Big Health and Fitness Lie #3:

Scientific Research Shows…

Buy into the back and forth of the “flavor-of-the-month” scientific studies and you’ll crash and burn.

I’ve done it. So have you.

If you really want to rely on science, you have to look at who’s doing the study, who’s funding the study, how many people participated in the study, how controlled the study was, and if they did a follow up study to verify results.

This is a daunting task and if you actually take the time to do so, you’ll find that many of the studies are much more inconclusive than the media reports.

There is one scientific fact about exercise and health that you need to know.
The fact is this: if you start to take control of your own health and fitness you WILL succeed.

You might think that’s not exactly science, but it really is. I remember reading Newton’s laws in the 7th grade: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
Translated to fitness: For every action you take there will be a reaction that will give you feedback and tell you if it works or if it doesn’t.

You can’t listen to all the studies that say working out at a certain time of day is better than another, or doing this type of exercise is the ONLY way to get the results you want. There is no “only” way. There are ineffective ways, there are better ways, and for each individual there may be a best way.

For an “only” to exist, it must be an “absolute,” and if an “absolute” keeps changing, it’s absolutely wrong!

You don’t need doctors and physiologists and trainers telling you what is right and what is wrong, or what has been scientifically proven and what hasn’t.

There’s a 10,000 year history of exercise that we’ve completely ignored over the past 30 or so years that has all the answers you’ll ever need.

The lessons from all these years are based on common sense. Move, move and, yes, move—and do so sensibly. It’s so simple it pains me to tell you.

About the author
Kevin Gianni is a health advocate, author and speaker. He has helped thousands of people in over 85 countries learn how to take control of their health--and keep it.
His book, "The Busy Person's Fitness Solution," is a step-by-step guide to optimum health for the time and energy-strapped.

Big Health and Fitness Lie #2:

The Model on the Cover of Vogue is a Perfect Picture of Health.
We cannot believe everything we see.
Models, fitness and beyond, are not the picture of perfect health.

Supermodel Carol Alt - when she was in the prime of her modeling career lived on coffee and bagels.
Arnold Schwarzenegger? Steroids, note: They were legal then.

What about the others? What about the guys you see on the fitness magazines? Do you really believe that they look like that under their clothes all the time?

They don’t.
It is common knowledge in the training industry what some of these guys do to look like that for their photo shoots.
They bulk up and put on weight and muscle first by eating an exorbitant amount of food everyday—straining their digestive, circulatory, muscular and skeletal systems. Then they practically go on a starvation diet that gives them a minimal amount of nutrients.

This is just a more intense version of binge and purge—over do it and then severely under do it.

Worse, in the last few days leading up to the shoot or body building competition, they drink barely any water (you might hold on to it) and stop eating anything with minerals that might cause the body to retain water.

And this is just if they do it naturally without steroids, HGH or any other muscle building, performance enhancing drugs.

Many of the fitness and diet programs you’ve done or read about are variations of this technique.

You throw your body out of its natural balance for limited periods of time to achieve short term results through subtle deprivation or extreme overexertion. Is this what you want to put yourself through, only to briefly resemble a false ideal?

I know I don’t.
You want fantastic health and fitness.
The way of the cover model and centerfolds is all about smoke and mirrors. These images we’re bombarded with are NOT real. The people are, but the message they are passing along to you is a lie.

Look at what’s happening in our sports leagues. The players are getting caught using banned substances over and over again. Baseball is a mess, so is sprinting, and so is cycling. What other sports are passing along this lie?

Are our athletes and cover models the people that we should want to look like? Probably not. Some of them are caricatures. They’re larger than life comic book figures. You wouldn’t set a goal to physically look like the Hulk, because he’s a fantasy figure. Just as fantastic are the images we see everyday on our TVs, magazines, and the internet.

Don’t buy into this and you’ll be happier, healthier, and more successful than you’ll ever imagine!


About the author
Kevin Gianni is a health advocate, author and speaker. He has helped thousands of people in over 85 countries learn how to take control of their health--and keep it.
His book, "The Busy Person's Fitness Solution," is a step-by-step guide to optimum health for the time and energy-strapped.

(NaturalNews) Diabetics who consume caffeine may experience a significant increase in blood sugar, according to a new study conducted by researchers from Duke University Medical School and published in the journal Diabetes Care.

