5 Natural Solutions for Avoiding and Treating Depression

Are you living a depressed and stressed lifestyle? There is no doubt that our fast-paced days in which many are living pay check to pay check are a big contributor to these negative feelings. Everyone experiences some level of depression at some point in their lifetime. Luckily, there are natural solutions for avoiding and treating depression. The best part? These tips could not only make you a happier person, but also a healthier person.

1. Treating Depression – Avoid Junk Food, Fast Food, and Processed Food

It may or may not be surprising, but junk food has actually been linked to depression. Both junk food and fast food (if there is really a difference) consumption sparks depression. Sugary sodas, high-fructose corn syrup, and again, processed foods, also contribute to depression by causing ill health effects. These effects lead to obesity, diabetes, numerous other health problems, and eventually to feelings of self-pity and depression due to feeling physically weak.

2. Expose Yourself to more Sunlight, Up Vitamin D3 Intake

You’ve probably heard it before: if you’re feeling depressed, get some mood-uplifting sun exposure. Well, this advice actually holds true for multiple reasons. There are a multitude of studies that have found an association between vitamin D deficiency and an increased risk of depression. Further, increasing vitamin D was found to reduce depression risk specifically.

3. Don’t Drink Diet Soda

Similar to findings linking processed foods with depression, research has also found a link between diet soda consumption and depression. A recent study by the National Institutes of Health found that 31% of individuals consuming 4+ daily servings of artificially sweetened soda, iced tea, or fruit drinks had been diagnosed with depression. This compares to 22% of regular soda drinkers reporting a diagnosis of depression. Further, those drinking 4 or more cups of coffee per day were 10% less likely to suffer from depression than non-coffee drinkers.

4. Consider Throwing Away the Antidepressants

Some individuals taking antidepressants view the medication as a life-saver, but these pharmaceuticals often have no positive effect. In fact, research has shown that a simple placebo can match antidepressants. A placebo is almost always nearly as effective. The best part? No negative side-effects.

5. Stop Ingesting so much Fluoride

Seeing as fluoride can lower IQ, cause cancer, damage the thyroid and pineal gland, and even up heart disease risk, is it any surprise that the toxic chemical can cause depression?

Culled.

You can read the original article here.

1 Pound of Fat = 3500 Calories!

1 Pound Of Fat  = 3,500 Calories

There are 3,500 calories in one pound (about 0.5 Kilograms) of fat. Thus, if you cut back or work off just 3,500 calories, you will lose an entire pound of fat. While it is possible to cut back on your calorie intake and increase your exercise regimen in order to lose pounds quickly, it is important to note that doctors recommend that you lose no more than 2 pounds (1 kg) of weight per week in order to ensure that your body properly adjusts to the weight loss.

Here are some tips to help you safely drop 3,500 calories from your regular routine:

Run

Running for about 1 hour at a slow pace will help you lose approximately 350 calories, depending on your body type, speed and terrain. Thus, if you run for one hour five days a week while maintaining a consistent diet, you will safely lose one pound.

It is important to understand that many people who just begin running will eat pasta and other foods high in carbohydrates in order to compensate for the exertion. They think that because they worked out so hard, they deserve a treat. After all, they justify, the pasta will help to keep their energy levels high. However, what they may not realize is that while they are justified in thinking that the carbohydrates will infuse their workout routine with energy, they are not actually setting their bodies up to lose weight. When you burn 350 calories but intake 450 over a high-carbohydrate pasta dish, you are adding more calories to your body than you otherwise would have.

Running does, however, help to boost our metabolism and change your muscle tone so that you burn calories more efficiently. Instead of inhaling a pasta dish after a run, select instead to have a large salad and splurge for the carbohydrate-rich croutons.

Eat In

When you eat out at a restaurant, not only are you subjecting your body to an array of high fat, high calorie foods, but you are also tempting yourself to eat a larger portion than you might normally eat. Therefore, what could be a simple 500 calories meal can easily turn into a 1500-calorie fat fest. In order to lose weight by cutting calories, it is essential that you are aware of exactly what you are putting into your body. Especially in the beginning of your new routine, it is important that you prepare your meals and monitor your level of hunger.

When eating out, generally you are in a social situation where food is not a priority – but spending time with your friends is. For this reason, people tend to eat more than they normally would. Non-dessert eaters often even spring for the extra round of calories. If you must eat out, help yourself avoid temptation by selecting a salad rather than a plate of pasta or burger. You will be amazed at the difference in the amount of calories you intake when you make simple choices such as meal option.

By reducing your overall calorie intake and increasing your level of physical activity, you will be able to lose those 3,500 calories without much trouble. Make sure that you stay focused, motivated and on task. You'll shed unwanted weight in no time!

The following activities will also help you burn fat:

Activities to burn 100 calories

• Walk for 25 minutes.

• Run for 12 minutes.

• Bike for 17 minutes.

• Dance for 20 minutes.

• Hit the elliptical machine for 15 minutes.

