can set up an internal power struggle or fear of failure that may do more harm than good. Create good health persistently but gently.

“This is harmony.” Give yourself permission to allow your body to follow its natural tendencies. Spend time influencing your body with intentional and sustained positive thoughts as if you have already created health by saying and believing: "I am perfectly healthy!" Say it with gusto: "I Am Perfectly Healthy!!!"

Fill yourself with health and there will be no room for disease.

Have a great weekend!

Michelle

Creative Health Tip 17 July 2009

2009-07-17T07:53:00.000-07:00

Creative Health Tip 10 July 2009

2009-07-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

The problem with uploading complete .avi format videos at YouTube has been fixed, so today's video is of a better quality than the last few which had to be converted before being uploaded! Yay!

Today's Creative Health Tip is about Mind Movies

Mind Movies are something that's become very popular recently. A Mind Movie is a motivational and creative tool. Usually, it's a three to five minute video that runs like a slide-show, displaying pictures and affirmations designed to evoke positive desires and enthusiastic emotions which are the key to creating your reality. They include upbeat music to enhance the experience and further boost your feelings of desire and intention to manifest and experience the things you want to create in your life.

To manifest prosperity, for example, they often include pictures of expansive mansions and fabulous cars and exotic vacation locations interspersed with affirmations such as "I have enough money for everything I want" and "I have my dream home" and so on.

Of course there are Mind Movies for health, too, with pictures of people enjoying various healthy and athletic activities like swimming, hiking, even skydiving! The affirmations are usually something like, "I feel rejuvenated" and "I always feel physically great" and "I eat only nutritious food" and so on. There are pictures of healthy foods, too!

There are fancy, professional versions, but you can easily make your own Mind Movie with your own pictures in just a few minutes. Create a new folder on your computer and copy or drag-and-drop into it pictures you want to manifest or recreate. For example, if you would like to lose weight, include pictures of happy, thin people and nutritious foods, and activities you would enjoy doing when you are thin.

If you would like to feel more energetic, put in pictures of people enjoying various physical activities. For an even better Mind Movie experience, put into the folder pictures of you when you were thin, or pictures of yourself enjoying an activity like playing golf or hiking, or any activity you would like to have the energy to do.

To manifest general health or to counteract a chronic health condition, include pictures of yourself as a healthy, vibrant, enthusiastic person, the person you want to be!

To enjoy your Mind Movie, you may play any music that is on your computer – in iTunes or another music folder, or even play a CD or iPod as you watch your Movie. Make sure the music is fun, upbeat, "feel-good" music! This will run in the background.

To start your slide-show, open the folder that contains your pictures and double click on the first one. This will open in a picture viewing program. If it does not start the slide-show automatically, look for an icon or command that will start the slide-show. Your pictures will be displayed in the order they are in the folder.

View your movie for a few minutes at least twice a day. I have heard of some people who watch their movie frequently throughout the day, and they report that they create and manifest their desire just that much faster, so view your movie as frequently as you desire! In this case, more is definitely better!

Have a great weekend!

Michelle

Creative Health Tip 03 July 2009

2009-07-03T07:28:00.000-07:00

Apologies if the quality of the video is below par. In order to get the full-length video to upload to YouTube, I've had to convert my recording to a different format. Hopefully YouTube will fix the problem with uploading the original format and I will go back to it ASAP.

Today's Creative Health Tip is: Shoulda' Coulda' Woulda'

This is sort of fun language play, but I know that you are aware of the impact of language, and that the words you use in your self-talk can make a huge difference in your life!

I was reading Louse Hay's book You Can Heal Your Life, and on page 15 she points out an interesting way we perceive the word "should." She says, "…I believe that should is one of the most damaging words in our language. Every time we use should, we are, in effect, saying "wrong." Either we are wrong or we were wrong or we are going to be wrong. I don’t think we need more wrongs in our life. We need to have more freedom of choice. I would like to take the word should and remove it from the vocabulary forever. I'd replace it with the word could. Could gives us a choice, and we are never wrong."

Further, on page 16, talking about the way the word should influences our lives, Louise Hay says, "We often find [people] have been berating themselves for years for something they never wanted to do in the first place. Or they have been criticizing themselves for not doing something when it was never their idea to begin with. Often it was just something that some else said they "should" do. When they can see that, they can just drop it from the "should list." What a relief that is.

"Look at all the people who try to force themselves for years into a career they don't even like only because their parents said they "should" become a dentist or a teacher. How often have we felt inferior because we were told we "should" be smarter or richer or more creative like some relative."

Being a wordsmith and lover of etymology – the derivations of words – I had to check this one out. Here is what I found in the online etymology dictionary http://www.etymonline.com/ :

While it doesn’t have anything to do with being wrong in any way, "should" certainly carries the idea of making a commitment, and appears to heap on the guilt and debt!

The word should is from "Old English sceolde, past tense of sceal (see shall). Preserves the original notion of "obligation" that has all but dropped from shall." It wants you to make a commitment, probably to something you may not really want to do. As it is related to the word shall, here is the scoop on that one. Shall comes from "O.E. sceal "I owe/he owes, will have to, ought to, must." Related via past tense form to O.E. scyld "guilt," Ger. Schuld "guilt, debt" "

Louise says she would replace should with could. Let's see if that is going to work better for us:

Could is from the Old English "cuðe, pt. of cunnan "to be able" (see can (v.))." Can is derived from "O.E. 1st & 3rd pers. sing. pres. indic. of cunnan "know, have power to, be able."

So, with could, we are able and have the power, but do we want to do whatever it is that we could, or are we still being pushed into something we "should" but don't really want to do?

Our safest bet by far is would! Would comes from the Old English wolde, past tense of willan "to will" (see will (v.)). Will is derived from "O.E. *willan, wyllan "to wish, desire, want" (past tense wolde). The implication of intention or volition distinguishes it from shall, which expresses or implies obligation or necessity."

So, if you want to create a good feeling and good health around all those things that everyone – including yourself! – says you should do (obligation and guilt), and you think that you could do (just because you are able does not make it desirable), check in with your intuition – that gut feeling that tells you that you are on the right track – and see if it says, "I would!" because you wish, desire, and want to do that!

If your intuition doesn't say "I would," then the item you are asking about doesn't belong in your life!

Have a safe and fun 4th of July weekend!

Michelle

Creative Health Tip 26 June 2009

2009-06-26T08:22:00.000-07:00

*** This video may be of somewhat poorer quality than previous videos. YouTube is having a problem with uploading my usual file format, so I've had to reformat this one to get it to upload. Hopefully, the format problem will be fixed soon and I will return to my previous format.

Meanwhile, here is the full text of the message:

Your mind creates your reality.

This is not a new concept. The Law of Attraction material has been around for a long time now, and most people understand that if/when they can "live in their dream" and really feel they are in their desire – be it a new house, car, or whatever – they will eventually manifest that item in the physical world.

I have been attending a series of workshops the last couple of months, and I have learned to take that a step further and say Your Beliefs Create Your Reality.

What is the difference, besides substituting the word Belief for Mind? Your mind is the tool that brings your beliefs into conscious awareness. Your Beliefs are what create the vibrations that make things happen.

Stress is a prime example of this. Any given situation will be stressful for some people, but not stressful for others. The difference is in the belief of the person having the experience. To go back to a popular children's book, The Little Engine That Could, the engine got stressed-out that he couldn't make it over the hill until he changed his belief to one that said "I Can." The way that worked is pretty obvious: his thought ("I think I can.") effected a change in his belief that he couldn't do it to a belief that enabled him to get over that hill!

However, there is another level, and this is the one I've been working with lately. You have all those conscious beliefs that create your response to experience: like the Little Engine's stress, he looked at that tall hill and his conscious belief said "I'm too small to make it over that hill" but he changed it through the "I think I can" process.

The deeper level is the one where core beliefs live, and these may conflict with your conscious beliefs. Core beliefs are the ones you have absorbed since birth; they are memories of and reactions to past experiences. Depending on whether these beliefs are productive or destructive, you can find yourself sailing along through life with everything going your way, or struggling because some core belief that no longer serves you is in conflict with your conscious belief and is holding you back, or even making you ill.

The series of workshops I've been attending to learn about this are with Jeb Barton here in Bend.

Jeb teaches that sustained conflict in your core beliefs is the cause of disease. Using our Little Engine again, here's how a core belief can cause disease (please keep in mind that this is a very simple example. The process itself is longer and more complicated):

Let's say that Little Engine has been told all his life that he's too little to go over any big hills – that is now his core belief. All his life, he's avoided big hills because he feels he's not strong enough to go over them. Now, Little Engine approaches the hill – there is no way to avoid it this time – and gets all sorts of encouragement from his friends, and even says, "I think I can, I think I can…." But now there is a conflict with the core belief that says "you can't" and the conscious belief that says "I can," and what to you think happens? He probably gets half way up the hill and an axel breaks, he bursts a gasket; he "gets sick" in some way due to the conflict in his you-can't/I-can beliefs.

If you are experiencing a chronic illness, it would definitely be to your benefit to examine some of your beliefs and see if you can figure out when and where you acquired a belief that no longer serves you or is holding you back, and use your Creative Mind ability to turn it around into a positive statement that will enable you to regain your health. If you can Believe yourself healthy, you will See health restored.

(There is a qigong meditation practice that works on that principle, and if you are interested let's arrange for a lesson in which I can guide you in that process. If you would like to do that, or have any comments or questions on today's Tip, write to me at bewellwithmichelle@gmail.com )

Creative Health Tip 12 June 2009

2009-06-12T07:48:00.000-07:00

[At the 2 minute 16 second mark, the word I was trying to think of was trampoline!]

Here is your Heaven On Earth Creative Health Tip for this week:

Stand up and stretch!

At least once every hour or hour-and-a-half - this is critical, especially if you are working at a job where you do a lot of sitting without moving around – standup, stretch out a bit, walk around for five minutes, loosen up your muscles, breathe in more oxygen.