Researchers placed tiny blood sugar monitors under the skin of 10 people with Type 2 diabetes, which allowed the participants' glucose levels to be tracked over the course of a normal 72-hour period. Participants were given a caffeine pill one day, and a placebo pill the next.

When given the caffeine pill, the participants experienced an 8 percent rise in blood sugar levels. The increase was even stronger after meals, with blood sugar increasing 9 percent after breakfast, 15 percent after lunch and 26 percent after dinner. The increase in blood sugar was not observed in those taking a placebo pill.

The amount of caffeine contained in the pill was roughly equivalent to the caffeine contained in four cups of coffee.

Prior studies have shown that caffeine could increase the body's insulin resistance, leading to an increase in blood sugar levels. In people without diabetes, however, this effect is fairly minor. In diabetics, any increase in insulin resistance can have serious consequences.

The researchers are now planning to conduct a larger trial to study if diabetics can manage their blood sugar better by removing caffeine from their diets.

"My advice would be, if patients are having trouble controlling their blood glucose and they are coffee drinkers, particularly heavy coffee drinkers, they might want to give it a try to see if it makes a difference to them," lead researcher James Lane said.

The reason that caffeine causes a spike in blood sugar is not yet fully understood. According to Lane, caffeine might interfere with the mechanisms that remove glucose from the blood. Alternately, caffeine consumption might cause the body to release adrenaline, which is known to cause a rise in blood sugar levels.

Thursday, June 12, 2008 by: David Gutierrez

Every time I get out of the shower and am drying my toes I think about balance, and how important it is to our everday lives. Do you wobble all over the place in an effort to stand on one leg and dry between your toes? Or have you reached the stage where you've just given up and hope you don't get any nasty fungal infections?

There is one very important thing to do which will help you when balancing on one leg.

Fix your gaze on something a metre in front of you on the floor. Watch this spot steadily for a while before you raise your leg, and you will find that balance just got a whole lot easier. Mind you, it will still take some practice if you are starting from a point of overbalancing every time you try to stand on one leg, but you will get better.

As we age, it is vitally important to maintain good balance in order to prevent falls, so if you do something every day to practice balancing, you will be helping yourself to age gracefully.

To get over any addiction and go on to lead a more healthy and fulfilling life requires an enormous amount of effort. What's more the effort needs to come from not only the person suffering from the addiction directly, but also from the team of people who are indirectly involved, like the family and other loved ones, close friends and work colleagues. Another area to look for support and positive effort on behalf of the addicted person is a really good rehabilitation center.

Substance abuse recovery has to start with an honest assessment of the facts, but because addicts are generally incapable of objective self-awareness, they often need to hear the truth from someone who cares about them. Drug and alcohol abusers are always emotionally fragile, and if the addict you care about is going to get sober, it’s going to be because he feels loved.

Read more...

If you want to feel rich, just count all of the things you have that money can't buy.
- Anonymous


Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.
Kahlil Gibran


Nature uses as little as possible of anything.
Johannes Kepler

Raising your frequency is a matter of unblocking the flow of Life Force from Source (also known as Love), so that it flows freely through you without resistance from your ego. The following are some of the many tools and energy-moving techniques that will help get you back in the flow!

Music is one of the easiest, most effective passive tools for frequency-raising as it is generally something that bypasses ego-resistance and entrains your energy to it without effort. You can use music to assist in moving out emotional “stuff” when you’re providing ego the chance to be heard so it can drop its resistance. Music composed as an act of healing is especially potent for this. Upbeat, rhythmic music will lift you up higher when you are ready to move to the joy space.
Conscious breathing—breathing dynamically and purposefully—realigns you with the rhythm of the Divine. Imagine you are breathing in Light and breathing out whatever is not in alignment and blocking the flow of Life Force through you. Using circular breathing techniques (rebirthing therapy) can rapidly move energy blockages through and out and free your energy to flow, but simply sitting and focusing on your breath is also a powerful way to get centered, oxygenated, and enlivened.

Aromatherapy is a powerful, passive frequency-raiser that bypasses all ego resistance.
The aromatic essences of plants were provided by the Creator for the purpose of assisting us in realigning with Source, thus balancing, healing and energizing us. Smelling a pure plant fragrance brings our energy into the frontal lobes of the brain to the pineal gland where our God Knowingness is accessible. Many fragrances such as frankincense, sandalwood, rose and balsam fir are particularly effective for stimulating the pineal gland and raising frequency. Essential oils must be therapeutic-grade for this use.

