Blood: The River of Health
Blood is the ultimate vehicle for our life force, but we all take it for granted.
Your blood travels from your head to your toe in less than 10 seconds.
Approximately 2.4 million red blood cells are created in our body every second.
These cells live for 120 days and travel 300 miles in their lifetime.
What we eat has a dramatic effect on our cells and the state of our health. We live in a world where burger is the king and dairy is the queen, and it’s no wonder that so many people today are tired, overweight and looking for a magic bullet.
You wouldn’t feed your pets the wrong food, or put the wrong fuel in your car – but we continually put the wrong food into our bodies. Your body requires 40 different nutrients a day and your cells can die prematurely from deficiency or toxicity. Vitamins B6, B9, and B12 are required for the production of hemoglobin – a protein which carries oxygen throughout your body, and carbon dioxide out. Minerals iron and copper are needed daily to generate the necessary chemicals in your hemoglobin. Your blood cells originate from the stem cells in your bone marrow; Vitamin A helps this process. Eating the right foods may just be that magic bullet.
With today’s five new food groups – Frozen, Fast, Fried, Junk and Processed – we’ve shifted our diets away from what our bodies truly need because of marketing, convenience, and taste. Making healthy foods today is actually easier than we think, and often times cheaper. Putting a salad together, steaming vegetables, and putting a piece of chicken in the oven does not require extreme culinary skills nor a lot of time. So what do we need?
Eating three to five pieces of fruit and five to seven servings of vegetables a day provides your body with nutrients like fibre, water, vitamins, minerals, electrolytes – all necessary for optimal body chemistry. Not to mention, they help keep our bodies at an alkaline state.
Find Your Potential of Health pH represents potential hydrogen. From a holistic perspective, we can say that it stands for potential of health. It is the value given to indicate the alkalinity or acidity of a substance, with complete acid at the low end of the scale – neutral at 7.0 – and pure alkaline at 14. Your body functions best when the pH of most of its fluids are in a range of 6.5 to 7.0.
Our diets play a major role in the amount of acid produced in our body; if one has too much acid, we begin depleting our minerals – sodium, calcium, magnesium and potassium – in order to buffer out the excess. If we don’t have an abundance of these alkaline minerals found in fruits and vegetables we open ourselves to a host of issues. Calcium loss results in bone density loss, and magnesium loss results in nervous dysfunction, muscle cramping and irregular heartbeat. Sustained exhaustion of this nature can lead to the diseases we see so prevalent in North America today. All meats, fish, wheat, alcohol, colas, sweeteners and condiments are acid forming in the body.
Life is about balance
We can certainly enjoy treats here and there. It is our overall diet and lifestyle that has the largest effect. It’s what we do 80 percent of the time that matters, and your diet should be 80 percent alkaline. However, most people are only at five percent. Lemons are a naturally acidic food – however, the body does not need to buffer the natural acids. The naturally occurring citric acid is a “weak” acid; once it’s done providing energy to metabolism, the remaining nutrients are alkaline. Along with almost all fruits and vegetables – a diet containing beans, flax, eggs, nuts, quinoa, garlic, and cold pressed oils will help our body remain in its ideal alkaline state.
All of those red blood cells you make each day want to live in a healthy environment. Taking responsibility of your own health can provide you with long lasting energy and vitality, and reduce your risk of the health issues that are plaguing our society today and costing our health care system billions of dollars a year. Keep nutrition simple; eat foods that grow toward the sunshine, are not found at a pickup window, and don’t have to pass a chemistry lab on the way to your mouth.
Balance Your Body
A working woman knows all about balance.
From juggling appointments, to taking care of kids, to taking care of herself, she’s always walking a tightrope. Of course she needs to know all about balance.
A great way to find your center of gravity? Yoga.
Balancing Ourselves The practice of yoga can help us stay connected with ourselves emotionally.
If we’re paying attention to our breathing and to sensation in the body as we practice, yoga becomes a portal into what we are truly feeling. The practice allows us to witness what is arising in the body-mind, with less reactivity, so we are able to respond to life’s challenges without reacting to them.