The reason this is important is two-fold.

First, if you are working at a desk, you often tend to sit a little hunched over which means you are not taking as much oxygen into your lungs because you are leaning forward and you lung capacity is compromised.

If you stand up, you elongate your body, you unfold yourself, and you can get more good oxygen into your lungs. The oxygen spreads throughout your body, of course, and helps to relax your muscles.

If you're not getting enough oxygen as you sit there at your desk, your muscles are going to start to become tense, and then when you do stand, you'll experience the uncomfortable "pins-and-needles" thing where you try to kick out your leg muscles and stretch a bit to relieve the discomfort.

You can save yourself that discomfort by just standing up and getting in some deep breathing every hour or hour and a half.

The second part of this is your lymph system.

Your lymph system works along with the movement of your muscles. Sitting still and quiet while working at your desk, your lymph system is very sluggish. It's not doing very much; it's not removing all those used and dead cells in your body nor any of the toxins that you've taken in. It's not getting them out because it's just not moving fast enough.

When you stand up and start moving around a bit with your muscles, that kicks your lymph system into a higher gear.

In fact, the best thing you can do for your lymph system is rebounding. Get one of those little trampolines and bounce on that for five minutes, or even three or four minutes….it doesn't need to be a long time. That will really rev up your lymph system and get a lot of that stuff out of your body.

A lot of that stuff (old cells and toxins) is what causes illness because it's just sort of sitting there and blah.

So….stand up! Stretch, Breathe Deeply, Move Around a little bit, and Feel Good!

Have a fabulous weekend!

Michelle

Hormone experts worried about plastics, chemicals

2009-06-12T07:30:00.000-07:00

This is a reprint of an article I saw yesterday on Yahoo! Apparently, there is a growing mountain of evidence that the chemical BPA, which is found in some plastic products, is terribly damaging to your health, espcially heart health because of the way it interacts with estrogen.

I have added bold emphasis to the original in places where I believe it is especially important for you to take note of the damaging influence of this chemical which apparenlty has been found in the containers of these products:

Photo source: Milwaukee, Wisconsin "Journal Sentinel" http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/34532034.html

Hormone experts worried about plastics, chemicals

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090611/sc_nm/us_bisphenol

By Maggie Fox, Health And Science Editor – Wed Jun 10, 2009 11:00 pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Hormone experts said on Wednesday they are becoming worried by a chemical called bisphenol A, which some politicians say they want taken out of products and which consumers are increasingly shunning.

They said they have gathered a growing body evidence to show the compound, also known as BPA, might damage human health. The Endocrine Society issued a scientific statement on Wednesday calling for better studies into its effects.

Studies presented at the group's annual meeting show BPA can affect the hearts of women, can permanently damage the DNA of mice, and appear to be pouring into the human body from a variety of unknown sources.

BPA, used to stiffen plastic bottles, line cans and make smooth paper receipts, belongs to a broad class of compounds called endocrine disruptors.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is examining their safety but there has not been much evidence to show that they are any threat to human health.

"We present evidence that endocrine disruptors do have effects on male and female development, prostate cancer, thyroid disease, cardiovascular disease," Dr. Robert Carey of the University of Virginia, who is president of the Endocrine Society, told a news conference.

The society issued a lengthy scientific statement about the chemicals in general that admits the evidence is not yet overwhelming, but is worrying.

Dr. Hugh Taylor of Yale University in Connecticut found evidence in mice that the compounds could affect unborn pups.

"We exposed some mice to bisphenol A and then we looked at their offspring," Taylor told the news conference.

"We found that even when a they had a brief exposure during pregnancy ... mice exposed to these chemicals as a fetus carried these changes throughout their lives."

The BPA did not directly change DNA through mutations, but rather through a process called epigenetics -- when chemicals attach to the DNA and change its function.

WIDESPREAD EXPOSURE

Taylor noted studies have shown that most people have some BPA in their blood, although the effects of these levels are not clear.

Dr. Frederick Vom Saal of the University of Missouri, who has long studied endocrine disruptors, said tests on monkeys showed the body quickly clears BPA -- which may at first sound reassuring.

But he said when tests show most people have high levels, this suggests they are being repeatedly exposed to BPA.

"We are really concerned that there is a very large amount of bisphenol A that must be coming from other sources," Vom Saal said.

Dr. Scott Belcher of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio and colleagues will tell the meeting they found BPA could affect the heart cells of female mice, sending them into an uneven beating pattern called an arrhythmia.

"These effects are specific on the female heart. The male heart does not respond in this way and we understand why," Belcher said. He said BPA interacts with estrogen and said the findings may help explain why young women are more likely to die when they have a heart attack than men of the same age.

U.S. government toxicologists at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences expressed concern last year that BPA may hurt development of the prostate and brain.

A 2008 study by British researchers linked high levels of BPA to heart disease, diabetes and liver-enzyme abnormalities.

(Editing by Eric Walsh)

Creative Health Tip 05 June 2009

2009-06-05T07:35:00.000-07:00

Here is your Heaven On Earth Creative Health Tip for this week:

I'd like to talk a little bit about feelings.

We know that good feelings like happiness, gratitude, and love create good health. We also know that sadness, grief, and especially anger if it's ongoing and unresolved, creates disease.

On the other hand, we do have those emotions, and we need to learn more about them; learn how to resolve them, learn how to replace them with gratitude, and happiness, and love.

If you're feeling things like anger or resentment, or grief or sadness over the loss of a loved one, that's good. Acknowledge your feelings. Acknowledge where they came from.

However, if you're not sure where they came from or why (as is sometimes the case with repressed grief or anger), that is something you are going to want to look into and resolve.

While you're working through these feelings, do try to turn the page for them.

Try to turn your grief into gratitude. If you've lost a loved one, of course you're going to grieve for them, but at the same time, you had some time with them - maybe months or years – be grateful for all that time you had and eventually that grief will turn into something life-affirming and health-giving instead of health-taking-away.

Anger can be a very, very difficult thing to work through, but it is also the most (physically) damaging of the emotions. If you can take that anger and turn it into happiness, take whatever caused you to be angry and – as I talked about in last week's Creative Health Tip – find the good in it. There's good in everything. If you can find the good in a situation that has brought on anger, that will turn you around from the side of chronic illness to chronic health. And don't we all want chronic health!

Have a fabulous weekend!

Michelle

Creative Health Tip 29 May 2009

2009-05-29T06:47:00.000-07:00

Here is your Heaven On Earth Creative Health Tip for this week:

Whatever is going on around you or in your life, Choose to find the good in it.

A lot of times, bad things happen to good people, and people often feel that you are at the mercy of the circumstances.

You may not be able to change the circumstances themselves, but you have absolute power over how you react.

If you react well, consider it as a learning experience, consider it as a way to gain knowledge, consider it as a way to take your power back, and not let all of these outside things just wash over you and cause you to tumble and fall and break. You will go a long way to creating excellent health for yourself.

If things happen and you let them make you crazy and stressed out, you are going to create illness for yourself. All that stress is just not going to sit well in your physical body, and eventually it will come to roost somewhere. You don't want that.

So, take back your power, make your choices good, and make the good choice to find the good thing in everything. There is always something good, even if it's just a learning experience or a way to help someone else out of a problem. If you can help someone else, you will often feel good about your own problems, and also find ways to help solve them, too.

Have a Heavenly weekend!

Michelle

Creative Health Tip 22 May 2009

2009-05-22T08:19:00.000-07:00

Here is your Heaven On Earth Creative Health Tip for this week: Smile!

Smiling does amazing things for your body!

I was at a business meeting Wednesday evening and the lady who spoke talked about reducing stress. She pointed out that when you smile, something in your body automatically changes. The levels of your stress-reducing hormones rise – your "feel-good" hormones – that we have that create good health. The levels of your stress hormones lowers or decreases.

Just through the act of smiling, you cannot feel sad, mad, depressed, down; you just can't!

So, get a little smiley-face sticker and put it on your keychain, your briefcase, your computer monitor, or wherever you're going to see it, and every time you do see it, Smile!

Chinese medicine has taken the practice of smiling one step further. There is a practice called the Healing Smile, or the Inner Smile. (It goes by several other names also.)

The purpose of this practice is to create healthy organs by smiling at them!

Start by taking a couple of nice deep, cleansing breaths, relax yourself into a nice, comfortable seated position . . .

And smile at your lungs. See your lungs as healthy. See them as working perfectly, exchanging air and carbon dioxide with the outer world.

Next, move on to your heart. See your heart pumping strongly. See it moving blood through your body perfectly. Be appreciative of these organs that work so hard to keep you alive.

After you spend a couple of minutes on your heart, move to your stomach and spleen. Envision a nice, healthy stomach that helps digest your food so that you can absorb the nutrients, and the spleen which helps to remove used and toxic materials from your body.

Next, move on to your kidneys. Envision healthy kidneys. . .use your imagination! Create health for these organs that support you in your life.

The final organ is the liver. Envision a healthy liver. See it working perfectly, see it healthy, see it filtering all the things out of your blood that you no longer need circulating through your body.

When you are done spending a minute or two just smiling at each of your major organs, seeing each as healthy, seeing it working properly, seeing it working perfectly, take two or three nice, deep, cleansing breaths, and relax, and know that you are Creating Health for yourself!

Have a Heavenly and very safe Memorial Day weekend!

Michelle

Creative Health Tip 15 May 2009

2009-05-15T07:17:00.000-07:00

Here is your Heaven On Earth Creative Health Tip for this week, a writing I found on the website of the Napoleon Hill (author of many books on the creative power of the mind) organization website:

Monthly Message from Dr. Napoleon Hill
Science of Success

August 10, 2005 http://www.naphill.org/foundation/message2.asp

BE GENEROUS by W. Clement Stone
Source: Success Unlimited, August 1964, p. 2.