Sleep is the gift we are given daily to get our ego-minds out of the way so we can realign with Source and Life Force can freely flow through us. Getting enough sleep is extremely important in raising your frequency and keeping it high.

Relaxation is like “neutral” in the gears of a car. When we relax, we allow energy in reverse polarity to come back into alignment. When things are going wrong, taking a deep breath and relaxing mentally and physically puts Spirit back in charge.

Toning is using your voice to raise and balance energy, something you do instinctively as a child. There are infinite ways to tone, but here is a technique to try: Start by sounding “oooooooooo” (rhymes with “glue”) at the lowest note your voice will go and raise the tone up smoothly over a period of a few seconds, from as low as you can easily go to the highest you can easily go, like a siren starting up, and hold the highest note as long as you can. Do not force the sound—let your voice gently wrap around the sound so as not to cause vocal strain. Repeat. Experiment with your voice and find your own favorite technique!

Exercise, including stretching, is a really great way to get the Life Force flowing freely through your body again. Physical movement not only causes energy to move through and oxygenate your brain, it stimulates the release of endorphins, which are frequency-elevating, as witnessed by the way they move you into joy. Do your favorite workout, dance, play a game that requires movement, or simply take a walk. The key is to move.

Frontal lobe stimulation withdraws energy from your reptilian brain (home of your ego’s greatest influence) and draws it into the part of your brain where your God Knowingness is available. You can stimulate your frontal lobes by focusing energy there. One easy way to do this is by visualizing your amygdala—two walnut-sized structures in the mid-brain at about eye level—and imagining Tinkerbell swooping in and tickling them with a feather. (Thanks to NeilSlade.com for that idea.)

Radiating Love unconditionally is the most frequency-raising of all activities because in order to do it, you have to be in alignment! It is what you were designed for, and the ability to do this is “hard-wired” into you. When you radiate Love impersonally, just the way Source does, without concern for who is receiving or appreciating it, you are automatically in perfect alignment.

Other powerful frequency-raising activities to try include:
~Writing a letter to God, and channeling God’s totally loving answer in response
~Appreciating something or someone (gratitude is an especially powerful form of appreciation)~Communing with Nature and allowing it to trigger your Love response to it
~Doing something for someone with absolutely no expectation of anything in return
~Using water, a magical, electromagnetic substance, to soak in, shower in, swim in, gaze at, and drink (being well-hydrated is essential for operating at higher frequency)

This article was written by Julia Rogers Hamrick, and shared generously with everyone who needs it.

©2006 Julia Rogers Hamrick

A strategy for coming back into alignment when you're feeling disconnected

Step One:
Observe your feelings and listen to the conversation in your head without judging what you observe. If you feel angry, resentful, hurt, sad, fearful, or anything other than joyful, or if what you’re hearing in your head is other than loving, your ego has taken the wheel and is blocking your perfect alignment with your God-Realized Self, and holding you out of the flow of Love from Source, thus lowering your frequency and keeping you in the “misery matrix.”

Step Two:
Acknowledge your intention to shift back into alignment as soon as you recognize that you are misaligned, and express your intent to surrender to your God-Realized Self: the aspect of you that is perpetually in alignment with Source and thus is totally loving, all wise, all powerful, and consistently blissful. Being aligned with this unlimited Self and rising in frequency (the result of being in alignment) is the solution to all problems.

Step Three:
Allow your ego to express whatever it needs to—whether it’s rage, grief, or self-righteousness. Just let it come out.
* If writing out your feelings (for your eyes only) would be helpful, do that.
* Cry, yell, punch a pillow—do whatever you need to do to discharge the energy.
* Do not resist anything that comes up on the basis of it not being “nice.” (These exercises are for you and no one else—ideally, you will do them in private.)
* Observe without resistance while this is going on, and know that these feelings are not a part of you, but simply “stuff” that needs to be discharged to make way for Love to flow.
* Devote as much purposeful time to this as needed.

Step Four: Select any frequency-raising support activities and tools that seem appropriate and utilize them (A partial list will be posted tomorrow). Moving Life Force freely through you without ego choking off the flow is the key to rising in frequency.

Music is one of the most powerful realignment tools as it easily bypasses ego resistance. You may want to use sad or angry music during Step Three, but once your ego has expressed and you’re feeling more peaceful and ready to allow yourself to move toward joy, choose music that you feel will be helpful in boosting you upward.

