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| Healthy Holistic Living News |
| Find up-to-date news and information on building a healthy home, developing a healthy living strategy, alternative medicine, managing a chronic illness, how to get disability as well as various articles and links related to holistic health |
| Language: English |
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| What's the Skinny on Baking Soda and Body Fat? |
| 2007-05-28 15:02:24 |
The other day I was scrolling through a list of keywords that people use to find my website and I kept coming across "Baking Soda and body fat" so I decided to do some research. What I came up with was interesting.
As far as I can tell baking soda per say does not directly, affect body fat. But, what I did find was a correlation between baking soda, citric acid and metabolism. You see our bodies are like a chemistry set and they have to be balanced to run properly. And one of the things that needs to balanced is our body's pH.
So what's pH?
Well technically, it stands for potential of hydrogen. It is a measure of the degree of saturation of the hydrogen ion in a substance or solution.
"Potential of Hydrogen measures the degree of the acidity or the alkalinity of a solution as measured on a scale (pH scale) of 0 to 14. The midpoint of 7.0 on the pH scale represents neutrality, i.e., a "neutral" solution is neither acid nor alkaline. Numbers below 7.0 indicate acidity; numbers greater than 7.0 indicate alkalinity."
I have no idea what the heck all that means but what I do know is that by measuring your bodies pH level you can determine if your body is too alkaline or acidic. Healthy people are slightly alkaline. Sick and unhealthy people are linked to acidic body environments. Your body pH affects almost everything about you. Your pH level influences every biochemical process in your body including weight loss and body fat!
The pH of your blood must at all times be between 7.3 and 7.4. "In the human body a pH balancing act is continuously going on to maintain homeostasis." So a body that has achieved homeostasis is a body that is functioning optimally. An optimally running body is one with a high functioning metabolism, good stamina and an overall feeling of wellbeing.
If you want to get serious about measuring your bodies' pH, you need to purchase a meter. You can buy simple test strips but from my research, they are not very reliable. I would ...
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| Should We Pull Oil? |
| 2007-05-14 05:39:45 |
OK so your first thought is that I must be writing an article on oil conservation right, Nope! I am talking about Oil Pulling, the age-old art of putting oil in your mouth to draw out the toxins in the body.
The official definition according to Wikepedia is, "Oil pulling or oil swishing, in alternative medicine, is a procedure in which the practitioner rinses their mouth with approximately one tablespoon of ordinary cooking oil for 3-20 minutes, then spits it out. This procedure is typically performed daily."
So as the theory goes, you take oil, preferable sunflower or sesame and put approximately 1 tablespoon in your mouth, tilt your chin up slightly and proceed to swish, squish, squirt and chomp the oil in your mouth for 20 minutes. Supposedly, you will begin to salivate uncontrollably and the oil will become like a foamy whitish liquid. Then you spit, rinse your mouth out really well with water and then brush your teeth. That's all there is to it.
This form of alternative medicine according to Dr. Karach, who has done many studies on the efficacy of this treatment, is a miracle cure for almost any disease in the body. Now I use the word efficacy lightly because in reading over his findings it is difficult to find the science. Of course, this does not mean this is not a viable treatment.
According to Dr. Karach the list of diseases that are cured from Oil Pulling are endless. "The Oil-therapy heals totally headaches, bronchitis, tooth pain, thrombosis, eczema, ulcers, intestinal diseases, heart and kidney diseases, encephalitis and woman's diseases. Preventively the growth of malignant tumors is cut and healed. Chronic blood diseases, paralysis, diseases of nerves, stomach, lungs and liver and sleeplessness are cured."
You can read highlights of Dr. Karach's paper that he gave at a conference of the All Ukranische-Union of the Oncologists and Bacteriologists, a part of the Academy of Sciences of UDSSR
Deepak Chopra highlights this technique is ...
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| What's all the hype about Baking Soda? |
| 2007-04-11 08:28:07 |
Baking Soda is a staple in just about every household. In some homes it's used strictly for baking in others, you will find the standard box in the refrigerator. In my home, it is used for just about everything. It is cheap, safe and actually does what it claims to do. What more could you ask for!
Baking Soda is sodium bicarbonate. It is found naturally in mineral deposits. Most of the baking soda in North America is mined in Wyoming. Not that it really matters all we have to do is buzz down to the local grocery store and grab a box.
If you go to the Arm & Hammer website you will find a great section on all the things you can do with baking soda.
