As a business man, and more importantly someone who hopes to make a difference in the way people live their lives, I’ve been involved with health and wellness for many years. I had a life-changing personal experience that convinced me that things needed to change for the better. In 1977, I visited a dentist thinking that I needed to have one filling done. Based on his professional opinion of what was best for my health (after all I came with a full health insurance coverage), I needed to have 12 mercury amalgam fillings installed in my mouth. Following this intervention I became progressively sicker and sicker, but I was unaware of the cause. Back in 1980 there were very few people talking about heavy metal poisoning and dentistry.
I later found out I had mercury poisoning. My health continued to deteriorate and I thought I was going to end up in a wheelchair. Mainstream medicine offered no solution, other than painkillers, surgery with uncertain outcome, or this consoling statement: “You will have to learn to live with this.” I was not satisfied with these options in the least, so I began to search for others. I discovered homeopathy, chiropractic and naturopathic medicine and started to learn how the human body works. I found out that not everybody looks at illness the way mainstream medicine did. They saw it as an invasion from outside that needs to be fought like a war in a series of battles. The “new” medicines I discovered described it more as an expression of problems in one’s cellular terrain, more like a dance that needs to be danced in a partnership between the parties.
Obviously this experience had a huge effect on me – it was the cause of me abandoning my management consultant career in favor of this health and wellness venture. Interesting, right?
To learn more about this and other valuable holistic health information, click here to visit life-enthusiast.com
Martin, Health, April 4, 2012 9:00 am
Today I write about detoxification or the lack of understanding of detoxification in the general public. Essentially, in your body, there is a constant struggle between how fast toxins are coming in and how fast your body is able to get rid of them.
There are two ways that toxins come into our body. One is because we live in an environment that has a lot more pollution in it than it did 500 years ago (thanks to the industrial pollution) and the other because of the things that we eat – grown by industrial agriculture and processed by modern food preservation methods.
We have more chemicals in our food than ever before. This stuff didn’t exist when we evolved as a species. Artificial coloring, flavoring and preservatives are the wonderful, fantastic inventions of the chemical and petroleum and pharmaceutical industries. You can only get rid of toxins by washing them out of your body. You need lots of clean well structured water to rinse them out of your body. And if they are fat soluble, you need to have lecithin to emulsify them. If they are water soluble, you just need good structured water to dissolve them and wash them out of the body. You drink a cup of coffee; you need to drink about two quarts of water to wash out the toxicity that that created.
That’s quite a bit of water to undo the damage of just one cup of coffee, isn’t it?
To learn more about this and other valuable holistic health information, click here to visit life-enthusiast.com
Martin, Health, April 3, 2012 10:43 am
People who are skeptical of holistic or alternative medicine in general may not be aware of the number of diseases that respond well to lifestyle changes. Here is a partial list:
• Asthma
• Back pain
• Bipolar disorder
• Breast cancer
• Celiac disease
• High cholesterol levels
• Colon cancer
• Crohn’s disease
• Depression
• Diabetes
• Fibromyalgia
• Gall stones
• Hepatitis C
• Herniated disc
• Herpes
• High blood pressure
• Kidney stones
• Lyme disease
• Lymphoma
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Stroke
This is a long list of degenerative conditions that can be reversed by holistic treatments. The world of natural health is alive and well, with millions of people taking care of their health in very different ways from mainstream practices. This is known as alternative medicine, but it should really be the only medicine. The useful part of the modern medical system is surgery. I have a lot of respect for what we have learned looking after people mangled in battles.
To learn more about this and other valuable holistic health information, click here to visit life-enthusiast.com
Martin, Health, April 2, 2012 4:20 am
The problem with ensuring your body has enough of the essential mineral magnesium is that oral magnesium supplements are usually ineffective. They are laxative at therapeutic levels, meaning the magnesium will pass straight through the body. This method usually requires at least a year to raise the levels significantly. On the other hand, intravenous magnesium is very effective but obviously not that practical, not to mention the fact that most people don’t like needles. It can also be difficult to get physicians to prescribe this method of treatment.
Where does that leave you, a health enthusiast hoping to get the magnesium their body needs? Well, we offer magnesium in the medium which makes it the easiest for you to get it into your body, as a liquid to be absorbed through the skin. These products include our TransDerma magnesium crystals and our magnesium bath salts, which are wonderfully relaxing and a great way to end your day.