Step Five: Let go to the upward movement of your energy and enhance it by breathing into it and celebrating it! Stay focused on the wonderful feeling of Life Force flowing through you, and feel it elevating you closer and closer to the “joy space.” Repeating the words “Thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you, thank you” over and over again to your God-Realized Self is like fanning a spark to turn it into a flame. Feel the magnetic energy of the joy space calling you upward and revel in the feeling of being there—it’s your true Home!

Honor your intuition as to what else you need to do. Your intuition is your God-Realized Self guiding you.

Repeat as needed.

This article was written by Julia Rogers Hamrick, and shared generously with everyone who needs it. Stay tuned for more tomorrow.

The World Cancer Research Fund has issued detailed recommendations on how to decrease cancer risk through lifestyle changes, including staying thin and avoiding bacon or ham.

A panel of nine teams of scientists reviewed more than 7,000 studies on the relationship between lifestyle choices and cancer.

"If people are interested in reducing their cancer risk, then following the recommendations is the way to do it," Professor Martin Wiseman said. "Cancer is not a fate, it is a matter of risk, and you can adjust those risks by how you behave. It is very important that people feel that they are in control of what they do."

Many of the recommendations were not new - such as not smoking or eating a diet high in fruits, vegetables and whole grains and low in red meat, fish and dairy - but others were more surprising.

One of the more unexpected results was that even among those who are not overweight, the thinner have a lower risk of developing cancer. While the researchers cautioned that people should not become so thin as to risk their health, they said that being as thin as possible within the healthy range is ideal - closer to a body mass index of 18.5 (low normal), rather than the high normal of 25. The researchers believe that body mass index correlates with cancer risk because it approximates body fat content.

Other recommendations include not gaining weight as an adult and avoiding bacon, ham, sugary drinks and alcohol. While acknowledging that some alcoholic beverages may have other health benefits, the researchers said that any alcohol consumption increases cancer risk. They recommended that men drink no more than two alcoholic beverages per day, and that women limit themselves to one.

According to Wiseman, if everyone followed the panel's recommendations, 30 percent of all new cancer cases - 3 million a year - could be prevented.

http://www.NaturalNews.com/023108.html

"Fifty-five percent of adult men and 78 percent of adult women are not getting enough calcium, according to the National Institutes of Health's Office of Dietary Supplements. Calcium deficiency can lead to bone loss and osteoporosis. Calcium supplements are routinely used to slow down bone loss. They have also been shown to improve premenstrual syndrome symptoms, reduce high blood pressure and possibly reduce your risk of colon cancer.

Kids (older than 3) and adults should get 1,000 milligrams a day, while people older than 50 should aim for 1,200 milligrams a day. Good sources of calcium in the diet include dairy products, leafy greens and fortified foods. Here are a few examples:

Food sources (w/ some recipes) Amount of calcium per serving
8 oz. 2% milk has 297 mg.
6 oz fortified orange juice has 200 to 260 mg.
1 c. low-fat plain yogurt has 415 mg.
1 to 1.5 oz. cheese has 275 mg.
1 c. kale has 95 mg.
2 1/4 c. broccoli has 100 mg.
3 oz. sardines has 320 mg.
1/2 c. fortified tofu has 138 mg.

If you are like many people who do not get enough calcium daily from their diet, then consider taking a calcium supplement. Remember, your body can only absorb 500 to 600 milligrams at a time, so you'll need to take a supplement a few times a day. Try to take supplements with food in order to improve absorption. But remember to avoid eating oxalate-rich foods like spinach and phytate-rich foods like beans unless you soak them for several hours and discard the water before cooking.

Don't forget that high-protein diets, salt and caffeine can also lower calcium absorption.

Wishing you good health!"


Dr. Brad
Revolution Health [newsletter@revolutionhealth-newsletter.com]

Substances foreign to the body, such as disease-causing bacteria and viruses and other infectious agents, known as antigens, are recognized by the body's immune system as invaders. Our natural defenses against these infectious agents are antibodies, proteins that seek out the antigens and help destroy them.

Antibodies have two very useful characteristics. First, they are extremely specific; that is, each antibody binds to and attacks one particular antigen. Second, some antibodies, once activated by the occurrence of a disease, continue to confer resistance against that disease; classic examples are the antibodies to the childhood diseases chickenpox and measles.

The second characteristic of antibodies makes it possible to develop vaccines. A vaccine is a preparation of killed or weakened bacteria or viruses that, when introduced into the body, stimulates the production of antibodies against the antigens it contains.