• Swim freestyle for 15 minutes.

• Use the rowing machine for 25 minutes.

Activities to burn 250 calories:

• Walk for 35 minutes.

• Run for 20 minutes.

• Bike for 30 minutes.

• Dance for 50 minutes.

• Hit the elliptical machine for 30 minutes.

• Swim freestyle for 25 minutes.

• Use the rowing machine for 28 minutes

Hope you enjoyed the post and I trust you will put it into practice.

We Are Only 10% Human!

In the near future, instead of antibiotics your doctor might present you with a vial of a specific strain of good bacteria which you are lacking that directly targets your particular health concern. In the meantime, generally repopulating a healthy environment of benevolent bugs in your system is an important start.

New research has genetically mapped the trillions of cells in the human body. It turns out that 90% of the cells in the human body are microbial (bugs), leaving only 10% of us that consists of human cells! Good thing our human cells are so much bigger than bug cells, or we would all look more like bugs!

With this in mind, instead of killing the bad bugs – which is the logic behind antibiotics – future medicine will focus on re-populating the beneficial bacteria, or good bugs, that have diminished in your body. After all, doesn’t it make sense to treat the 90% of us – the bugs – so that they clearly and effortlessly maintain the health of the remaining 10%?

What is even more interesting is that these microbes replicate extremely quickly. Some can reproduce up to 1 million times in eight hours. So in a typical work day, they have a million babies, giving them the leverage to genetically morph and adapt to our ever changing world.

But as prolific as they are, researchers are finding that they do not proliferate well in the presence of toxins, chemicals and processed and preserved foods. If we continue to sterilize everything and eat foods that our good bugs can’t digest, the 90% of us will slowly die. And as the microbial diversity within us slowing wanes, so will our health.

The trick is: how do we keep the trillions of beneficial microbes in the body alive and flourishing? Click here to read the original article and learn more.

Five Tips to Lose Weight

With so much information out there about weight loss, I just thought I should make it simpler and easier for my readers. I won't bore you with some things you already know, so I'll keep it very simple. The summary of this post is that you should put these few points into practice and not just read and toss them aside. Knowledge becomes power only when it is used. Enjoy!

These 5 tips will help you achieve consistent and considerable weight loss

1. Drink at least 8 glasses of water per day. It decreases your appetite and flushes toxins from your body.
2. Exercise regularly. It raises your metabolism, helps burn calories and tones up your body. Do not exhaust yourself.
3. There is no need to starve yourself. Eat a snack if you are hungry. Salad, a piece of fruit or yoghurt. Never snack on fatty foods because you never full full eating eat - you will only eat more.
4. Avoid alcohol. It gives empty calories which are taken in by the body as sugar. It also suppresses the body's ability to burn fat.
5. Reduce the size of your plate so that it appears to be full. Eat three meals a day regularly. Enjoy your food, eat slowly and chew well. Avoid having a big meal. Go in for more high fiber foods.

These few simple changes in your diet and lifestyle can help reduce obesity and help you live a healthier and more productive life. 

Namaste!

How Your Body 'Loses' Weight

The first week of dieting usually produces the most dramatic weight loss. When you start dieting, your body uses up its glycogen stores before it begins to burn excess fat for fuel. As you use the glycogen stores, your body sheds the water that was bound to the glycogen. Once glycogen stores are depleted, the body shifts to burning fat stores for energy. Losing fat is a much slower process. (Luckily, Skinny Fiber helps boost the body's metabolism and helps it use up the fat stores for energy).

Sensible, healthy fat loss is in the range of 1-2 lbs (0.5 - 1.0 kgs) per week. If you try to lose more quickly, a number of undesirable effects can occur.

• You will burn up lean body tissue rather than fat stores, leaving you with less muscle and more fat.
• Your metabolism will switch to super-efficient mode, making it more difficult to lose weight.
• The more extreme the diet, the greater the likelihood that you rapidly gain back any lost weight (Again, using Skinny Fiber is not dieting because you have to take it 30-45 minutes before your meals, that way your body gets used to having meals and eventually when you have achieved a desirable weight goal and stop using Skinny Fiber the weight still stays off.) 

So, there you have it. Losing weight is easy but dieting really doesn't help your body and the more you starve, the more weight you retain. In the next post, I'll be sharing with you 5 tips that can aid you achieve success in your weight loss journey. Tchao!

Do Diets Really Work?

Dieting is an exhaustive process and causes weight fluctuations. Many dieters experience weakness and irritability. incomplete exercise is also often performed by dieters by going to the gym or aerobic classes, a few times a week. This is NOT the solution. Focus on reducing the number of calories eaten in a day. This will help in a steady weight loss. When you eat and exercise sensibly, you will be at much less risk of developing obesity-related diseases. 