BE GENEROUS! Give to those whom you love; give to those who love you; give to the fortunate; give to the unfortunate; yes – give especially to those to whom you don’t want to give.

Your most precious, valued possessions and your greatest powers are invisible and intangible. No one can take them. You, and you alone, can give them. You will receive abundance for your giving. The more you give – the more you will have!

GIVE a smile to everyone you meet (smile with your eyes) – and you’ll smile and receive smiles . . .

GIVE a kind word (with a kindly thought behind the word) – you will be kind and receive kind words . . .

GIVE appreciation (warmth from the heart) – you will appreciate and be appreciated . . .

GIVE honor, credit and applause (the victor’s wreath) – you will be honorable and receive credit and applause . . .

GIVE time for a worthy cause (with eagerness) – you will be worthy and richly rewarded . . .

GIVE hope (the magic ingredient for success) – you will have hope and be made hopeful . . .

GIVE happiness (a most treasured state of mind) – you will be happy and be made happy . . .

GIVE encouragement (the incentive to action) – you will have courage and be encouraged . . .

GIVE cheer (the verbal sunshine) – you’ll be cheerful and cheered . . .

GIVE a pleasant response (the neutralized of irritants) – you will be pleasant and receive pleasant responses . . .

GIVE good thought (nature’s character builder) – you will be good and the world will have good thoughts for you . . .

GIVE prayers (the instrument of miracles) for the godless and the godly – you will be reverent and receive blessings – more than you deserve!

Be Generous! GIVE!

Have a Heavenly weekend!

Michelle

Conflicts of Interest Taint Medical Studies

2009-05-11T22:03:00.000-07:00

Well, this isn't much of a surprise, unless you consider how long it took for them to admit that favorable studies of pharmaceuticals are tainted and biased and often just plain lies. People in the alternative health-care field have been warning of this for years - literally! - but until now the mainstream has done its best to discredit them. Suddenly, the shoe is on the other foot.

Personally, if my option were to trust the pharmaceutical industry and the current model of chronic-disease care, I wouldn't - and I don't. This may be just the thing that you need to snap yourself out of going along with the crowd, and finding yourself some Real holistic health care, and avoid the "find a drug to control your symptoms" mentality that oversees medical care these days!

Here's the story, finally reported by the mainstream media:

Conflicts of Interest Taint Medical Studies

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/conflictsofinteresttaintmedicalstudies

Robert Roy Britt Editorial Director livescience.com – Mon May 11, 2009

A new review of studies finds 29 percent of cancer research published in high-profile journals had disclosed a conflict of interest.

While it's a good thing that the conflicts were disclosed, the review also found conflicts affect the research outcomes. The results, announced today, will be published June 15 in the journal Cancer.

The findings add to a mountain of evidence suggesting you should be skeptical of health and medical advice.

Other investigations have indicated that many medical studies simply are not accurate. Further, the media is known to distort key aspects of medical studies, twisting findings by virtue of ignorance, blowing obscure, unpublished "breakthroughs" out of proportion, and frequently failing to disclose industry funding even when the researchers do mention it.

Even common existing treatments can be found pointless, as in 2007 when researchers showed that honey works better than cough medicines in soothing children's coughs. [I have to admit, I don't find it "pointless" that researchers were able to protect children from drugs by proving that a safe, natural substance is actually better for them. Do you? ~M~]

Industry ties

Drugs are, of course, big business. So there is incentive to fund studies that will shine positive light on a drug. Other industries do the same. A recent study funded by gum-maker Wrigley found - no surprise - that chewing lots of its sugarfree gum can help you cut down on calories.

The most frequent type of conflict revealed by the new review was industry funding of the study, found in 17 percent of papers. In another 12 percent, at least one of the study authors was employed by the industry - drug companies and others aiming to market treatments to patients.

Drug trials with reported conflicts of interest were more likely to have positive findings, the review revealed.

"Given the frequency we observed for conflicts of interest and the fact that conflicts were associated with study outcomes, I would suggest that merely disclosing conflicts is probably not enough," said study author Dr. Reshma Jagsi, an assistant professor of radiation oncology at the University of Michigan Medical School. "It's becoming increasingly clear that we need to look more at how we can disentangle cancer research from industry ties."

Many of the studies are likely wrong anyway, other research indicates.

Medical scholar John Ioannidis of the Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece and Tufts University in Medford, Mass. has analyzed medical studies over the years and concludes that most are flawed by poor study design, bad math or self-serving data analysis. Other researchers have countered, however, that multiple studies of a given treatment tend to clearly bear findings out or refute them over time.

Conflict affects outcome

In the new study, Jagsi and her colleagues found other dubious outcomes. They looked at 1,534 cancer research studies published in prominent journals.

Studies that had industry funding focused on treatment 62 percent of the time, compared to 36 percent for other studies not funded by industry. And the studies funded by industry focus on epidemiology, prevention, risk factors, screening or diagnostic methods only 20 percent of the time, vs. 47 percent for studies that had declared no industry funding.

"A serious concern is individuals with conflicts of interest will either consciously or unconsciously be biased in their analyses," Jagsi said. "As researchers, we have an obligation to treat the data objectively and in an unbiased fashion. There may be some relationships that compromise a researcher's ability to do that."

For example, she said in a statement, researchers might design industry-funded studies in a way that's more likely to produce favorable results. They might also be more likely to publish positive outcomes than negative outcomes.

"In light of these findings, we as a society may wish to rethink how we want our research efforts to be funded and directed," Jagsi said. "It has been very hard to secure research funding, especially in recent years, so it's been only natural for researchers to turn to industry. If we wish to minimize the potential for bias, we need to increase other sources of support. Medical research is ultimately a common endeavor that benefits all of society, so it seems only appropriate that we should be funding it through general revenues rather than expecting the market to provide."

Jagsi and her colleagues looked at all original clinical cancer research published in five top oncology journals and three top general medical journals in 2006, including the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, and the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Media gets it wrong, too

There are other reasons for the average person to be skeptical about medical breakthroughs.

Peer-reviewed journals act as filters, with findings reviewed by capable colleagues before publication. Plenty of medical research that has yet to be published makes it into the popular media, too, where more distortions take place.

A study in 2006 found that out of 175 stories in the popular media that discussed unpublished research, only two noted that the research was unpublished.

But even if a study is published in a peer-reviewed journal, that doesn't mean the media will do its job. A 2008 study detailed in JAMA looked at 306 news articles, online and in newspapers, that dealt with about company-funded medication studies. Only 42 percent of the articles disclosed the fact that industry had funded the studies.

Stress Relief Tip 08 May 2009

2009-05-08T07:46:00.000-07:00

Here is your Heaven On Earth Stress Relief Tip for this week!

You've heard that "music soothes the savage beast" or "whistle a happy tune and you'll feel less afraid."

It's very true that music does wonderful things for reducing stress.

We live in a very busy, fast-paced world, and your heart tries to keep up with whatever is going on in the environment around it. If you're working in a very busy, fast-paced, noisy office, your heart actually beats a little faster trying to keep up with everything that's going on, and that can lead you to feel stress.

If you can have a little iPod on your desk, or play background music (on a CD player or on your computer), play some classical or New Age music. Both these music styles will help you feel more relaxed. Especially at the end of your day, go home and play a soothing CD; put your feet up for a while and just let the stress of the day wash away.

Another thing you can do that really enhances how well you feel, reduces stress and makes you feel good, is to sing. It's musical again, but this time you're part of the process; you're involved in improving how you feel. [You're Creating Good Health!] If you sing a nice, fun , upbeat-tempo song, you will reduce the level of stress hormones and increase your level of healthy, feel-good hormones!

So, Sing a happy song, an have a heavenly weekend!

Michelle

Stress Relief Tip 01 May 2009

2009-05-01T07:22:00.000-07:00

Here is your Heaven On Earth Stress Relief Tip for this week!

I would like to talk about Change today.

There has certainly been a lot of change in my life this week. I've had two people move into my house quite unexpectedly, I met with a business advisor who told me to change the focus of my business just a little bit – tweaking it and working on it. The classes that I teach in the evenings have taken a slightly different turn, and we're changing (just a little bit) how all of that works.

Life is all about change. The challenge is working with that change. The challenge can be finding how to make it work in your life.

A lot of change seems to be a struggle for most of us. We fight it, we "swim against the current," and that just leads to unhappiness; it can lead to disease.

If you find the good in the change, find how the change is going to help you, change your perspective on how you see change! That's a biggie. Dealing with change is all about perspective, it's about how you look at it.

No matter what is going on, there is some good in everything. To relieve your stress, to find your happiness, to get away from the "bad" and into the "good," examine it. Whatever is going on, if it's a problem, examine it from all sides.

A cube has six sides; write your problem on a cube and start looking at all those different sides. It will enable you to say, "Wow, I can see this good will come out of this difficult situation."

Go with the good. Concentrate on that instead of on the challenges. It will go a long way in relieving your stress.

Have a heavenly weekend!

Michelle

Stress Relief Tip 24 April 2009

2009-04-24T08:42:00.000-07:00

Here is your Heaven On Earth Stress Relief Tip for this week!

As you can see by my T-shirt, World Tai Chi & Qi Gong Day is tomorrow, Saturday April 25, starting in the first time zone and going all around the world for the whole day, people will be doing tai-chi and qigong wherever they happen to be. I hope that you will find a group in your area if you are not from Bend. If you are from Bend, we are meeting at Compass Park at 10:00 AM. I hope you'll be there.

I highly recommend qigong as a stress-relief technique. It will calm the mind, it will soothe the body; it is also the self-healing branch of Chinese medicine.

You can do qigong on your own, there are hundreds of books and DVDs available for you to purchase almost everywhere [i.e. most bookstores]. However, if you are working on a particular health issue, I do recommend at least visiting with an instructor, someone who can help you in your practice by guiding you through the principles of Chinese medicine. They can help you understand what the moves do, how the movements are going to help You with your particular condition.