It is the first trait of antibodies, their specificity, that makes monoclonal antibody technology so valuable. Not only can antibodies be used therapeutically, to protect against disease; they can also help to diagnose a wide variety of illnesses, and can detect the presence of drugs, viral and bacterial products, and other unusual or abnormal substances in the blood.

Given such a diversity of uses for these disease-fighting substances, their production in pure quantities has long been the focus of scientific investigation. The conventional method was to inject a laboratory animal with an antigen and then, after antibodies had been formed, collect those antibodies from the blood serum (antibody-containing blood serum is called antiserum). There are two problems with this method: It yields antiserum that contains undesired substances, and it provides a very small amount of usable antibody.

Monoclonal antibody technology allows us to produce large amounts of pure antibodies in the following way: We can obtain cells that produce antibodies naturally; we also have available a class of cells that can grow continually in cell culture. If we form a hybrid that combines the characteristic of "immortality" with the ability to produce the desired substance, we would have, in effect, a factory to produce antibodies that worked around the clock.

In monoclonal antibody technology, tumor cells that can replicate endlessly are fused with mammalian cells that produce an antibody. The result of this cell fusion is a "hybridoma," which will continually produce antibodies. These antibodies are called monoclonal because they come from only one type of cell, the hybridoma cell; antibodies produced by conventional methods, on the other hand, are derived from preparations containing many kinds of cells, and hence are called polyclonal. An example of how monoclonal antibodies are derived is described below.

A myeloma is a tumor of the bone marrow that can be adapted to grow permanently in cell culture. When myeloma cells were fused with antibody-producing mammalian spleen cells, it was found that the resulting hybrid cells, or hybridomas, produced large amounts of monoclonal antibody. This product of cell fusion combined the desired qualities of the two different types of cells: the ability to grow continually, and the ability to produce large amounts of pure antibody.

Because selected hybrid cells produce only one specific antibody, they are more pure than the polyclonal antibodies produced by conventional techniques. They are potentially more effective than conventional drugs in fighting disease, since drugs attack not only the foreign substance but the body's own cells as well, sometimes producing undesirable side effects such as nausea and allergic reactions. Monoclonal antibodies attack the target molecule and only the target molecule, with no or greatly diminished side effects.

Remove toxins, allergens & stresses from your body.
Reset the autoimmune system (order a cease-fire).
Rebuild the damaged bodily tissues (with high-tech nutrition).

Overcoming Fibromyalgia is a bit like rebuilding a city that has been bombed during an aerial war. The 3 steps are:

1. Negotiate a political decision to stop the bombing - this normally means you have to remove combatants from the city. If the enemy believes that there are still combatants in the city... they will continue to order bombing raids.

2. Recall the bomber planes.

3. Start repairing and rebuilding.

Combatants = toxins or allergens or stresses. When toxins settle into a tissue area... the immune system believes it has an enemy. It will not stop believing that until the foreign elements leave. So, the first step is to detoxify the body of toxins. This includes heavy metals, allergens, etc.

Ordering a cease-fire is only possible because of a substance called Collastin that has been found to help modulate immune system response, essentially telling the immune system to relax and not fight today... and antioxidants that police the town and stop damage from free radicals.

Finally, damaged tissues must be rebuilt by the most effective nutrition possible. This includes a balanced approach of all... not just some of the 25,000 nutrients that the body needs. An approach that is not comprehensive ensures that real healing cannot take place.

Fibromyalgia has been overcome by persons who apply the above tactics.
There is no single magical bullet that conquers Fibromyalgia.
Fibromyalgia is developed over time as a person becomes toxic and body systems are degraded. It can be overcome by rebuilding these systems through time.
While many of the body systems replicate new cells every five months, nerve cells take two years or longer. So, efforts to overcome Fibromyalgia are going to be long-term efforts (two years).

Have you ever thought of the sweet potato as special? If you look at all the goodies it contains you will agree that the sweet potato is indeed a Superfood.

The orange colour beneath the skin lets you know they are loaded with beneficial carotenoids.
Sweet potato also contains fibre, vitamin A, calcium, magnesium and potassium. And that's not all - they also contain vitamins E, C and B6.

One cup of cooked sweet potatoes has 200 calories and almost no fat, which makes it great as an energy sustaining vegetable.

I use sweet potatoes in my evening meal instead of potatoes, and normally just boil them until soft. They can also be oven roasted, which makes them very much more delicious.