Effects of Dieting

• Dieting results in the process of semi starvation, due to deprivation of foods that you like.
• Dieting leads to lowered metabolism especially in women.
• Along with dieting it is important to make the body active throughout your working hours. Your 24 hours a day calorie burning power depends upon the lean muscle mass through strengthening exercises.
• It has been scientifically established that the weight fluctuations from yo-yo dieting are associated with an increased risk for heart disease.
• It is not the fitness classes or gym workout for 40 minutes or one hour, five days a week which are going to help you. It is the little 5 minutes of walking many times a day which helps double your calorie burning.  
  

There you have it. The small steps count. It is the small drops that make a mighty ocean. Make the changes count today. You can join us here for group support, motivation, healthy tips and recipes, plus the fun of being part of a vibrant community of amazing people making small but consistent changes. Together we all achieve more.

This is how you become fat

Facts about Fat

• The fatty layer beneath our skin helps conserve body heat and regulate body temperature. It also provides insulation against cold.
• Fat placed around our joints helps as a lubricant in allowing smooth movement.
• Our vital organs like liver, heart and brain are all cushioned by fat to prevent injury.
• Cholesterol is an important type of fat which is a part of each cell and is important for its functioning. It is a precursor of vitamins, hormones and bile acids. Bile acids help in digestion of food in the body.

To control excessive fat in the body, nature has given us a hormone called leptin. This hormone plays an important role in obesity. Leptin helps in controlling hunger, burning of calories and aids in better metabolism.

When you eat a diet with a lot of refined sugar like sweets, chocolates, aerated drinks, and desserts, this can cause obesity even without overeating.

A high fat diet makes the body shift its metabolism towards storing fat, instead of burning fat for energy. Lipase, an enzyme which breaks down fat molecules, helps storage in your body's fat cells. The more fat eaten, the more its storage, particularly around the abdomen and hips. When you reduce fat from your diet, you first lose fat from the abdomen.

If you keep over eating, your fat cells grow larger. You also start forming new fat cells and gain weight. If you decrease your food intake, the size of the fat cells decreases but the number doesn't (so, it's better not to allow those new cells form in the first place!). So in addition to feeling hungry, your body thinks you are starving and tries to compensate by slowing down your metabolic rate. When your metabolic rate becomes slow, then your calorie burning also slows down.

Overweight and obese people have a higher rate of multiple medical problems like:

• Cardiac: High blood pressure, heart failure, heart disease
• Gastrointestinal: Gall stones, recurrent heart burn
• Endocrine: Diabetes, high lipids, menstrual irregularity, infertility
• Pulmonary: obstructive sleep apnea
• Musculoskeletal: Degeneration of knees, backache, disc herniation, osteoporosis, pathological fracture of bone
• Skin: various disorders (usually due to accumulated toxins in the fat cells)
• Cancer: various organs

Being overweight may be killing you slowly, but there is hope and help. If you are obese and need the services of a health coach to help you through this phase, send me a mail at essentialweightloss@gmail.com and if you are overweight and want to order Skinny Fiber to help you start your weight loss journey, click here

Are You an Apple or a Pear?

We have partial control over our body shape and size. Partially, our genetic disposition controls our metabolism, body type and the tendency to store fat. Whether you have an apple (android) or pear (gynoid) body type, is determined by your waist-to-hip ratio. Divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement to get the ratio.

Waist/Hip = Ratio

If the ratio is greater than 0.85 for women, or 0.95 for men, then you are an apple. If the ratio is less, then you are a pear. Men and women can be of either body type. Africans and African Americans usually tend towards the pear shape.

Apples store excess weight in their abdomen, rather than their hips and thighs. Fat distributed in the abdomen is often associated with certain metabolic problems like, high cholesterol, heart disease, and diabetes. If you are an apple, and you have a body mass index (BMI) of over 30, you are at a risk of developing coronary heart disease.

Click here to calculate your BMI:

Pears mostly carry excess weight in their bottom, hips and thighs. A pear can have a very small waist, narrow shoulders, and wider hips and thighs. In women this body shape becomes suited to child-bearing. As this fat has a special purpose, the body protects it and burns off other stores of fat - first from the face, then the arms, bust, stomach and so on before it gets to the buttocks, hips and thighs.

Don't lose hope if you have fat concentrated in any of these areas. Skinny Fiber teaches your body to lose even the most stubborn of fats. To order Skinny Fiber, click here

Why Am I Not Losing Weight?

So many times when talking to someone about Skinny Fiber or a particular weight loss method or product is not working for them I have found things out that really I can see why it is not working.

Just yesterday someone told me they did not feel as hungry as before but not losing. I asked if they had cut the sugar and junk carbs and the answer was not really.....

Your body cannot burn body fat if your insulin levels are too high. You can exercise and do everything else right, but if your insulin levels are high…you will not burn body fat. The best way to insure low insulin levels is either by eating foods that are not processed and do not contain sugar-- eat real food - meat , eggs veggies, moderate fruit nuts..anything that is not man made will help you keep insulin levels low and keep your body in fat burning mode.