That little bit of extra help is a great idea because it will help you to more effectively to use your mind to guide your healing practice.

I hope that you will look into qigong, and taiji, both, as a way to relieve stress. It's a great way to enhance your holistic wellness.

Have a heavenly weekend!

Michelle

Stress Relief Tip 17 April 2009

2009-04-17T08:28:00.000-07:00

Here is your Heaven On Earth Stress Relief Tip for this week!

This is a tough one, and I'm not sure why people don't do it, if we think it's going to make us look incapable or whatever, but we don't ask for help when we need it.

There are two people I know who recently have gone through some challenges with their families, and one asked for help. They've come through it now, are getting over their problems, and everything has worked out very well for them. I think that's because the person who needed that help asked for it.

I know another lady who is taking care of an elderly relative and not only will she not ask for help, she won't accept help when it's offered. I honor where she is and her reasons for doing that, but at the same time she's getting very stressed out, she's getting very burned out, and it looks like she's headed for a place where not only is she not going to be able to care for her relative, she won't be able to take care of herself.

If you need a hand with something, ask. If the first person, or the second person, or even the fifth person you ask is not able to help you, honor where they are. You don't know what's going on in their lives, they really may not be able to help you at this time. Don't take "No" personally. Keep asking! The right person to help you will come along, and it will work out beautifully.

To help with that, I'd like to mention an organization for which I am the Admin person here in Bend: it's called Time Banks or Time Traders. This is a free service, a "pay it forward" organization in which you do favors for other people, and you earn time for doing that. You "pay" for favors for anything that you need by donating your time to another member. There's an online system behind this organization; you sign in, you then put in what you need and what you can do for others.

It's people helping people! If you would like more information, please send an email to me at stressrelief4me@gmail.com . Put Time Traders in the subject. If you would like me to call you, send your phone number, or I can attach and email the information to you. Either way is fine with me! If you are interested, just let me know!

Have a heavenly weekend!

Michelle

Stress Relief Tip 10 April 2009

2009-04-10T07:23:00.000-07:00

Today's video is a little longer than usual because I teach you a powerfully effective qigong breathing technique that you can use anytime, anywhere to instantly reduce stress!

(If you would like to know more about qigong or the Eight Healing Sounds, please send me a note at bewellwithmichelle@gmail.com. Private lessons are available. I will also be leading the opening breathing exercise and demonstrating the Eight Healing Sounds of Yin Style Ba Gua for World Tai Chi & Qi Gong Day on April 25 from 10 to 11 AM in Compass Park, 2500 NW Crossing Dr. in Bend. Everyone is welcome, so come and join me and other fine qigong and taiji instructors, and take advantage of this opportunity to sample a few different styles of qigong and taiji!)

Here is your Heaven On Earth Stress Relief Tip for this week!

Breathing! You all know proper breathing is great to relieve stress, but breathing is obviously such an automatic thing that doing it in a mindful, conscious manner is not something that we often think to do.

Today I'm going to combine breathing with some simple motions that will make it mindful, that will make it conscious, that will make it "in the moment," and that will keep you in the moment.

Even thought it seems like a very simple and easy thing to do, this is a very powerful stress-relief technique. It is actually the first move in a qigong style called the Eight Healing Sounds of Yin Style Ba Gua.

What we’re going to do in this practice is breath all the way down into our abdomen. Abut four fingers width below your navel is a spot called the dan tien. This is one of the major energy centers in your body.

When we inhale, I want you to imagine you are inhaling all the way down into that dan tien. When you exhale, I want you to think of and imagine you are relieving stress; you are breathing the stress out while making the sound "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh."

Just imagine how you would feel or what you would say if you were relaxing into the biggest, fluffiest, most comfortable recliner you have ever sat in, in your entire life. You just think, "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."

Really let that sound come through. That's what sets the vibration going, that's what gets your energy moving, that's what brings you back into harmony and balance. So, inhale again, all the way down into your abdomen, and exhale while breathing "Ahhhhhhhhh."

Now I’m going to explain a very simple hand motion to go along with that. (See the video for a demonstration!) Follow along while we do the first position from the Eight Healing Sounds of Yin Style BaGua.

Remember, the dan tien is four fingers width below your navel. Inhale into the dan tien while you reach your arms out from your sides like wings, and raise your arms up over your head, palms facing upward. At the top of your reach, turn your palms to point forward and hold your hands bent at the wrist as if you were wiping down a wall while you exhale and vocalize the "Ahhhhhhhhhhh" sound.

Repeat: inhale as you reach your arms out from your sides like wings. Again, raise your arms up over your head, palms facing upward. At the top of your reach, turn your palms forward and hold your hands bent at the wrist as if you were wiping down a wall while you exhale and vocalize the "Ahhhhhhhhhhh" sound.

Remember to imagine the stress leaving your body as you exhale.

Repeat as needed to relieve stress!

Don't forget, if you would like to know more about qigong or the Eight Healing Sounds, please send me a note at bewellwithmichelle@gmail.com. Private lessons are available. I will also be leading the opening breathing exercise and demonstrating the Eight Healing Sounds of Yin Style Ba Gua for World Tai Chi & Qi Gong Day on April 25 from 10 to 11 AM in Compass Park, 2500 NW Crossing Dr. in Bend. Everyone is welcome, so come and join me and other fine qigong and taiji instructors, and take advantage of this opportunity to sample a few different styles of qigong and taiji!

Have a heavenly weekend!

Michelle

Budget Trimming Tips for a Down Economy

2009-04-09T19:55:00.000-07:00

I found this article a while ago, and it has some great ideas for cutting expenses in this challenging economy! I've taken the liberty to add some comments in red, too.

Enjoy!

Budget Trimming Tips for a Down Economy

by Laura Rowley on Wednesday, November 5, 2008

There's plenty of advice out there to help slash your spending -- get rid of your car, throw out the television, grow your own vegetables, rent out the attic to a college student. But maybe you need a car to drive to work, have no time to garden, enjoy relaxing in front of the tube occasionally, and don't want to bump into an 18-year-old stranger in your bathrobe.

Here are eight ways to tweak your budget and save $500 by the year's end -- with minimum hassle, and without radically changing your lifestyle.

1. Cable TV: If you pay for premium cable services -- extra channels, HBO, etc. -- call your cable company and put your service on "vacation mode" between now and the end of the year. You'll still receive basic service, but save temporarily on the extras.

We did this recently because we were having work done in the basement/TV room. We eliminated the "preferred tier" for two months (we don't get the movie channels), saving $15.99/month. (Comcast charged $1.99 for the change, so the total savings was $30.)

I still pay $40 per month for the basic service. Who watches 200 channels a month anyway?

2. Prescriptions: Only about one-third of prescription drug purchases are mostly or fully covered by insurance, according to a recent Consumer Reports survey, and prices can vary by as much as $100 for the same drug. Always ask your physician for a generic equivalent, which can cost up to 40 percent less, then shop around.

About a dozen states sponsor websites that help you compare prescription prices. Discount stores such as Wal-Mart and Target offer the most popular generic drugs, including antibiotics and medications for asthma, arthritis, diabetes, and high cholesterol, for as little as $4 a month.

I tested out comparison-shopping on the web and phone to save on a common antibiotic, Amoxicillin (250mg, 30 capsules), and it took about five minutes. First I searched New York State's drug comparison website for amoxicillin at local pharmacies in New Rochelle, which charged from $13.64 to $17.09. Then I called Wal-Mart in nearby White Plains, which charged just $4, and Costco, which offered the drug for $6.90 (no membership required). Savings from highest to lowest pharmacy: $13.09.

Do qigong instead of taking drugs! Most drugs come with debilitating side effects and, in the long run, cause more problems than symptoms they suppress. The most powerful healing element you have is the power of your mind!

3. Cell phones: Take a look at your actual usage and make sure your plan matches your behavior -- are you using all your minutes? Wasting money on extra services or old ringtones?

For example, I used to pay $40 for unlimited megabytes to check email on my phone. But I realized I wasn't actually checking email that way very often. I called and asked for the cost of my actual megabyte usage the previous month: $6. By paying for the bytes used (and eliminating text messaging altogether) I save $30 to $35 a month.

If you tend to go over your allotted minutes (at a cost of 40 to 45 cents a minute), register for free with a service called OverMyMinutes. It will alert you by text or email when you're at your limit.

Wow....do you really need to use a cell phone so much, especially since they have been linked to brain and ear and eye problems?

4. Food: This one takes a little more effort, but with about an hour of planning, I typically cut my grocery bill by one-third. I start at my grocery store's online circular, creating five to seven dinner menus based on what's on sale and in season (click on the item and the site creates your shopping list for you).

Then I head over to CouponMom or MyGroceryDeals (both free, registration required). Click on your state and local grocery store, and the sites tell you specific bargains available that week so you can stock up. CouponMom also tells you whether a coupon is available and exactly where to find it (i.e., "Smart Source insert 10/5"). I just pull the coupon inserts out of my Sunday paper every week, date them, and throw them in a drawer. I only cut a coupon when CouponMom tells me where to find it; but you don't have to do this at all to save money.

In the store, I check the price of the sale/coupon item against the generic brand to make sure it's really a deal, and then use the store's loyalty card. Using this approach, I cut a recent grocery bill from $174 to $114 for a week's worth of groceries for a family of five. (I also do a monthly warehouse club run for low-cost staples like skim milk, which freezes pretty well.)

Eat organic!!! Fresh, organic foods have from 50% to 80% higher levels of nutrients than their non-organic counterparts. You eat less and get better food and nutrients!

5. Drycleaning: "Wool, cashmere, silk, rayon, polyester, and spandex can all be laundered," says Lindsey Wieber, of The Laundress, a collection of specialty fabric care products. Manufacturers actually wash the fabric before they construct it into a garment, she explains, and add the "dry clean only" label to avoid liability issues. Wieber and co-founder Glen Whiting, both Cornell University graduates, work with one of their former professors (who has a doctorate in fiber science) to create new enzyme formulas that clean without damaging clothing.

