This is a guest post by Terry Reed. Terry is a Clayton College of Natural Health graduate and he has a strong opinion on that often heard phrase, “Ask your Doctor”

Why is it that we are constantly told to “Ask your doctor”? I mean why are we suppose to do that when something pertains to anything like our diet, supplements, and exercise? Do they as a collective group really know about these things than individuals who do their own research? Most physicians I know admit they know very little on the above topics unless they are into nutrition, exercise, etc. In short, if they are like other similar people who take care of themselves.

If I want information on these topics I search out people who are pictures of health and take care of themselves. I may get bad information once in awhile from a gym member who is in great shape, but I would still take their advice about something they do everyday then from someone who had never been in the gym. Likewise, I will listen to a clerk in the health food store if they have been working a long time there and seem to know their stuff. I would question them just as I would a medical professional with regards to how long this supplement has been around, what are the side effects, and does it work? I would listen and then do my own research. Absolutely.

Ask your doctor; where did this slogan come from? As far as I can tell this slogan was planted by the American Medical Association a long time ago and stuck. What once started off as a catchy advertising quote for a medical union caught on. I am sure many people ignored this quote at first but over years it was played so often on television and radio ads that it eventually just sunk in to our collective mind set.

Do I really need to ‘ask a doctor’ if I want to start an exercise program? Come on here; if I want to start a walking program I just start walking. If I want to start a stretching program or yoga, I just start stretching and doing yoga (no handstands please). If I know I have been eating too much around the holidays, I just cut back on my portions sizes and watch out for the heavy calorie laded food. If I want to take a supplement I research the topic thoroughly via the internet, books, and ask around and then try the supplement to see if it works for me.

A few facts on supplement safety

Almost all vitamin supplements are safer than prescription drugs. I mean no one should take an Iron supplement unless your blood has been tested to see if you are low in Iron, but most other vitamins and mineral supplements are safe to take as long as you don’t take mega doses.

A few, and I mean a very few cases are used as examples by the medical community:

• Iron supplement overdoses especially in children
• Vitamin A overdoses
• caffeine containing diet supplements causing anxiety and heart palpitations
• and of course the rare case of a normally natural amino acid tryptophan– which was contaminated many years ago by one food supplement manufacturer in Japan that decided to use genetic engineering to create its tryptophan supplements cheaper, and instead, created a potent poison that ended up killing at least 37 people and causing illness for another several thousand people.
• On the herbal front, the plant comfrey has also been indicated as being a possible liver toxin, but comfrey should just be used on the outside of the body for wound care not in the inside like many people were doing via a tea made out of the plant.

Of course, I don’t want to take something that could injure me or a loved one. The real problem is that there is so much misinformation out there and we all need to take responsibility in doing our own research first before trying any supplement. Start with the internet but be wary of internet sites that propose a multitude of health benefits from just taking a one miracle supplement that is suppose to work without watching your diet, stress levels, or exercising. This should set some alarms off. Remember the money motive. If people can make money by exaggerating, then they will. After all, they think, who is being hurt? They feel that your pocketbook may take a hit but that is about the worst that will happen out there for most supplement promoters. Unlike, many prescription drugs that really CAN do some quick damage and lead to your early demise.

A few facts on prescription drugs

The worst offenders in my opinion are the prescription drug manufactures. Dr. Joseph Mercola stated in his 2008 article ‘Prescription Drugs More Likely to Kill You Than Recreational Drugs’; “That more than 700,000 people visit U.S. emergency rooms each year as a result of adverse drug reactions.” If this was not bad enough, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, adverse drug reactions from drugs that are properly prescribe and properly administered cause about 106,000 deaths per year just in the U.S.A, alone. And the big one, a study done by the Center for Disease Control showed that Poisoning was second only to motor-vehicle crashes as a cause of death from unintentional injury in the United States. That study included both prescriptions prescribed and illegal drugs taken without a doctor’s approval as well. In short, drugs can kill you.