I asked if she took it 30-45 minutes before meals with at least a full glass of water, about 250 ml or 8 ounces of water...the answer was not every day...The Skinny Fiber will work by helping you feel full and curb cravings. The #1 challenge to losing weight is over eating. Taken up to 30-45 minutes before you eat and always stopping before you are full is very important.

Asked if she made sure to eat protein snacks or small regular meals 3 times a day with at least 4 hours between each meal and the answer was no. Real food is what you find around the outer aisles of the supermarket. This is where you find the fresh vegetables, fruits, meats, and dairy. You will be more easily satiated because your body will get nutrients from real food. Real foods are nutrient dense and will not ignite cravings.

Here are a few things to Ask yourself...What is your typical day of food?? Enough calories?? too many?? Are you eating 3-4 small meals ...real food not boxed or fast food?? Do you have any health issues?? How old are you-- does your family have a history of obesity?Keep a food journal -- get at least 1.5 Litres of water or 64 ounces of water -- follow this-- I give this guide to everyone whether you use Skinny Fiber or not --there are so many small changes that make a big difference--Here are some basic tips I have come up with that will help out on your weight loss journey!!!

1) Change the way you think about food...eat to live not live to eat!

2) NEVER drink calories!!! Soda and juice are full of sugar!!

3) Limit the carbs---bread, pasta and potatoes--- STAY AWAY from premade boxed foods...worst ever high carb and sodium--low in vital nutrients!!! Big weight loss stopper!!! Avoid "LOW FAT" "NO FAT" usually loaded with sugar!!

4) Eat 3-4 small meals a day

5) Drink at least 1.5 Litres 64 ounces of water a day

6) Move your body...any amount of movement is good!

7) Focus on one change at a time

Do not measure your success with the scale--measure yourself...get out a pair of jeans you can not wear anymore and look at them everyday...try them on once a week! These are your "dream jeans"

9) Visit the support group often...the motivation could make all the difference! 

10) Tell yourself you are worth it...you can do it and see yourself the way you want to be---I believe in you!!! ~Live for the day....know that we all fall.. just get back up!


Join us on www.facebook.com/groups/EssentialWeightLoss for all the tips and support you need to lose weight and live a healthier life.

The Lemonade-Master Cleanse

I would suggest this Cleanse at least twice a year for everyone! This was originally called the Master Cleanse, created by Stanley Boroughs. It is a method of fasting with a lemonade drink taken every hour, for 8 hours. Fasting is the oldest recorded “diet” program, dating back more than 2500 years. There is great detoxification, matter of fact, some would say that only during a fast does the body detoxify fully. It takes at least 10 days to reach the deeper tissues of the body. 10 days of no food is a long time for many, and it could be life threatening for someone who is diabetic or very hyperglycemic (get shaky when you don’t eat regularly). Using the ingredients in the Lemonade Fast supplies minerals and sugars so the body does not have those blood sugar reactions. 

The Lemonade Cleanse is one of the most effective total-body cleansing programs available. It is simple, inexpensive and provides you the energy to continue your daily tasks. It is true you are not eating, and the concept of that is hard for some people, but most people report that by day 3 they have more energy than they had when they were eating! Amazing!

The Lemonade Cleanse Summary

After this evening, you will stop eating (fast) for the length of your cleanse. Starting tomorrow, you will fill a glass with 8-10 ounces (250 - 300 milliliters of water) of good, pure water and add the following to your water. You will repeat this every hour for 10 days.

- ADD 1/10 of a teaspoon of Cayenne Pepper, organic if you can, at least 30,000 HU

- ADD 2 Tablespoons of Grade B Maple Syrup

- ADD 1/2 of a freshly squeezed lemon

- Each evening you will need a cup of laxative tea, which you can get at some grocery stores, most health food stores. Click here to order your kit.

- Beginning the second morning of your fast, and every morning thereafter, you will need 30 ounces (about 900 milliliters )of water with 2 (two) teaspoons of sea salt in it. NOT table salt, but sea salt. Drink it down in 15 minutes or less if you can. This is imperative to help flush the toxins that the body is releasing during the fast. Any detox symptoms you might get from fasting, like rash, irritable, headache, etc, is generally relieved with the morning salt water. IF you cannot drink the salt water, do another cup of the laxative tea in the morning unless you already have diarrhea.

That’s it! Eat nothing, and take no supplements during your fast (but continue any medications you are supposed to be on).

How many days should I fast?

The original Master Cleanse was a 10-day fast. Calm down…most people have a hard time doing that many days on a first fast. You don’t have to commit to that long. BUT, if you can make it to day 4, you won’t be hungry any more and it is a piece of cake after that. A one, two, even three day fast does not produce therapeutic results, meaning your body will get a little something from it, but nothing spectacular.  It takes a certain amount of days for the body to cleanse enough that it begins to release the deep toxins that cause disease. For some it will be day 7, but for most of the people who are not eating a diet that is primarily raw foods, it generally takes the full 10 days. But work up to it if you must. Do a couple days here and there until you find you can make it all the way to day 10. Remember, if you can get to day 4, you should be home free, the rest is easy.