Hand-wash or use a mesh bag in the washing machine (delicate cycle on cool). Lay wool and cashmere flat to dry; everything else, including cotton and linen, can be thrown in the dryer on a low-heat setting, then pressed. Hang up and air out suits immediately; use a lint-free cloth and a stain-removing product to eliminate perspiration or other stains on the inside lining, and spot clean exterior stains. Using this method, Wieber says, suits only need to be dry cleaned two to four times a season. (Savings in our household: About $30 a month.)

I agree, and remember to use a fragrance-free, and chemical-free soap!

6. Utilities: You can get a basic programmable thermostat for as little as $23 at the hardware store, but can save as much as 25 percent on your energy bills by turning down the heat (or air conditioning) when you're away from home or asleep. For the average utility payer, that works out to about $250 a year, or $21 a month (so ideally, you roughly break even in November, and save $21 in December and thereafter).

In addition, water bills can be cut back 25 percent by replacing your old showerheads and faucets with low-flow aerating models. Look for 2.5 gallons per minute (gpm) or less; Home Depot sells showerheads at 1.6 gpm for as low as $12. (Savings in our household after the initial investment: About $10/month.)

These are great! We have used programmable thermostats on both a gas furnace, and now gas-powered heating stoves (which look like wood-burning stoves and have the ambiance of a real fire with out the wood chips, and smoke, and soot).

7. Taxes: The market's steep decline this year offers many investors the opportunity to save by harvesting tax losses before Dec. 31. An investor can sell downtrodden securities held in taxable accounts to offset either capital gains elsewhere or as much as $3,000 in ordinary income. (Meanwhile, additional losses can be carried forward to future years. See this IRS publication for details.)

A study of 185,000 households by Fidelity found that only 10 percent of taxpayers took advantage of the full $3,000 deduction allowed under the tax code. Most of the households surveyed would have gained $500 in additional tax savings. Consider this example from the study: An investor buys a stock for $30,000, and sells it for $27,000, taking a $3,000 loss. If the household had $100,000 in adjustable gross income, harvesting the loss would have cut their tax bill by $450 if the position was held more than a year and $750 if it was held short-term. Click here for more year-end tax tips.

8. Money rituals: In their book "The Power of Full Engagement," authors Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz suggest that change is a matter of adopting new rituals rather than demanding we be more disciplined. "Building rituals requires defining very precise behaviors and performing them at specific times," they write.

Save money by creating quirky rituals: Save all the $5 bills from your wallet at the end of the day. Bring your lunch to work every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday until the end of the year. Boost your 401(k) contribution by 1 percent every time you get a raise. Comparison shop for your auto or homeowner's insurance the day after your birthday each year.

This is very true...the more fun and quirky the practice, the more you will practice it and be engaged by it, and the more you will profit!

Small rituals become habits -- and take a lot less time and energy than watching every penny you spend. (For more savings tips, see my blog.)

Stress Relief Tip 03 April 2009

2009-04-03T06:53:00.000-07:00

Here is your Heaven On Earth Stress Relief Tip for this week!

Everybody's talking about taxes right now. If you are one of those lucky people whose taxes are already done, good for you!

If not, here are a few tips to keep you from getting stressed out when doing taxes:

1 – Don't wait until the last minute. If you do, Murphy's Law will go into full effect and you'll have a mad scramble to meet the deadline.

2 – Remember to breathe! When doing a stressful task, you often breathe shallowly which contributes to the tension and discomfort you feel because you just aren't getting enough oxygen into your bloodstream.

3 – Take breaks while you work. Even if you're using a computer program like my husband and I did, it can take several hours to get through all the screens and forms. After an hour you start to lose your ability to focus, and your muscles start to tense up which makes the whole process not only mentally challenging but physically uncomfortable, too. For every hour you work, you should take a five-minute break. Get some exercise by walking around for a couple minutes, and take a mental break by hopping out to YouTube and watching a couple of funny videos because laughter reduces those stress hormones and increases your feel-good hormones.

Relax, get your taxes done, and have a heavenly weekend!

Michelle

Friday Food Pharmacy - Holy Powder To Spice Up Your Life

2009-04-02T13:19:00.000-07:00

I know it's not Friday, but I just couldn't help including this one in the Friday Food Pharmacy especially since it has some heavyweight healing and health properties.

The way this spice works is really amazing, and it makes a lot of sense to start using it in more meals!

This is reprinted from the website of Dr. Joseph Mercola.

'Holy Powder' Makes Your Cell Membranes Behave for Better Health

The marigold-colored spice known as turmeric, which is revered in India as "holy powder," has been used for centuries to treat wounds, infections and other health problems. In recent years, there has been increasing research into turmeric's main ingredient, curcumin, and its astonishing array of antioxidant, anti-cancer, antibiotic, antiviral and other properties.

Now, researchers have discovered that curcumin acts by inserting itself into cell membranes and making them more orderly, a move that improves cells' resistance to infection and malignancy.

Scientists had previously speculated that curcumin does its health-promoting work by interacting directly with membrane proteins, but the new findings challenge that notion. Instead, curcumin appears to regulate the action of membrane proteins indirectly, by changing the physical properties of the membrane.

Sources:

Eurekalert March 6, 2009

Journal of the American Chemical Society March 3, 2009

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

Turmeric is a yellow spice most often associated with Indian food, curry and yellow mustard, but as research into this powerful spice increases, it’s becoming clear that it may be one of nature’s most powerful potential healers.

Both the ancient Chinese and Indian systems of medicine have recognized turmeric’s beneficial properties for thousands of years, but this new study is the first to show how exactly it does its work.

It appears that curcumin -- the pigment that gives turmeric its yellow-orange color, and which is thought to be responsible for many of its medicinal effects -- is able to “discipline” cells and get them back into working order. When curcumin enters a cell, the study’s lead researcher said:

"The membrane goes from being crazy and floppy to being more disciplined and ordered, so that information that flows through it can be controlled."

This not only improves your cells’ resistance to infections, but it also may help prevent cancer.

Turmeric May be a Potent Cancer Fighter

In India where turmeric is widely used, the prevalence of four common U.S. cancers -- colon, breast, prostate and lung -- is 10 times lower. In fact, prostate cancer, which is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in U.S. men, is rare in India and this is attributed, in part, to turmeric.

Numerous studies have looked into this potential cancer-fighting link, with promising results. For instance, curcumin has been found to:

• Inhibit the proliferation of tumor cells
• Inhibit the transformation of cells from normal to tumor
• Help your body destroy mutated cancer cells so they cannot spread throughout your body
• Decrease inflammation
• Enhance liver function
• Inhibit the synthesis of a protein thought to be instrumental in tumor formation
• Prevent the development of additional blood supply necessary for cancer cell growth

And according to researchers from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, curcumin blocks a key biological pathway needed for development of melanoma and other cancers.

The spice actually stops laboratory strains of melanoma from proliferating and pushes the cancer cells to commit suicide by shutting down nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-kB), a powerful protein known to induce an abnormal inflammatory response that leads to an assortment of disorders such as arthritis and cancer.

More Reasons to Add More Spice to Your Life

The reason people in India refer to turmeric as “holy powder” is because it has such a broad range of health effects. In fact, curcumin has been shown to influence more than 700 genes, with benefits that include:

• Strengthening and improving your digestion
• Supporting healthy liver function and detoxification
• Purifying your blood
• Fighting cancer, arthritis and Alzheimer’s disease
• Anti-inflammatory properties

Further, evidence suggests turmeric may play a beneficial role in the following diseases:

• Cystic fibrosis
• Type 2 diabetes
• Crohn’s disease
• Psoriasis
• Rheumatoid arthritis

• Cataracts
• Gallstones
• Muscle regeneration
• Inflammatory bowel disease

A Few Turmeric Tips

You can absolutely use turmeric in your cooking, and in case you haven’t tried it, it has a warm, peppery flavor. However, when you do choose a pure turmeric powder, rather than a curry powder, as at least one study has found curry powders tend to contain very little curcumin, compared to turmeric powder.

Be sure to listen to your body as always, and if turmeric is a spice you do not enjoy it may be a sign that it’s not right for your body. If you are not one who enjoys the flavor of curry, you can also get the benefits of turmeric by taking it in a high-quality, organic supplement form.

Stress Relief Tip 20 March 2009

2009-03-20T08:22:00.000-07:00

Today is the Vernal Equinox, so Happy Spring!

Here is your Heaven On Earth Stress Relief Tip for this week!

Spring into a realistic day. It may seem a good idea to book appointments one right after the other, but it's healthier and more prudent to leave some wiggle room.

For example, yesterday I went to the office at 3:30 with the intention of doing a couple of web updates and meet with our former bookkeeper…..should easily have been done by 4:30.

Well, it turned out that it took a while to track down the accounting bit while the universe threw us a curve ball and had a good laugh about it (and so did we). Almost the moment we finished, the musician stopped in and we discussed the songs for our next program. Since I had the songs, I went ahead and printed the programs because I knew I wouldn't have a lot of time at the office this morning due to another meeting. Then a woman came in who had ordered a set of CDs from us, then……

You see where this is going, I'm sure! I finally headed home at 6:30, and still had to stop at the office supply store, and then pick up something for dinner! It could have been crazy, but I didn't have anything else going on that evening so I knew it would all be ok.

Always leave yourself some extra time, and you can join in the laughter when the universe decides to throw you a curve ball!

I am going out of town for a few days next week, so there won't be a stress relief tip on Friday the 27th. I'll be back with a new tip on April 3.

Have a fantastic weekend!

Michelle

High cholesterol from your food? Not likely!

2009-03-19T13:24:00.000-07:00

Television advertising – and maybe even your doctor – would have you believe that eating foods that contain high amounts of cholesterol highly raise your cholesterol levels.