I’ll give you just a few examples, I had a secretary that worked for me and was trying to lose weight. The doctor prescribed a combination of two drugs (Fen-Phen) for her which was good at helping patients losing weight. After a year she developed a heart mummer and you may have guessed it, the company making the prescription had to withdraw their product as too many people were destroying their heart valves simply by taking this drug. Lawsuits followed but for many it was too late. You really can’t put a price on your health.

Another example dear to me and my family was my mother who was placed on Hormone replacement therapy many years ago. She was going through the change of life which is a normal process in our adult life but we are sometimes led to believe something is inherently wrong about this… I say this because we are biological creatures and like all other biological creatures we have as a species a reproductive cycle. We don’t have the ability to reproduce at an early age nor do we have it as we reach the age of a more physically mature adult. Nature knows what it is doing and slowly shuts down a woman’s reproductive ability after so many years, in all probability this is done to protect the woman’s ability to produce healthy offspring. We all know the chances for birth defects increase along with age as well as the woman having health complications in later year pregnancies. So it is a normal time for woman, a change of life and natural. It obviously is normal yet some how some body decided they had to treat this and you guessed it, with a prescription drug.

What does our medical community do with this information? They jump on this and insist that they have a program we can follow in which science knows more about a female’s body than they do. So they wheel out a drug that lessens some of the symptoms of menopause and instead gives you an increase change of contracting breast cancer, uterine cancer, & ovarian cancer. What were they thinking? Using extracts taken from pregnant horses’ urine to give to humans and charging a good deal amount of money for it in the process. Why in the name of science, nature, or humanity would they do this? Using another animal’s hormone to be used in a human’s body. Perhaps if they used bio-identical hormones the results would have been as intended but using horse piss? Really, I am not making this stuff up.

Well, my mother started taking this stuff and within several weeks her body gave her a warning sign. I remember my mother showing me about twenty skin tags that had formed on her chest right between her two breasts. I mean these skin tags grew literally overnight right there and had to be surgically removed. We never thought of what may be happening on the inside of her body. Some of the chemical hormone she was taking was making her skin cells grow in an uncontrolled fashion. Sound familiar to you? That’s right that is the same thing that cancer does. In short, my mother trusted her doctor and stayed on that hormone for far too many years. He lowered her dose but kept her on them. After all, it was to lessen her symptoms of menopause and as the doctor told her, it would help keep her from getting osteoporosis.

I didn’t go often with my mother to her medical appointments because she went too many times. She did exactly what the medical community told her to do. She took her prescriptions, had her annual breast x rays called mammograms, and got a check up every six months. Finally, she switched doctors because she was on no less than twenty prescriptions. I kid you not. My mother was a normal weight individual and looked in good health to all that she met, but they had her on over twenty medications. Her new doctor spent six months just reducing her meds to just five. She needed two pills for her high blood pressure, one for her thyroid, and two for her asthma. He commented on how high her dosage was for her hormone replacement pill and cut her off of that one entirely. It was too late. By then my mother had contracted breast cancer which was estrogen positive.

Now, my mother had breast cancer that was estrogen positive. Did her many years on horse piss hormones really cause this? Her new doctor told her it probably did but he could not say this definitively. After all, who is to really know? But his head nodded in agreement when the topic was brought up. Not to worry. They sent her to an oncologist. Her horror trip was just starting.

My take on this whole thing is twofold; one: most people have their own agenda and that includes doctors. Two: Think about that when they reach for their prescription pads the next time: sometimes ‘asking your doctor’ is the worst thing you can do!

I’m very proud to share Lauren’s wisdom here! Lauren is healing her Crohn’s disease naturally and doesn’t have to take over half the medication she used to be on due to her healing vegan diet and supplements. I found Lauren’s story over at the Crazy Sexy Life blog. (go ahead and read a little background on her, I’ll wait)

You mention you stressed and worried a lot. About being diagnosed with crohns or in general about other aspects of your life?