To learn more about this and other valuable holistic health, click here to visit life-enthusiast.com
Martin, Cellular Health, Health, March 30, 2012 4:30 pm
Why would you want to supplement with magnesium? Let me count the ways:
• Mental stress
• Physical stress
• Coffee
• Sugar
• High sodium diet
• Alcohol
• Cola-type sodas
• Tobacco
• High perspiration
• Medical drugs of all types
• Low thyroid
• Chronic pain Diuretics
• A high carbohydrate diet
• A high calcium diet
And here is a list of symptoms that can result from a lack of proper magnesium in the body:
• Asthma
• Blood clots
• Bowel disease
• Cystitis
• Depression
• Detoxification
• Diabetes
• Fatigue
• Heart disease
• Hypertension
• Hypoglycemia
• Insomnia
• Kidney disease
• Migraine headaches
• Musculoskeletal conditions
• Nerve problems
• Obstetrical problems
• Panic attacks
• Gynecological problems
• Osteoporosis
• Raynaud’s syndrome
• Tooth decay
And in case this post comes of as negative (I don’t want it to be at all), here are the benefits of proper magnesium supplementation:
• Improves Sleep
• Boosts Energy Levels
• Relieves Muscle Discomfort
• Overcomes Stress
• Relaxes Nerves
• Improves Bad Moods
• Improves Heart Function
• Increases Kidney Health
• Supports Healthy Blood Pressure
• Improves Bone Health
• Alleviates Various Aches
• Keeps Bones in Alignment
To learn more about this and other valuable holistic health, click here to visit life-enthusiast.com
Martin, Cellular Health, Health, March 29, 2012 2:47 pm
In keeping with the topic of my previous post, I’d like to talk a little bit about positive thinking and how it can relate to our health. One of the biggest differences between the Life Enthusiast Co-op and other medical establishments is we believe you can get better. We want you to believe the same thing because more often than we would be likely to admit does our health come down to self-fulfilling prophecy.
What exactly is a self-fulfilling prophecy? The clearest example I can think of is two students studying for the examination. One is convinced he can not pass the examination. Because of this “knowledge”, he knows he doesn’t need to study.
And why should he study if he already knows he can’t pass the examination?
On the other hand, the second student is confident in her intellectual abilities and goes to great length studying to receive an A on the exam.
These are both examples of self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s up to you to guess how well the first student did.
To learn more about this and other valuable holistic health, click here to visit life-enthusiast.com
Martin, Emotional Health, March 28, 2012 11:04 am
Enzymes, as any regular reader of this blog knows, are an essential part of proper nutrition. Enzymes improve the body’s digestion of foods whether they have been cooked, processed or are simply raw. Enzymes also help your body eliminate a great deal of toxins. Systemic enzymes help break down undigested or under-digested foods that may have gotten into your blood stream through a challenged small intestine (a problem called leaky gut).
The food you eat is (mostly) comprised of proteins, carbohydrates and fats. Enzyme supplements containing protease, amylase and lipase are extremely useful for keeping your body in a good shape. These three ingredients should be on your radar screen at all times. Without enzymes all life comes to a halt.
Allegany Nutrition enzymes offer a great value – their formulas are published in the open – unlike some “proprietary blend” enzymes. You can easily what a great value they offer by comparing their individual components and their potency to the products offered in typical store brands.
Enzymes are really important for the proper assimilation of nutrients. You need to select a product with high level of activity and a good balance of the important components.
Ionic Trace Minerals help digestive enzymes to perform their proper function by increasing their enzymatic potential. These minerals serve the body as co-factors that make the use of the enzymes more productive. They also give more strength to each separate enzyme molecule.
Allegany Nutrition uses high grade ingredients – why else would we select it? Digestive enzymes are extremely important and once this is realized by the health community at large, we will be making a huge step forward in providing ourselves with the tools we need to reach our bodies’ full potential.
To learn more about this and other valuable holistic health, click here to visit life-enthusiast.com
Martin, Cellular Health, Digestive Health, Health, March 27, 2012 8:43 pm
At the Life Enthusiast Co-op, we feel that one of the most important things a person can do for health is to be aware of the toxins that they let into their body every day. Many people experience symptoms like dizziness, spaciness, sense of unreality, or loss of concentration, not knowing that they are being caused by an excess of toxins in their body. These feelings are not akin to feeling sick with a head cold or flu. People who suffer from chronic fatigue and candida overgrowth experience this very often.