How To Break A Fast

The greatest benefit may be lost, followed by harmful after effects, if the fast is not broken in the right way. George Bernard Shaw said, “Any fool can fast, but it takes a wise man to break a fast properly.” In fact, the best effects of a fast depend upon the dietetic management after it is broken. The longer the fast, the more care must be taken in breaking it. Raw fruit and vegetables should be the ONLY foods eaten for the three days following your 10-day fast. If you need something more, a boiled or baked potato (plain -without butter) can be introduced on the second and third day. The greatest danger lies in eating too frequently and too much at a time after a fast. After a long fast the digestive organs are in a condition of complete inactivity, and to overload them suddenly with a large amount of food may provoke acute attacks of indigestion and produce many other kinds of serious disturbances. The organs must be trained to return to normal activity gradually, beginning with very small quantities of light food. Remember, if you made it to day 10, you will not be starving, so this part is not difficult.

A very helpful website for the Lemonade Diet: http://therawfoodsite.com/index.htm

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Colon Cleansing

Death Begins in the Colon. That sounds a bit harsh doesn't it? If you get into natural health, you will begin to learn about nutrition and you will definitely begin to hear that you need to cleanse. There is great misunderstanding around what a ‘cleanse’ is or should be, but the target of cleansing is generally the Colon. It makes sense as the colon is where the body sends all waste products until they are eliminated in a bowel movement. The body is a very efficient system, “fearfully and wonderfully made” as long as you are only ingesting items that the body was actually intended to deal with. Today’s modern world offers us so many tasty and enticing things that do not belong in the body, and most people get precious little fiber to help entrap those items and hold them for elimination.

Nature’s protective mechanism is to secrete mucus in the colon to protect against toxins, poisons and other waste products. It works along with fiber to trap those things that might do the body harm. Because the average diet has strayed so far from the foods and items the body was designed to process, the protective mechanism is forced to work continuously producing an abundance of mucus with little chance of it being eliminated. Layer piles upon layer, mucus thickens and becomes gel like, often hardens like rubber…you can imagine how toxic that is to just sit in the body.

The simple fact is that unless you have been eating an almost completely raw, vegan, organic diet, than you have the need for colon cleansing. While I do not promote that a vegetarian diet is the best for everyone, meat, dairy and refined carbohydrates are foods that the human intestine was not created or designed to deal with. Animals in nature that eat meat as a staple in their diets have very short colons. Humans have a colon that is 6-8 feet long. When an acid food must spend that much time in transit, it promotes secretion of the elements the body will use to build mucoid linings. But no matter what the diet, linings will develop. The reason for this is that food must be completely digested or the body treats that food like a foreign substance. It may even treat it like a toxin depending on your inability to absorb and metabolize all the elements in that food. Overall, the healthier you eat, the fewer linings you will have and you will not need to do colon flushing as often. But you can safely assume that you have mucoid linings that need elimination, like the ones in the photo.

We assume that when we eat food, the body extracts the nutrients it can and the rest is sent to the colon where it is passed when we have a bowel movement. We have discussed that one bowel movement per meal is healthy, and should be considered regular. But regular still does not predict that the intestine is actually passing all of the waste material. When you eat something the body is not fully able to digest, the body also becomes confused with how to eliminate properly. At least Ninety-five percent of what you eat is supposed to be moved out as waste. The only thing the body takes are the nutrients and only five percent of healthy fruits and vegetables is nutrition, the rest is pulp and fiber that remains in the intestine as waste for elimination. Imagine what percent of unhealthy foods need to be passed . . . 99.5%? Now suppose your body has not been passing the entire contents of the waste you have been consuming. This percent begins to rot and putrefy along the walls of your intestine. Not just your large intestine, it forms in your small intestine as well. And there are over twenty feet of it.

The body considers this waste as toxic material that will be absorbed into the main circulation, which means an eventual threat to health. The defense is to produce mucous and place it as a protective covering around the toxic waste. Over time, you get more and more of this and it literally goes from putrefied to petrified. These are referred to as mucoid linings- mucus formed as a response to toxins which hardens into a rubbery lining. Many of the old linings that people pass are literally as hard at tire rubber. People can’t cut them with a knife. So when I say petrify, I mean petrify. And all this started with innocent undigested food, which might have been assumed good for you. I have supplied a few photos so that you might understand why you feel terrible, and why disease can so easily take over a body. It’s no different than putting a little sugar, salt and flour in your gas tank every time you fill the car and then wondering why you lose performance over time. After a certain amount of build up, the car starts to sputter and stall and eventually just shuts down the motor. When you take the motor apart, you find all this gunk and it seems perfectly reasonable that the engine would no longer run. We understand why a motor needs cleaning and maintenance, yet we assume our organic, living, biological bodies are unstoppable. Why do we assume our body is different?

So what is the best cleanse? There are tons of options, most in supplement form. Some are pretty good and some are complete trash, so here are some tips.