You probably know by now that baking soda can be used for just about anything. It is one of the most multifaceted natural products you will ever find. There has been a resurgence in the use of baking soda over the last 20 years due to the increased interest in using environmentally friendly products. Studies show that baking soda is environmentally benign.
Check out this study at Pubmed, Safety and Efficacy of Baking Soda
There is a ton of information on the internet giving tips on the many uses of baking soda but chances are you've learned a few from your mom. You know it's a cleaning solution, that it neutralizes odors and cleans the drains with a bit of vinegar you probably know more than you think. Growing up, my mother used baking soda for everything. But it wasn't until I got sick that I went back to my roots and discovered that baking soda could really be used for everything!!
If you don't know the difference between baking soda and baking powder check out this article What Is the Difference Between Baking Soda & Baking Powder?
My Healthy Home Baking Soda Tips:
Quick note: I don't bake or cook so you won't find a single tip on using baking soda for cooking from me!
Kitchen
#1 Clean your cutting board weekly with baking soda. Spread baking soda over entire surface then pour ...
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| Excuse Me If I Don't Feel the Least Bit @#!%!@ Spiritual Today! |
| 2007-04-06 04:59:51 |
Yesterday I woke up on a spiritual high all was perfect in the world. I couldn't wait to start my day! I felt love for all other humans and I kept everything in perspective. Knowing what I know about the world I took nothing personally and found the humor in each encounter whether it was positive or negative. I went to bed with a feeling of gratitude and peace and was looking forward to another day on my wonderful journey.
Then today I woke up and the first thought that entered my mind was, @!%#% another day! I don't know where this feeling came from whether it's hormones, past life crap coming back to haunt me or childhood trauma and I don't care all I know is I am not happy and for some reason I prefer to feel this way! If someone was to look at me cross, I am quite prepared to rip his or her head off! I am reveling in my misery and seem to be loving it!
What happened and why am I embracing this misery as if it's my best friend?
This scenario is one we have all been through God only knows you can't keep that sense of spirituality for longer than a couple of days before you fall off the spiritual wagon and back into the tangible reality of this world! This usually occurs right at the moment that the person in the car next to you cuts you off and then proceeds to flip you the finger!!
So where does this leave us? Are we less spiritual or spiritually challenged if we can't seem to keep ourselves out of the occasional funk? Do Buddhist Monks ever wake up on the wrong side of the bed?
I am pretty sure that all of us experience a funk from time to time the key is how long does it last. A key determinate in the length of our "bad mood" depends on our personality and to what degree we have suppressed our emotions. Once an emotional situation has been relegated to the subconscious we no longer have choice over how, when or to what degree that emotion is going to be expressed. Our subconscious could have an emotional leak at any point in time and...
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| I Knew it All Along It's The Damned Plastic Making Me Fat Thank God I Don't Have to Give Up My McDonalds! |
| 2007-04-03 05:40:46 |
Ok so maybe that's not the whole story. If you lay around doing nothing all day but eating junk food and lounging on the couch then yes you're fat because of your own behavior.
BUT....
Scientists are finding that the infamous endocrine disrupting chemicals in well, most everything have a dramatic affect on human metabolism and appetite control. Some are even saying we are programmed for obesity!
According to Frederick vom Saal, professor of biological science at University of Missouri-Columbia, environmental chemicals found in everyday plastics and pesticides may very well influence obesity. Dr. vom Saal has found that when fetuses are exposed to these chemicals, the way their genes function may be altered to make them more prone to obesity and disease.
"Certain environmental substances called endocrine-disrupting chemicals can change the functioning of a fetus's genes, altering a baby's metabolic system and predisposing him or her to obesity. This individual could eat the same thing and exercise the same amount as someone with a normal metabolic system, but he or she would become obese, while the other person remained thin," vom Saal said. "This is a serious problem because obesity puts people at risk for other problems, including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and hypertension," he added.
In an article in ODE magazine "Why Dieting Fails" by Kim Ridley, she explains, "The body typically stashes toxins absorbed from food, water, and other sources in fat cells. In the late 1990's, a research team led by Professor Angelo Tremblay of Laval University in Quebec began studying the effects of organochlorines like DDT, dioxins and PCBs on the metabolisms of people enrolled in weight-loss programs. Building on earlier work by Italian researchers, the Canadian team found that levels of industrial pollutants in the dieter's blood rose as they lost weight; fat cells shrink and release the contaminants back into the bloodstream.
Tremblay and his co...