As it turns out, this is true for rabbits because they lack enzymes necessary for the digestion of fats (1), but very far from true for human beings!

Also, they would have you believe that high cholesterol is the cause of stroke or heart attack. This is far from true, too. Many studies have shown that cholesterol is a poor indication of risk; cholesterol levels do not effectively mark a person for heart disease, and in fact people with low cholesterol levels currently deemed as "healthy" may suffer more health problems that those with levels currently deemed "too high."

Here is an excerpt, bold highlights are my additions:

"In the Framingham heart study done near Boston that spanned 30 years , the researchers concluded that high cholesterol was a risk factor for heart disease, but when one really dissects the data, one must question how they came to that conclusion. For example, when the participants of the study are plotted on a graph it clearly shows that those with cholesterol levels between 182 and 222 did not survive as long as those with higher cholesterol levels of between 222 and 261. The study shows that about half the people with heart disease had low cholesterol, and half the people without heart disease had high cholesterol.

"Most studies have found that for women, high cholesterol is not a risk factor for heart disease at all - in fact, the death rate for women is five times higher in those with very low cholesterol. In a Canadian study that followed 5000 healthy middle-aged men for 12 years, they found that high cholesterol was not associated with heart disease at all. And in another study done at the University Hospital in Toronto that looked at cholesterol levels in 120 men that previously had heart attacks, they found that just as many men that had second heart attacks had low cholesterol levels as those that had high. The Maoris of New Zealand die of heart attacks frequently, irrespective of their cholesterol levels. In Russia, it is low cholesterol levels that are associated with increased heart disease. The Japanese are often cited as an example of a population that eat very little cholesterol and have a very low risk of heart disease. But the Japanese that moved to the US and continued to eat the traditional Japanese diet had heart disease twice as often as those that maintained the Japanese traditions but ate the fatty American diet. This suggests that it is something else, like stress perhaps, that is causing the heart disease."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Me again: So, perhaps we should take a look at what cholesterol is, where it comes from, and how the body uses it. Below are two articles that should clear up a lot of the misconception.

How the Body Uses Cholesterol by Neil Stone

As a vital part of the body's chemistry, cholesterol is used to produce the steroid hormones required for normal development and functioning. These include the sex hormones estrogen and progesterone in women and testosterone in men. These hormones trigger development of the physical traits characteristic of adult women and men; they also play a role in reproduction.

Other steroid hormones produced from cholesterol include cortisol, which is involved in regulating blood-sugar levels and defending the body against infection, and aldosterone, which is important for retaining salt and water in the body. The body can even use cholesterol to make a significant amount of vitamin D, the vitamin responsible for strong bones and teeth, when the skin is exposed to sunlight.

Cholesterol is also used to make bile, a greenish fluid that is produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder. The body needs bile to digest foods that contain fat. Bile acts as an emulsifier -- it breaks down large globules of fat into smaller particles so they can mix better with the enzymes that digest fat.

Once the fat is digested, bile helps the body to absorb it. The presence of bile in the intestines is required before cholesterol can be absorbed from foods. The body also needs bile in order to absorb vitamins A, D, E, and K, called fat-soluble vitamins, from food or supplements.

Your body has the ability to make all the cholesterol it needs for these various functions. A diet that contains animal products, however, also supplies cholesterol to the body. In an effort to balance these two sources of cholesterol, your body adjusts the amount it produces each day.

For example, if you eat many foods from animal sources, your body gets a substantial dose of cholesterol from the diet, called dietary cholesterol; your body then slows down its own production of cholesterol. On the other hand, when most of the foods you eat come from plant sources, your body manufactures more cholesterol in order to meet its needs.

Your body can also eliminate some excess cholesterol through bile. Whenever bile is released into the intestine, a portion of it is absorbed back into the body to be used again. The remaining bile is excreted in the feces. To help maintain the cholesterol balance, the body can dissolve excess cholesterol in the bile and can also convert more cholesterol into bile acids so that the cholesterol will be excreted with the feces.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Neil Stone is a professor of clinical medicine in cardiology at the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University and a practicing internist-cardiologist-lipidologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He also serves as the Medical Director of the Vascular Center for the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute. Dr. Stone was a member of the first and third National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panels and a past chairman of the American Heart Association Nutrition Committee and Clinical Affairs Committee.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here's more on the lack of correlation between high cholesterol foods and your high cholesterol:

Cholesterol Facts: Avoiding Cholesterol in Foods Won't Lower Your Cholesterol by: Gabe Mirkin, M.D.

If you avoid all foods that contain cholesterol, will your high cholesterol return to normal?

It's not that simple. Your blood cholesterol level is influenced far more by how many calories and how much saturated and partially hydrogenated fat you eat, than by how much cholesterol is in your food. Cholesterol is found only in foods from animals, such as meat, fish, chicken, dairy products and eggs. It is not found in plants. More than 80 percent of the cholesterol in your body is made by your liver. Less than 20 percent comes from the food that you eat. When you eat more cholesterol, your liver makes less.

Your liver makes cholesterol from saturated fats, which are found in most foods but are concentrated in meat, poultry and whole-milk dairy products. The saturated fat is broken down by your liver into acetone units. If you are not taking in too many calories, your liver uses the acetone units for energy, but if you are taking in more calories than your body needs, your liver uses these same acetone units to manufacture cholesterol. That explains why eating two eggs a day does not raise blood cholesterol levels in the average American. They are already taking in so much cholesterol from meat, fish and chicken and diary products, that when they take in more, they absorb less.

The average North American takes in 350 mg per day of cholesterol. If he takes in 26 mg per day, he absorbs 41 percent. When he takes in 188 mg cholesterol per day, he absorbs only 36 percent, and when he takes in 421 mg per day (the equivalent of two eggs), he absorbs only 25 percent. Some people absorb more than five times as much as other people at the same intake. So you lower blood cholesterol levels far more effectively by eating less food, less saturated fat and less partially hydrogenated fats than by avoiding foods that contain cholesterol.

About The Author
Dr. Gabe Mirkin has been a radio talk show host for 25 years and practicing physician for more than 40 years; he is board certified in four specialties, including sports medicine. Read or listen to hundreds of his fitness and health reports at http://www.DrMirkin.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Me again……so, got it? It's ok to eat meat and eggs, really; in fact, eggs have been knows as "the perfect food" for ages, and they still are! Cholesterol isn't the enemy, and you really need reasonable levels to properly absorb vitamins and minerals so you will be healthy. If your cholesterol levels are pharmaceutically forced too low, you will be sick.

(There is an ad on TV these days with a man telling us he didn't know his high cholesterol could have caused his erectile dysfunction. I have another theory: along with exposure to dietary herbicides and pesticides, the statin drug he takes to lower his cholesterol is interfering with his testosterone levels, and those are the causes of his ED, not his cholesterol level. What do you think?)

The bottom line: Don't overeat – many people do when stressed, and that is a greater danger than eating foods rated high in cholesterol. Eat healthy – try eating according to your Metabolic Type or your Blood Type (I do!) – and definitely eat organic!

Stress Relief Tip 13 March 2009

2009-03-13T08:36:00.000-07:00

Here is your Heaven On Earth Stress Relief Tip for this Fabulous Friday the 13th!

Do one thing at a time!

In our fast-paced and hectic world, it seems like a good idea to be able to multi-task, doesn't it? Multi-tasking has almost become a survival skill!

However, it takes a toll on your stress levels and your sanity. The number of "mental health days" taken from work these days is staggering! Unfortunately, many of those days are unpaid, too, and that raises those stress levels even more because your bank account may be stretched to its limits. You don't need a day off, but you Need a day off!

The other thing is, it's really very disruptive to your ability to get anything done when you are forced to flit hither and thither doing little bits of this and that. You aren't doing yourself any favors by juggling all those balls, and someday one is going to drop, and it's going to make a big nasty splat.

Do yourself a huge favor and be mindful. Work on only one thing at a time, and do it to perfection. You will be less harried and much happier, and your stress levels, not to mention stress hormones, will allow the clear-headedness you need to get things done in a way you can be proud to call your best.

Have a fantastic weekend!

Michelle

Stress Relief Tip 06 March 2009

2009-03-06T06:32:00.000-08:00

Here is your Heaven On Earth Stress Relief Tip for this week:

Use positive self-talk to uplift your spirits, and play up the positive events of your day. If twelve things went wrong, focus on the one thing that went right even if it was one tiny event in an otherwise hectic day.

Avoid what I call the train-wreck rumble: "First the coffee pot broke, then there was an accident that tied up traffic for 30 minutes so I was late for work, then Billy gave me this unbelievably complicated job and of course wanted it done yesterday, then……" and so on.

This will just compound your stress by reliving all the stress of the day over and over and over. Wasn't it enough that you were stressed out by it the first time?!

Take the one thing that went right, and nurture it: "Bobby and I had a late meeting, but we got so much done! He was really cooperative, and agrees that our focus should be value, not speed. It was such a pleasure to work with him today….." and so on. (Just the act of nurturing will make you feel better because who are you nurturing? Yourself! And, you deserve it!)

There is so much harmony in this second scenario it delivers instant peace and pleasure, and you know how powerful gratitude is in evoking relaxation. You simply cannot feel stressed when you are in that Attitude Of Gratitude mode.

Have a great weekend!
Michelle

Guided Meditation Reverses Alzheimer's and Macular Degeneration

2009-02-21T08:20:00.001-08:00

This article is reprinted with the author's permission from the website of the American Holistic Health Association of which I am also a member.

I can't add much more to this article than to say it's another stellar example of the healing power of the mind.

I believe this is the direction health care will take, harnessing your inherent power to heal, but only when you insist on using these methods will your healthcare provider get on board and work with you. If he or she refuses, please find a new, more open-minded health care provider!

Meanwhile, enjoy! And be ready to write your affirmation and record it after you read this article! ~Michelle~

Use of affirmations while sleeping

By Barbara Derrick, Ph.D.