1. Increase your fiber. If you equate the fact that the human body was designed to be fed raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and grains (all very high fiber), and all nutrition comprises 5% or less of a food, it leaves 95% of our diet is intended to be fiber! If you don’t have a diet that equates, begin to eat one. For those on a weight loss program, you need more fiber than usual, and Skinny Fiber has just the right amount of fiber to help you cleanse. Because most of our diets contain (or in the past contained) chemicals, preservatives, toxic metals, dyes and so forth, you need something that will help attract and bind to the toxins in the colon so they can be eliminated. 

2. The second big issue is water. The intestine needs water to keep that sludge moving along. What moves easiest in a tube, watered down sludge or try, pasty sludge? How much water is enough? Take your body weight in pounds (1kg = 2.2 pounds), divide it by two and that number is how many ounces you need a day. If you are not thirsty enough to want that much water, you are probably too sedentary, so get off your tush and work up a thirst. For those of you who drink the right amount and say the water just goes right through you, or you have dry skin anyway, look at some Thyroid support. You may need Thyroid Support and be Iodine deficient.

3. The third issue for colon cleansing is exercise. The intestine is full of muscles that move the food from one end to the other in a wave called peristalsis. This is literally a muscle contraction. Some of it is instigated by a brain signal, but lots of it is initiated by your daily movement and abdominal muscle signals. 

4. Did you know that the bile produced by your liver (and stored in the gallbladder) can melt cement? Yes, it is used for digesting fats and other elements, but it also serves to keep the stool soft and moving along. Besides water, nature’s stool softener is bile. 

5. Colon Cleanse Recipe. The tips above are for natural colon cleansing. If you desire to move old waste material out like the mucus and toxic stuff that is likely in there, use them all together. The goal is to get as many bowel movements as possible without causing diarrhea. If you think you can add a bowel stimulant, do it. Go as high as you can WITHOUT causing diarrhea. DO NOT do this if you are pregnant or nursing though.

6. Real Cleansing. I am sorry to tell you that the body is unable to fully clean while it is also having to digest food. Ok, so maybe you don’t eat anything from dinner time to breakfast or even lunch each day .. is that plenty of time to clean house? If you have a really healthy diet, as in almost all raw, vegan diet, yes, you are fine, but make sure you are getting some breakfast. The body tries to clean while you are sleeping and fruits are cleansers, so the more ripe, in season fruit you can eat in the morning, the better. If you are not a super dedicated raw vegan, the only way to do a thorough cleanse is to fast. No, not for a whole day silly, it takes 10 days to get to the deep tissues. Each day you are not eating, the body goes a little deeper in its ability to dump old waste. I don’t really recommend water fasting for most, so look into the Lemonade-Master Cleanse. Add the products listed and you will almost surely pass mucoid linings of your own.

7. Die Hard Cleansing. What? Like 10 days of fasting with lots of extra pooping isn’t die hard enough? Add some colon flushing to that and you can consider yourself a certified die hard cleanser. In this step you are combining points #5 and #6 above, and flushing the colon with water. 

Courtesy: TBA/GWSW

5 Tips to Treat the Symptoms of PCOS

Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome – more commonly known as PCOS – is a hormonal disorder that affects 1 in every 10 women. With PCOS, a woman's ovaries often produce higher than normal levels of the male hormone androgen, which then suppresses the female hormone progesterone. The body may also have a problem using insulin, causing blood sugar levels to rise and increasing the risk of developing diabetes and heart disease.

The signs and symptoms of PCOS come in many shapes and sizes. For some women it’s small cysts on the ovaries, acne, and weight gain. For others it’s irregular or painful menstrual cycles, extra facial hair, and depression. And for some, it can lead to fertility challenges. Fortunately for those living with the syndrome, there are many ways to treat the symptoms and the condition that causes them.

Here are some tips for women with PCOS:

1. Avoid refined sugar. Sugar can deplete the body of essential nutrients and increase blood sugar levels, resulting in the hormonal imbalances that are known to aggravate PCOS symptoms.

2. Cut out soy products. Certain studies show that the phytoestrogen, or plant-based estrogen, in soy products produce excess estrogen in the body, which throws hormones out of whack and disrupts endocrine function.

3. Reduce caffeine intake. In addition to containing bacteria and chemicals that can cause fertility challenges, caffeine reduces the body’s ability to absorb important nutrients. The body needs every nutrient it can get – especially when trying to maintain hormonal balance.

4. Consume healthy fats. Healthy fats are essential to the body’s production and balance of hormones. So make sure to incorporate foods like avocado, coconut oil, and almonds into your diet on a regular basis.

5. Exercise regularly. Regular, daily activity will not only result in healthy blood sugar levels and weight loss; it’ll also help regulate menstrual cycles. Exercise doesn’t have to be a marathon – a 20-minute brisk walk around your neighborhood every day will do the trick. 

For those of you with PCOS, what do you recommend for managing the symptoms?