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| A Blog a Day Keeps the Doctor Away |
| 2007-03-28 04:30:11 |
In the beginning Blogs were mainly a means of listing links to others sites or news articles with a bit of commentary. They have evolved into a whole new world of communication and social networking.
According to Wikipedia - "A blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order."
You can find almost any kind of blog on the web today. We have everything from professional blog sites to personal journals and diaries turned into blogs giving the world an opportunity to be voyeurs into other people's lives.
Blogs give everyone the opportunity to have their 15 minutes fame even if they only have 10 visitors a day. An interesting phenomenon happens when people use the internet it removes some of our inhibitions giving us the opportunity to express ourselves in ways we would never do face to face. It offers some sense of anonymity even if we share the most personal of details including our name.
So what in the world do blogs have to do with our health?
Dr James Pennebaker, professor of Psychology at the University of Texas in Austin, pioneered research into the links between writing and health.
Dr. Pennebaker's initial findings were interesting. His participants reported that writing about horrible experiences left them feeling horrible immediately after writing. Dr. Pennebaker writes in his book, Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions that "In analyzing the mood findings, it appeared that all we had succeeded in doing was inventing a new way to make people depressed," he writes Six months down the track, however, the picture changed. Pennebaker found that people who'd written revealing accounts of a personal trauma showed an "impressive drop" in visits to the doctor, compared with control groups who were assigned other writing topics."
And upon analyzing a follow-up questionnaire given to participates four months after the experiment it was reported, "Writing about their d...
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| The Birth of Chronic Pain |
| 2007-03-26 05:08:25 |
Pain is a fascinating concept. I didn't think much about pain until I got sick about seven years ago. I experienced pain like no other I was pushed to points I thought were not possible that's when I started thinking more about the origin of pain, it's staying power and truly trying to understand the philosophy of pain.
A pain impulse usually starts its trip along the pain pathway when you suffer an injury or illness.
Let's take a look at an example: Let's say you cut your finger.
Have you ever noticed that when you cut your finger you first feel the sensation of being cut before you feel the pain from it? That happens because you have separate nerves for touch and for pain. And the touch nerves send signals much faster than pain nerves.
Your touch nerve signals travel to the brain as fast as 200 miles per hour while the pain signals travel at around 40 miles per hour and chronic pain signals travel as slow as 3 miles per hour.
Going back to our example, when you cut your finger you tend to instinctually rub it because it relieves some of the pain and makes your finger feel better. The reason it feels better is because those fast touch signals outrun the slower pain signals. By the time the pain signals reach the pain gates they are so overcrowded with touch signals that the pain signals have a hard time getting through.
I learned early on that you could outsmart pain. And one technique I used was exactly like the example above; I gave my "nervous system a competing source of input" one that was faster than the pain signal. That was one of the first anti-pain strategies I learned and I used it often.
Throughout my health journey, I learned that there were many techniques to providing competing sources of input to my nervous system. It can be done pharmacologically, mechanically, electrically and the most powerful tool of all it can be done with your thoughts.
When pain signals start there journey up your spinal cord working there way to your...
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| The Fundamentals of Happiness |
| 2007-03-23 07:58:30 |
How can we find happiness? Is their a tangible path to happiness or is it some illusive feeling that comes and goes according to what happens around us?
According to the Dalai Lama, happiness can be cultivated like all other things. The structure of the human brain is optimally designed to allow us to affect our behaviors, personality and patterns. Ultimately giving us the power to lead either unhappy or unfulfilled lives or to live inspired, happy full lives. The choice is ours.
"The systematic training of the mind- the cultivation of happiness, the genuine inner transformation by deliberately selecting and focusing on positive mental states and challenging negative mental states - is possible because of the very structure and function of the brain. We are born with brains that are genetically hardwired with certain instinctual behavior patterns; we are predisposes mentally, emotionally, and physically to respond to our environment in ways that enable us to survive. These basic sets of instructions are encoded in countless innate nerve cell activation patterns, specific combinations of brain cells fire in response to a given event experience or thought. But the wiring in our brains is not static, not irrevocably fixed. Our brains are also adaptable. Neuroscientists have documented the fact that the brain can design new patterns, new combinations of nerve cells and neurotransmitters (chemicals that transmit messages between nerve cells) in response to new input. In fact, our brains are malleable, ever changing, reconfiguring their wiring according to new thoughts and experiences. And as a result of learning, the function of individual neurons themselves change, allowing electrical signals to travel along them more readily. Scientists call the brain's inherent capacity to change "plasticity."