Barbara Derrick, Ph.D. is a Summerville, SC psychotherapist in private practice. As president of ABC Holistic Wellness Foundation, she is a writer, lecturer, and researcher of holistic methods. She has lectured at holistic conferences and her work has appeared online and in national periodicals. Her primary study in improving symptoms of Alzheimer’s patients has proven successful. She believes in the Edgar Cayce contention that brain cells can be restored. You can contact Barbara at (843) 821-6532 or telldrbarb@bellsouth.net

Editor's Note: This is a true story. Wally's story also appeared in the July/August 2004 issue of Venture Inward [1], and his case history was presented at the 8th Annual Edgar Cayce Health Symposium in September, 2003

Introduction

Wally Decker is a widower who had cared for his wife of 52 years prior to her death. Though he was in his late 70s at the time, he took part in aerobics regularly and danced whenever he could find a partner. Like the hurricane that had once devastated the area around his South Carolina home, a storm arrived in Wally's life in 2002 at age 80. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. He saw this diagnosis as a fate worse than death. For most of his life he had enjoyed perfect health. His Christian Science faith had sustained him through years clear of the usual maladies that plague most of us. As a matter of fact, he didn't even have a regular physician until he reached the age of 67. Now, his diagnosis presented him with a disaster worse than an ordinary lifetime's accumulation of illnesses. Wally's symptoms manifested as confusion, short term memory forgetfulness, and trouble with directional information causing him to go off in the wrong direction. His cognitive ability was diminishing also.

Case Study

When Wally called to tell me a clinical psychologist had diagnosed him with Alzheimer's the tremor in his voice told me how defeated he felt. Aside from delaying the progress of the disease, medical science offered little hope. He had been told that nothing had been found to cure the disease.

About that time I just happened to be at the same place as David McMillin, M.A., program director at the Health and Rejuvenation Research Center (HRRC), a division of the Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE) an organization that researches the body-mind-spirit connection and the readings of Edgar Cayce. [2]

David McMillin shared with me that the HRRC had just acquired a grant for an Alzheimer's research project to be titled, Suggestive Therapeutics Treatment and Protocol. The grant was funded by a private donor whose mother died from complications of Alzheimer's. After the protocol was formulated, slots would be open for those who qualified. One of the primary requirements for participation in the project was to have a medical doctor attest that a patient had Alzheimer's. The project's approach, focusing on assisting the body to heal itself, seemed to be a good match with Wally's early training in Christian Science. Our first step therefore was to get Wally's neurologist to attest that he had Alzheimer's.

When Wally and I went to his neurologist and explained the Suggestive Therapeutic Treatment Plan, however, his initial response was, "I don't believe in such stuff. And I don't want my name associated with anything like this." After some persistence on my part and hesitation on his part, the neurologist finally filled out the report and signed it.

We needed reports not only from physicians, but from family and friends who were asked to record their assessment of Wally's behavior. With my Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology and my psychotherapy practice I was also qualified to make certain assessments. I completed the reports and submitted all the color-coded papers. If requirements were met Wally could be a candidate for the Suggestive Therapeutics Treatment Plan and Research Protocol program.

As we waited for word of acceptance to the project, Wally began having doubts. Part of the program protocol required that he have a massage daily. This posed a challenge as he did not have anyone at home to do this and he could not imagine finding a massage therapist who could massage him each day. I advised him to wait for the decision of selection for the protocol and then try to conform to the protocol.

Finally, we heard that he had been selected. We reviewed the materials describing what was required to be part of the project. One important item was that Wally would need to have someone repeat an affirmation to him daily while he was relaxed. I thought of a way this could be accomplished. Just before one goes to sleep, there is a natural time of relaxation. He could listen to an affirmation at this time. I had used this pre-sleep intervention with clients many times and it had always worked well. Wally readily agreed to practice using the tape nightly if I made one for him.

My years of studying the Edgar Cayce readings had taught me that we should obtain approval before we offer a prayer or a meditation for anyone I wanted to be sure Wally could agree with every word. Working together, Wally and I prepared an affirmation that stated exactly what we wanted Wally to achieve. The affirmation read as follows:

As you relax, you are experiencing quiet, peace, happiness, and joy. You can feel God's love surrounding you. This allows you to rest in the knowledge that God's love is guiding you, helping you in every way to make each day good and purposeful. You have good, appreciative feelings for those around you, knowing that you wish every person in your life well and they hold you in high regard.

Your mind will move toward functioning well, and this will give you great pleasure. Your short-term memory is improving, your mind more alert and your recall of names and words improving day by day.

This time of relaxing will help to coordinate your nervous system and improve circulation through your body. The eliminating systems are removing toxins from your body. The foods that you eat will provide nourishment to your body.

You will be calm and cooperative to those around you at all times. You are self-sufficient. This makes you happy and proud. You will look forward to each day and enjoy life. Your short-term memory and your recollection of words and names are serving you well.

You are being healed -- you are becoming whole at all levels. The divine energy within you is rejuvenating your body, mind and spirit.

The voice he heard on the tape was mine. He trusted what I told him. That was good. I also knew if Wally told me he would do a certain thing, he would do it. He also had to keep a daily log of his activity relating to the program, which he did faithfully.

Wally began playing the tape each night just as he went to sleep. The meditation was repeated several times (for 30 minutes until the tape ran out) and he often fell asleep before the conclusion. But that was okay. He was still registering the words in his subconscious mind.

Up until this time, Wally had been falling asleep in front of the television, using a timer to turn the set off. In doing this, he had been opening himself to whatever happened to be on the television each night. In substituting the tape for the television news, his mind heard only the positive affirmations on the tape. Wally made a commitment to listen to the tape every night, get a massage every week, and follow the requirements of the Suggestive Therapeutics Treatment Plan and Research Protocol program.

True to his word, he found a massage therapy school in the area that would provide him a massage for a nominal fee. He obtained the required therapy regularly. As a matter of fact, according to the log sheet, the only three days he missed playing the affirmation tape were days when he was hospitalized for pneumonia. He compensated for this lapse by playing the tape for three mornings in addition to the usual evening tape.

During the period of time we were incorporating the affirmation tape and the massage into Wally's routine, he was told he had macular degeneration in his left eye. His doctor predicted he would eventually lose the sight in his left eye, which was his good eye. (The right eye had glaucoma). There was little the medical world could do, except to forestall the inevitable. He reconciled himself to the fact that he could not see well enough to drive at night. If he went out at night, he depended upon someone else to do the driving.

Assuming he would need to go into an assisted-living residence in the very near future, Wally decided to sell his house and began having repairs done. This independent man could soon become dependent on others because of his infirmities.

However, within 30 days of regular use of the tape changes became apparent in his behavior. He was happier. He looked upon others with a greater degree of compassion. He accepted the positions of others, even when he did not agree with them. He showed an unconditional positive regard for other people. Then Wally's eyesight began to improve. He was able to drive at night again.

A return visit to the neurologist brought good news. "I really thought you had Alzheimer's," the neurologist told him, "but now I don't think you have Alzheimer's after all." That was surprising. A clinical psychologist who does the testing for professionals in the area also agreed on this diagnosis. Wally asked him for an explanation but the doctor had none.

When Wally returned for a regular check-up by a professor in the department of ophthalmology at a well-respected medical university, he received more good news. This professor was the one who had made the diagnosis of dry macular degeneration in his left eye with the concurrence of another ophthalmologist. Now, he told Wally there was no longer evidence of macular degeneration.

Conclusion

The two illnesses that had distressed Wally so much were now non-existent. The affirmation tape purposely included the wider spectrum of overall good health as well as the Alzheimer's. He had been cooperative and diligent in his daily practice of using the tape, open to healing possibilities and followed the protocol to the full extent. It worked.

As of 2007, Wally is in his mid-80s. A recent check with his doctors confirmed that his condition is the same and they see few signs of Alzheimer's. He is still playing the tape, although not as often, is still driving, dancing and is self sufficient, living alone in his own home.

The results achieved by Wally through the Suggestive Therapeutics Treatment and Protocol have been replicated with other patients at the Mattie C. Hall Health Care Center in Aiken, SC (For details see article "Singing on the Alzheimer's Unit" by Barbara A. Derrick, Ph.D. that appeared in the September/October 2007 issue of Venture Inward. Used by permission, Venture Inward magazine, Edgar Cayce's A.R.E., www.EdgarCayce.org). The medical director has attested to the good results and benefits of the program. Dr. Mark Meyer attests to weight gain, positive behavior changes and psychotropic medication reduction. The final results of this program will be published in the September/ October 2007 issue of Venture Inward.

A full report of the Mattie C. Hall Health Care Center study, a copy of the affirmation used, and other CDs are available from the Association for Research and Enlightenment bookstore at (800) 333-4499. The next phase of this project is to find another health care facility willing to replicate the findings already medically documented in Aiken, South Carolina. Administrators and/or medical directors of interested health care facilities should contact Dr. Derrick.

References

[1] VENTURE INWARD: Bi-monthly magazine of Edgar Cayce's Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.), at Virginia Beach, Virginia.

[2] Known as the "sleeping prophet" Edgar Cayce for forty-three years demonstrated the uncanny ability to put himself into a self-induced state of relaxation and meditation that enabled him to place his mind in contact with all time and space. From this trance state he could respond to questions as diverse as "What are the secrets of the universe?" and "How can I remove a wart?" His responses to these questions came to be called "readings." His readings contain insights so valuable that even to this day individuals have found practical help for everything from maintaining a well-balanced diet and improving human relationships to overcoming life-threatening illnesses and experiencing a closer walk with God.

Practicing qigong can change your gene's response to stress

2009-02-16T20:34:00.000-08:00

Below are some excerpts from "Researching the Benefits of Mind-Body Practice by Investigating Genetic Expression" by Roger Jahnke, OMD.