Culled from: Integrative Nutrition

5 Steps to Wellness - Step 5 (Detoxification

While the previous steps of the 5 Steps to Wellness Series set the stage for wellness, the human body is currently exposed to a variety of toxins with which it was not designed to deal. These toxin categories accumulate in the body and eventually reach levels that cause all of today’s pain, sickness and disease. 

Toxin categories include: 

- chemical toxins

- food origin toxins

- environmental toxins

- cosmetic toxins

- medication/narcotic toxins

- metal toxins, injected toxins

- pathogens, arthropod toxins

- structural/surgical toxins

- electromagnetic toxins

- emotional toxins, and 

- inherited toxins. 

If you have any health challenges, or desire to maintain health, the toxin accumulation must be identified and eliminated. This is one of the most important facets to overcoming disease.

Elimination of these toxins is what allows the body to achieve its God-given miracle to heal. When the toxins are removed, the body is able to make new healthy cells rather than the same diseased duplicates. Think of it in terms of a wound with a splinter. You can take pain pills, antibiotics or even natural supplements every day, but if you don’t remove the splinter from the wound, the body will not be able to heal. 

Cleansing of toxins is THE KEY to maintaining or achieving health and wellness.

Keep in mind that the cleansing methods described in Step #4 can be done at home. They are designed to eliminate general toxic waste, poisons and toxins from the body. Many of the cleanses listed have done absolute miracles for many. Some toxins, like vaccine origin toxins, may be too specific for general cleansing methods to eliminate. We encourage you to do any of the cleansing described in Step#4.

Now, there you have it! You 5 steps to wellness. You can start reducing the amount of toxins that enter your body. But always remember that no matter how wonderful your diet and lifestyle has been or is now, there is no way to avoid all the toxins that are constantly being exposed to the body. No matter how sheltered or sterilized your living habits are, there is no way of avoiding all the toxins that eventually create the diseases that claim so many lives. If you are mindful of the choices you make each day, incorporate a moderately healthy diet and lifestyle and follow the 5-steps, you can attain and maintain great health. Begin your journey today, and live long enough to fulfill your destiny!

5 Steps to Wellness - Step 4 (Cleansing)

                           Did you know that your exterior is a mirror of your interior? 
    The cleaner you are on the inside, the outside will reflect it in beauty and radiance.

Everything in life requires cleaning. Your vehicle, your house, your desk and the outside of your body. Most people shower every day to avoid appearing and smelling unattractive or unclean, but how many have ever considered cleaning the inside of the body? A person with an office job might not get visibly "dirty" during a days work, but they still tend to shower every day because skin cells die every day. 

If you have read any of the information on this blog you know that animal products, refined products and nutritionally void products are at best of little use, at worst harmful. If you had useless or harmful things in your car, your house or your desk, would you dispose of them? Sure you would. Most of this junk food comes in pretty packages filled with chemicals that make them taste the way we want them to, but that doesn't make them good for the body. The fact is, the body considers them waste, or junk and it needs to get rid of it. If the body cannot eliminate the accumulated waste, the waste slowly moves into organs of the body and create dysfunction and finally disease. In addition, this waste creates a perfect host for the toxins discussed in Step #5.

One of the ways our recommended weight loss supplement, Skinny Fiber, helps you is by absorbing the poisons and toxins that have accumulated in the body (especially the intestines) and eliminate them through bowel movements This doesn't mean diarrhea. When you have normal bowel movement, the toxins get eliminated). Enemas and colonic are good but they cleanse the lower end of the intestine, not the entire part. 

It is impossible to achieve health of any kind if the body is full of old waste material. Don't settle for bathing the exterior of the body alone, cleanse the inside as well. You will feel cleaner, happier, healthier and people will begin to notice that you generally look better (not to mention the amount of weight that is lost by moving pounds of old sludge out of the intestines).

The different kinds of cleansing that can be done at home include:

• Liver/Gallstone Cleanse
• Kidney Cleanse
• The Lemonade Master Cleanse
• Oil Pulling Therapy
• Enemas
• Colon Clease w/ Water Flush
• Colemas (home colonics)
• Fasting
• Additional Cleansing Therapies

Culled: HCMI

If you have read the 5 Steps to Wellness Series up to this point, that means you are concerned and interested in improving your overall state of health. Watch out for Step #5 to, the concluding part of this series. My next post after this series will be on Colon Cleanse - home-based tips you can do to improve colon health. Enjoy the read.

5 Steps to Wellness - Step 3 (Elimination)

If the body cannot eliminate waste normally, that waste will eventually accumulate into all areas of the body and be used as host material for the toxins listed in step #5. Elimination of waste is very important to health. Waste is created during the digestive process and the metabolic process, not to mention waste formed from all the foods we eat. Waste is also created when toxins accumulate and interfere with normal cellular functions. In today's society, with today's habits, normal waste is produced faster than the body can eliminate it.

When I talk about elimination, I am referring to bowel health. I don't want to say bowel movements because everyone thinks they are normal. That cannot be the case since colon cancer is the number one killer disease.