When your body is unable to get rid of the toxins within the bloodstream, it affects your brain, your thoughts and the way you feel without you even realizing it.
Toxicity is most common in the lymphatic system. The reason? The lymph does not have a pump, it moves only when you are moving. When you don’t exercise enough, nutrients aren’t getting where they need to go and toxins are not getting expelled by the body the way they should be.Cellular metabolites need to be removed from cells, transferred to your blood and filtered out by your kidneys.
Toxin overload generally starts in the colon where your body will extract water for its internal needs. The toxins come with the water and enter the bloodstream. Your body will try to expel them but if your kidneys and liver are overwhelmed with the amount of filtering they need to do, the toxins will be backing up in the lymphatic system.
One of the best things you can do to counteract this process is eat lots of fiber, which keeps things moving in your colon, easing your overall toxic load.
You can do a fairly easy salt brine bowel flush – drink 2 quarts of water with a teaspoon of salt in each – and your bowel will flush itself within an hour.
Himalayan Crystal Salt is the best salt of the planet, very different from the common refined salt which the mainstream media keeps telling you is so bad. Rather, this salt was crystallized over 250 million years ago from the ocean, where trilobites and other primitive life forms were swimming. We think of it as the amniotic solution from which life springs. This is actually true, since the primordial ocean was like the womb of the planet from which all life as we know it was formed.
Our Himalayan Crystal Salt is also powerful vibrationally – the crystals dissolve into a very potent brine. It will help you eliminate unwanted toxins from your body.
To learn more about this and other valuable holistic health, click here to visit life-enthusiast.com
Martin, Cellular Health, Digestive Health, Emotional Health, Health, March 26, 2012 12:57 pm
Many women suffer a great deal when they menstruate. Bloating, water retention, mood swings – all related to out-of-balance hormonal levels caused by deficiency if iodine. Iodine (the deficiency of) is involved in PMS, in miscarriages, and in developmental retardation in children.
Men suffer from iodine deficiency (that’s behind the thyroid trouble) in similar ways. Their testosterone levels go down, resulting in less interest in sex. They get cranky, short-tempered, depressed and start losing muscle mass.
Our thyroid is controlled by iodine. Thyroid is the gland that uses up most iodine in the body. It will collect it at the expense of other organs, especially the reproductive system. Your thyroid will be stealing much needed iodine from breasts and ovaries in women, and the prostate in men – allow 20 or more years of this chronic deficiency, and you will have an epidemic of cancer.
Stay tuned for ideas about iodine supplementation.
To learn more about this and other valuable holistic health information, click here to visit life-enthusiast.com
Martin, Cellular Health, Health, Nutrition, March 23, 2012 10:21 pm
One of my favorite metaphors for explaining meditation is that it is weeding the mind. Anyone who has had a garden knows that it doesn’t grow well by itself, you need to tend it often, be actively involved plant selection and care. The mind works a lot like a garden in that a few negative thoughts can spoil all the hard work you’ve put into growing your prized vegetables.
At its most basic level, meditation is the clearing of the mind of all thoughts entirely. It is very difficult at first to do this, but a good way to try this is to sit in a comfortable position on a couch or sofa and pick an object to focus your attention on. Many recommend an apple as a good starting point. The idea is to clear the mind of any awareness of anything other than the apple. This sounds very simple but it is extremely difficult. As soon as your mind wanders to other thoughts (which will happen within the first minute), you must immediately pull your mind back to the thought of the apple. Your ability to focus so single-mindedly will improve with time, but it requires the same effort and commitment to developing a muscle. In fact, your brain is just that, a muscle. It needs exercise like everything else. See how long you can sustain this single-minded state. Five minutes is a reasonable goal for early on, but the real benefits of meditation come with at least half an hour.
At this point you may be asking, what are the real benefits of meditation? Why am I staring at an apple? Firstly, in focusing your brain on this object you are calming the mind, and getting rid of any thoughts which may be present in your thinking at all times without you even knowing it. These are the “weeds”. Usually, our thoughts are colored with many biases that we are not even aware of. These thoughts affect how we go about our daily lives, the choices we make and our general attitude about the world. By focusing the mind, we cleanse ourselves of these thoughts and are able to focus only positively on what we want. You will find your days will be far more conscientious and full of life and energy after mediating, I know I do.
To learn more about this and other valuable holistic health information, click here to visit life-enthusiast.com
Martin, Emotional Health, Health, March 22, 2012 9:27 am
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