The full report on this exciting breakthrough in how practices like qigong can actually change gene expression is available on his website at www.instituteofintegralqigongandtaichi.org/pdfs/Qigong_GeneExpression.pdf

I have included a link to one of my earlier articles on telomeres, the protective caps on immune cells, and have made a few comments about holistic practices at the end of the quote.

First: Just what is "Gene Expression?" This, from wikipedia Gene expression is the process by which inheritable information from a gene, such as the DNA sequence, is made into a functional gene product, such as protein or RNA.

Regulation of gene expression is the cellular control of the amount and timing of appearance of the functional product of a gene. Any step of gene expression may be modulated, from the DNA-RNA transcription step to post-translational modification of a protein. Gene regulation gives the cell control over structure and function, and is the basis for cellular differentiation, morphogenesis and the versatility and adaptability of any organism.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_expression

So, with that in mind, here is the feature article:

*** Begin Quote ***

Page 4 – 5

In a number of press releases the authors of Genomic counter-stress changes induced by the relaxation response made a number of comments that are easily applicable to all three studies. They state that:

"This study provides the first compelling evidence that the RR [relaxation response] elicits specific gene expression changes in short-term and long- term practitioners."

Actually the other studies were earlier and they all suggest this.

The Genomic Counter-stress authors wrote that their findings suggest:

"Consistent and constitutive changes in gene expression resulting from RR may relate to long term physiological effects," and that "Our study may stimulate new investigations into applying transcriptional profiling for accurately measuring RR and stress related responses in multiple disease settings."

It is likely that these studies portend a “sea change” in research and will trigger an outpouring of similar research. Dr. Herbert Benson, professor emeritus of Harvard University and director emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute and co-senior author of the study said:

"Now we've found how changing the activity of the mind can alter the way basic genetic instructions are implemented," said Benson.

Dr. Towia Libermann, director of the BIDMC Genomics Center and also co-senior

author of the study added:

"This is the first comprehensive study of how the mind can affect gene expression, linking what has been looked on as a 'soft' science with the 'hard' science of genomics.” "It is also important because of its focus on gene expression in healthy individuals, rather than in disease states," explained Libermann.

The authors said their study showed that the relaxation response changed the expression of genes involved with inflammation, programmed cell death and the handling of free radicals. Free radicals are normal byproducts of metabolism that the body neutralizes in order to stop damage to cells and tissues.

Page 5 – 6

Probably the most compelling statement from the article on the findings of the study was “It is becoming increasingly clear that psychosocial stress can manifest as system-wide perturbations of cellular processes, generally increasing oxidative stress and promoting a pro-inflammatory milieu. Stress associated changes in peripheral blood leukocyte expression of single genes have been identified. More recently, chronic psychosocial stress has been associated with accelerated aging at the cellular level. Specifically, shortened telomeres, low telomerase activity, decreased anti-oxidant capacity and increased oxidative stress are correlated with increased psychosocial stress and with increased vulnerability to a variety of disease states.”

These 3 studies strongly suggest that Mind-Body practices, especially those that trigger a sustained and accumulative RR effect – a counter stress effect – can prevent and ameliorate disease. This effect of Mind-Body practice on gene expression transforms the landscape of scientific exploration and launches an entirely new direction for the investigation for the emerging field of health maximization based integrative medicine.

Page 21 – 22

It is becoming increasingly clear that psychosocial stress can manifest as system-wide perturbations of cellular processes, generally increasing oxidative stress and promoting a pro-inflammatory milieu [23]–[25]. Stress associated changes in peripheral blood leukocyte expression of single genes have been identified [26]–[28]. More recently, chronic psychosocial stress has been associated with accelerated aging at the cellular level. Specifically, shortened telomeres, low telomerase activity, decreased anti-oxidant capacity and increased oxidative stress are correlated with increased psychosocial stress [29] and with increased vulnerability to a variety of disease states [30]. Stress-related changes in GEP have been demonstrated by microarray analysis in healthy subjects, including up-regulation of several cytokines/chemokines and their receptors [31], and in individuals suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, including inflammation, apoptosis and stress response [32] as well as metabolism and RNA processing pathways [33]. The pro-inflammatory transcription factor NF-kappa B (NF-κB) which is activated by psychosocial stress has been identified as a potential link between stress and oxidative cellular activation [34].

[For a brief explanation of the connection between telomeres (the protective caps on the ends of immune cells) and stress, see my post "Scientists identify mechanism behind mind-body connection" http://successstressrelief.blogspot.com/2008/07/scientists-identify-mechanism-behind.html on my Stress Relief for Savvy Women blog.]

The RR is clinically effective for ameliorating symptoms in a variety of stress-related disorders including cardiovascular, autoimmune and other inflammatory conditions and pain [15]. We hypothesize that RR elicitation is associated with systemic gene expression changes in molecular and biochemical pathways involved in cellular metabolism, oxidative phosphorylation/generation of reactive oxygen species and response to oxidative stress and that these changes to some degree serve to ameliorate the negative impact of stress. Genome-wide evaluation of PBL GEP is a reasonable approach to survey the transcriptional changes that are involved in elicitation of the RR. The GEP of RR practitioners presented here reveals altered gene expression in specific functional groups which suggest a greater capacity to respond to oxidative stress and the associated cellular damage. Genes including COX7B, UQCRB and CASP2 change in opposite direction from that in the stress response [31], [32].

Our findings are relatively consistent with those found in a study of Qi Gong [17], a practice that elicits the RR. In their study of 6 Qi Gong practitioners and 6 aged matched controls, practitioners had down-regulation of ubiquitin, proteasome, ribosomal protein and stress response genes and mixed up- and down-regulation of genes involved in apoptosis and immune function. We find a similar pattern of GO categories that are significantly over-represented in GO or enriched in GSEA in our cross sectional comparison, M vs. N1. However, in our data-set ribosomal proteins were up-regulated.

Overall, similar genomic pattern changes occurred in practitioners of a specific mind body technique (Qi Gong) as well as in our long-term practitioners who utilized different RR practices including Vipassana, mantra, mindfulness or transcendental meditation, breath focus, Kripalu or Kundalini Yoga, and repetitive prayer. This indicates there is a common RR state regardless of the techniques used to elicit it.

Footnotes included in the above quoted materials:

15. Astin JA, Shapiro SL, Eisenberg DM, Forys KL (2003) Mind-body medicine: state of the science, implications for practice. J Am Board Fam Pract 16: 131–147.

17. Li QZ, Li P, Garcia GE, Johnson RJ, Feng L (2005) Genomic profiling of neutrophil transcripts in Asian Qigong practitioners: a pilot study in gene regulation by mind-body interaction. J Altern Complement Med 11: 29–39.

23. Irie M, Asami S, Nagata S, Miyata M, Kasai H (2002) Psychological mediation of a type of oxidative DNA damage, 8-hyDr.oxydeoxyguanosine, in peripheral blood leukocytes of non-smoking and non-Dr.inking workers. Psychother Psychosom 71: 90–96.

24. Yamaguchi T, Shioji I, Sugimoto A, Yamaoka M (2002) Psychological stress increases bilirubin metabolites in human urine. Biochem Biophys Res Commun 293: 517–520.

25. Zheng KC, Ariizumi M (2007) Modulations of immune functions and oxidative status induced by noise stress. J Occup Health 49: 32–38.

26. Glaser R, Kennedy S, Lafuse WP, Bonneau RH, Speicher C, et al. (1990) Psychological stress-induced modulation of interleukin 2 receptor gene expression and interleukin 2 production in peripheral blood leukocytes. Arch Gen Psychiatry 47: 707–712.

27. Glaser R, Lafuse WP, Bonneau RH, Atkinson C, Kiecolt-Glaser JK (1993) Stress-associated modulation of proto-oncogene expression in human peripheral blood leukocytes. Behav Neurosci 107: 525–529.

28. Platt JE, He X, Tang D, Slater J, Goldstein M (1995) C-fos expression in vivo in human lymphocytes in response to stress. Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry 19: 65–74.

29. Epel ES, Blackburn EH, Lin J, Dhabhar FS, Adler NE, et al. (2004) Accelerated telomere shortening in response to life stress. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 101: 17312–17315.

30. Epel ES, Lin J, Wilhelm FH, Wolkowitz OM, Cawthon R, et al. (2006) Cell aging in relation to stress arousal and cardiovascular disease risk factors. Psychoneuroendocrinology 31: 277–287.

31. Morita K, Saito T, Ohta M, Ohmori T, Kawai K, et al. (2005) Expression analysis of psychological stress-associated genes in peripheral blood leukocytes. Neurosci Lett 381: 57–62.

32. Zieker J, Zieker D, Jatzko A, Dietzsch J, Nieselt K, et al. (2007) Differential gene expression in peripheral blood of patients suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder. Mol Psychiatry 12: 116–118.

33. Segman RH, Shefi N, Goltser-Dubner T, Friedman N, Kaminski N, et al. (2005) Peripheral blood mononuclear cell gene expression profiles identify emergent post-traumatic stress disorder among trauma survivors. Mol Psychiatry 10: 500–513, 425.

34. Bierhaus A, Wolf J, AnDr.assy M, Rohleder N, Humpert PM, et al. (2003) A mechanism converting psychosocial stress into mononuclear cell activation. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 100: 1920–1925.

*** EndQuote ***

Bottom Line: Qigong, mindfulness meditation, the use of mantras and other chants, and other mind-body practices can change how your genes respond to stress! If this occurs at the cellular level, it is an indication that qigong and other mind-body practices can actually change your cells or cellular activity.

As a stress-relief consultant and qigong instructor, I can help you to use these methods, enabling you to be healthier, avoid "a variety of stress-related disorders including cardiovascular, autoimmune and other inflammatory conditions and pain" (see above), age slower, look younger, live longer, and life a fuller and happier life!

Contact me through the form in the sidebar or through my email address in my profile. I am committed to helping you relieve stress in the natural and holistic ways that work best for your mind, body, and spirit.