It has been stated that if the bowels eliminated all the waste material it received, the body would never have any pain, sickness or disease (Tissue Cleansing Through Bowel Management, by Bernard Jensen). In this light, how many people have a healthy bowel? Keep in mind that healthy does not mean a bowel movement every morning, it doesn't even mean several bowel movements. The word "regular" means at least one bowel movement for each meal eaten, but even this rate of movement does not indicate "healthy" elimination. Just because the bowels are moving does not mean the bowels are releasing or dumping all the toxins accumulated in there.

According to Bernard Jensen's research, if the bowels eliminated properly and the environment of the intestine remained healthy (sufficient fiber, water and exercise), there would be little or no disease. The main cause of ageing is actually an excessive amount of toxins that accumulate and begin to stifle cellular regeneration. Many people believe acidophilus (also known as flora or good bacteria) to be of main importance to colon health and while it is extremely important (and included in step #4) flora will naturally replicate and be healthy if the environment of the intestine is good. 

Many people suffer with yeast or candida infections and most of that is what we call Opportunistic yeast. That means that it is fungus that is supposed to be in the large intestine as acidophilus. When the environment of the colon gets bad, these little guys leave the area. When they do this, they cause infection known as candida. So the greatest fix for most candida is actually bowel health.

Modern medicine has found that by the age of 50, the average person has accumulated 50 pounds of sludge in the large intestine. This is due to a lack of stimulation in the intestine. We have seen countless people increase energy and stamina and loose much of their belly weight and fat simply because they got rid of the extra sludge in the intestine. If you think about it, most people gain their weight around the waist and while people tend to think it is fat, much of it is nothing more than backed up waste that never found its way out of the intestine. The body knows that too many toxins will damage tissues, so it will begin to store extra toxins as fat and even tumors. If the environment of the intestine becomes healthy, much of that fat and misc growths just disappear into the toilet. All the extra toxins in the blood put extra stress on the liver, kidney and spleen, and keep the lymphatic system from draining. The lungs also suffer as they are the paired organ to the colon (five element theory).

It is important, no, it is vital, that your intestines are moving on a regular basis, which means at least once for every meal eaten, and that all the waste is exiting the body. Technically speaking, 95% of the food you eat should be coming out of the body. The 5% that is left is supposed to be the nutrition the body extracts from the food as it passes through the intestine. Of course, in today’s world, it is doubtful that 5% of what we eat is nutritious. Maybe fillers, colors, dyes and pesticides, but I doubt 5% of it is actually nutrition unless your diet is made primarily of fruits, vegetables and grains, so maybe we should expect more than the 95%. If any part of elimination is not functioning well, the body cannot detoxify and detoxification (step #5) is probably the single most important precursor to achieving true health.

Culled from HCMI

Watch out for Step #4. Healthy living is a process. Read on

5 Steps to Wellness - Step 2 (Digestion)

The best diet complimented by the most perfect supplement program

won’t do you much good if the body cannot access the nutrition being supplied.

Healthy foods and supplements are of no use to the body if it cannot convert the nutrients into energy and other elements needed to support the actions and functions of the body. So what is the difference in digestion, assimilation and metabolism and how does one assure they are occurring normally? Those who have studied natural medicine have learned that enzymes need to be supplemented regularly and as much as 80% of our diet needs to be in the form of raw fruits and vegetables if the required amount of enzymes are to become available to the body. Supplementing enzymes can be done, but it is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to eat a diet that is 80% raw. Even those who do are finding disappointment because they aren’t getting all the enzymes they think they are.

The fact is, most fruits and vegetables are genetically altered with enzyme inhibitors. In addition, the ground the vegetables grow in do not contain a balanced ratio of nutrients. If that's not enough, chemical pesticides and fertilizers are used and they deactivate many of the enzymes! If the nutrition is not in the soil to begin with, it cannot become part of the plant. People try to use organic to solve these problems, but organic does not prove the plant was nutritionally balanced to begin with, only that it was not willfully sprayed with harmful chemicals during the growing process. Organic does not prove that the seeds used to grow the plants were healthy either. No matter how you look at it, enzymes are required in supplement if the previous and following steps are to be assured in the Get Well, Stay Well process. Diet cannot provide all the enzymes your body needs, even if you are eating 80% of your food raw. Our Essential Weight Loss Program promotes the use of Skinny Fiber, a natural weight loss supplement that contains the proper blend of digestive enzyme to assist the body's natural digestive functions.

Most enzyme supplements provide food enzymes alone, but the Enzyme Complex in Skinny Fiber promotes stimulation of the body’s natural enzymes on the digestive, assimilative and metabolic levels. All the food enzymes in the world won’t help digestion on a metabolic level. You cannot supplement metabolic enzymes, but you can supplement food and digestive enzymes and increase the potential of the metabolic enzymes.

Culled from HCMI

Watch out for Step 3 of the process. Enjoy the read.