Balancing Our Emotions
Yoga helps support overall emotional health.
First, there’s the cultivation of what the yogi’s call “witness consciousness.” This sense of witnessing helps us realize that yes, we have emotions, but we are so much more than the current mood, so much more than the self-limiting beliefs we may have about ourselves or the world.
Yoga, including yogic breathing called pranayama, begins to clear the constrictions we may have around the everyday challenges we face. We feel more expansive and spacious within, and more connected to others without. It’s not surprising that we have this subjective experience of reconnecting with ourselves and with others, because that’s exactly what’s happening biochemically.
Research has shown that we are lowering the stress hormone cortisol when we practice yoga, and we are raising GABA levels, a neurotransmitter that protects us from anxiety and depression. We are also raising oxytocin levels, the ”bonding” hormone that allows us to feel more connected to others.
Balancing Our Bodies
Although there are specific poses that a beginner can do that can help us keep emotionally balanced and connected it’s hard to isolate poses out of the context of a breathing and centering practice. I would recommend a class or an instructional DVD—some type of formal instruction for a beginner.
In general, a simple forward bend is calming. Back-bending poses are more energizing. A simple supported backbend, combined with deep yogic diaphragmatic breathing through the nostrils, extending the exhalation longer than the inhalation can both lift the mood and calm the central nervous system. Balancing Our Life In my own life, to stay balanced, wherever I am (and I travel quite a bit!) I practice every morning, usually at sunrise, and wherever I am, I try to be outside as the sun rises to practice some pranayama breathing and some standing, strengthening poses. Throughout the day, I may stop for a moment to shift the energy with a smile breath.
I begin by closing my eyes and breathing deeply into the bottom of the lungs. Next, I drop my chin to my chest as I exhale. Then I lift the corners of my mouth, lift my head, inhale and open my eyes. It’s a five-second lightening-up mood elevator. Smile breath creates a real paradigm shift in my mood.
Before I get out of bed, I start my morning with yoga nidra, which means Yogic sleep. Yoga Nidra is a guided meditation that reminds me of who I truly am, beneath the current mood or the morning stiffness in my body.
So use yoga to find balance in your life!
How Far Would You Go to Look Young?
A peculiar new facial treatment that involves real life snails is trending in Japan for women in search of a youthful glow!
According to recent news, salons have been using snails to stimulate regeneration of the facial skin and to heal existing concerns such as wrinkles, sunspots and scarring. The snails are said to have the ability to eliminate dead skin cells and calm inflamed skin.
Several snails are placed onto the facial area for hours at a time, allowing the mucus from the snails to secrete and disperse against the skin membrane. The mucus contains properties that are similar to the ingredients we find in most anti-aging skincare products on the market today.
Among its ability to stimulate regeneration, the combination of its ingredients aid in other skin conditions such as these:
· Heals existing Acne
· Soothes Sunburn
· Removes Dead skin cells
· Acne Scarring
· Wrinkles
· Crows Feet
· Texture and Tone
· Youthful Glow
· Aids in Retaining Moisture
· Heals Rashes
· Reduces Redness
The snails are fed a diet of 100% organic vegetables to ensure that the ingredients are in the purest and healthiest form. A one-hour treatment costs around $245 dollars!
You know what “they” say; the best healing comes from nature itself. This is most certainly an all-natural, non-invasive, synthetic free treatment for those looking for a safer alternative to healing their skin(!) While it is currently only being used in Japan, there is no telling how soon it could hit salons all over North America. The question is, how far would you go to get that youthful glow back? Would you try this if it were available?
Everyone is always in search of an anti-aging cure. The Japanese have really s-nailed it with this one!
Why Flirt?
Flirting should be uplifting and fun – to both me as the Flirter and also to the Flirtee.
So many men admit to me in my “Men Tell All” interviews that they love when a woman flirts with them – it makes them feel special. They feel seen and appreciated – just as we women do when someone flirts with us. Few of us are “just born with” (ie. natural born flirts) but it is a skill that can be learned and uplifts the sass and sexiness of your day. Flirting is good, clean, honest, FUN! Can you live it without it? Yes, but why bother??