Simply put we may not be able to alter existing neuropath ways but we can develop new patterns or neuropath ways that are stronger and therefore become the domin...
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| Is Yoga still effective if you have a cat sitting on your face? |
| 2007-03-21 05:13:51 |
At around 6 am this morning, after working 2 hours on the computer, feeding a house full of cats and strategically avoiding baby bottle washing duty it was time to start my Yoga.
It also happened to be my time to watch our baby who is affectionately known as Baby Izzy. So in the bouncy chair Baby Izzy went. I began my Yoga as I usually do by lying down on my back, emptying my mind and trying to relax all the muscles in my body.
Just as I was starting to relax my body and move into the first stretch my 3 month old cat, Sydney tromps over and proceeds to find a nice cozy spot to sleep right on my neck. She then proceeds to rest her sweet little nose directly over my right nostril. Now, my breathing was slightly altered but nothing to be too concerned about. I had one available nostril.
At the same time, Baby Izzy starts squirming like a worm so I quick, trying not to lose my new found state of relaxation pop the pacifier in her mouth and lie down again. Little Izzy continues to squirm so with my left foot I reach over and start bouncing the bouncy chair. Now Sydney, who was displaced during the pacifier incident returns to claim her territory once again, blocking my right nostril. As I am bouncing, Baby Izzy with me left foot and trying to relax only the right side of my body I can't help but think is Yoga still effective with a cat sitting on your face?
Then I began to giggle, what a seen! Sydney starts rubbing her face all over mine and Baby Izzy starts practicing her cooing! Yes, indeed I do think I am still benefiting from my Yoga! What could be more relaxing than starting your day off with a great belly laugh!
All of which got me thinking.... What are the benefits of Laughter?
"Dr. Lee Berk and fellow researcher Dr. Stanley Tan of Loma Linda University in California have been studying the effects of laughter on the immune system. To date their published studies have shown that laughing lowers blood pressure, reduces stress hormones, increases mu...
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| Today it is My Intention to Manifest a 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid! |
| 2007-03-20 04:43:26 |
Today I am manifesting a 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid! That's right and for all you folks out there who feel like that might be a tad materialistic, well your right! Nevertheless, the truth is that we are born into the world to enjoy everything that is on this planet from love, to yes even a Toyota Camry Hybrid!
Wanting and desiring material items, in societies view has become a bad thing. We tend to place judgment on someone who desires material belongings. The problem is that so many of us suffer from a sense of powerlessness and lack of fulfillment in our lives that we desire external things to fill this void. That makes it unhealthy. But desiring material items can be apart of a healthy, happy and fulfilled existence if your desires are coming from a healthy perspective.
Like some of you, I have always believed that wanting or desiring material belongings was selfish, materialistic, and shallow and didn't align with my spiritual values. Truth is I don't know where I came up with that. I must of always felt that some how if you desire material items you were less spiritual?
The Universe is limitless. And with my new understanding, I embrace all that the world has to offer; including all of the wonderful inventions and glorious creations. Today I will manifest a Toyota Camry Hybrid and tomorrow I will manifest world peace!
Not to mention our new baby girl, Baby Izzy says she is tired of driving around in a beat up old Toyota truck. Just an FYI if you haven't read the story of how Baby Izzy came into our lives you may want to take a look at The Power of the Secret.
So sit down in a quiet spot and pick your fantasy vehicle, come on don't be shy you know you want it. You may want to get on the internet first and download a picture so you can capture it in your mind.
Invite the Universe to bless you by saying "Today I invite the Universe to bless me in my effort to align myself with my soul."
Visualize yourself sitting in your new car, f...
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| It's Time to Let your Emotions Out of the Closet! |
| 2007-03-19 10:55:40 |
Well finally, feelings and emotions are having their day in the sun. We all have them, we all cry, laugh, get angry, feel shame, guilt and love but we are taught from a very young age that emotions are to be controlled something you do in private if you have them at all. Today you no longer have to live in the "Emotional Closet." Science has finally proven the true power of emotions! Research is showing the importance that emotions play in our lives and the incredible effects that they have on our health and overall wellbeing.
"Emotions work much faster and are more powerful, than thoughts. Thinking clearly with your brain is useful but feeling positively from your heart provides an amazing boost to health and creativity."
HMMM...sounds suspiciously familiar....anybody heard of The Secret?
If you're still in the dark read The Power of the Secret
So what's the big deal about emotions? Well first, they are running our lives (the negative ones that is)! Not many ...
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