The worrying started before crohn’s. I originally thought it was what brought on crohn’s disease. I still feel it probably played a big part in the disease showing up. I’ve always been a worrier, worrying about things that didn’t even matter, like what I was going to do tomorrow instead of living in the present moment and really being there. Crohn’s opened my eyes to this and has made me a more relaxed person. I don’t stress of things I can’t change, nor do I worry about the future. I live in the now and that’s the best I can do.

What essential practices keep you from worrying too much and how does that affect your health?

My essential practices are definitely yoga and meditation and like I mentioned, staying present. I find that quieting my mind even for 5 minutes a day makes a world of difference. Everything that matters before I do that seems to not matter anymore. I also read a page from an affirmation book and try to apply it to my day or pull an Angel Card from some oracle cards I have. I always seem to open to a page or pick a card that can relate to the situation I am in.

What are your primary supplements you can’t go without?

For Crohn’s I find supplements are important. We have absorption issues so a little extra goes a long way. I take a few things, right now I am pregnant so I take a raw vegan prenatal, I also always take vegan vitamin D, iron, B12, calcium, DHA oil, probiotics. I am always adding goodies like hemp seeds, maca powder, spirulina, chia seeds and goji berries to my smoothies.. When I am not pregnant I also take aloe vera juice (a shot every day as soon as I wake up) and digestive enzymes.

What is your exercise regime?

When I am not pregnant I exercise a lot! I really enjoy it as a hobby! I have treadmill so in the morning I will walk about 2 miles 6 days a week and also do either an aerobic type of video, weight lift or yoga. I also make sure I get some form of exercise after dinner, either walking with my dog, riding my bike, going on a hike. Usually something outside, as long as the weather permits. Right now, since I am pregnant, I walk 2 miles 5 days a week and I also do prenatal yoga once or twice a week.

What advice do you have to those diagnosed with Crohns disease, who are afraid NOT to take all the western medicine approaches?

My advice to anyone with Crohn’s is to go with your gut, no pun intended! I knew that at times my doctor (my old doctor) would try to have me on as much as possible without just trying out one thing at a time. I usually paid attention to how I felt on the lowest dose, or least amount of medication and then would add or take away if needed. Of course, I told my doctor I was doing this and wouldn’t suggest anyone doing it on their own. My doctor now is very understanding and knows I want to me on the least amount of medication possible. Our goal is to one day be off of all medication, where my old doctor had once told me that I would be on medication for life. My crohn’s isn’t healed enough to be completely off of everything, but I hope to get there in the future.

Where do you think you would be at if you didn’t go vegan and took all the medications they wanted you to take?

If I didn’t go vegan and took all the medications the doctors wanted me to take, I would probably not be pregnant! I would be very sick, not knowing that food had any part of healing. I was lucky to always be a health food and natural health advocate so I was aware of a lot of things that I don’t think many with crohn’s know. Diet plays a huge part, and cutting out meat and dairy is essential, in my opinion. Meat is extremely hard to digest and dairy.. well, who doesn’t have problems with dairy? IBD or not, most Americans can not digest dairy. So if you are eating it and have something like Crohn’s you are not going to heal your gut, and I definitely wouldn’t be where I am now.

I’m assuming high acidic drinks like coffee and alcohol are off limits for you, how do you substitute them?

I haven’t had coffee since a few months after being diagnosed. I was still drinking it for a short period and I did once try to have it again and it was only 2 days before I got sick. Alcohol was different, I was still drinking here and there up until about 2 years ago (I’ve had crohn’s for 5 years). I got really sick and ended up in the hospital after a few weekends of drinking a little red wine and that was the end of it for me. Now I drink a lot of herbal tea. I also love Teeccino! It is an herbal coffee made from herbs, grains, fruits and nuts. Definitely a great substitute. For alcohol I like to drink Kombucha which is a fermented drink that has lots of probiotics (helpful for the gut). For some reason it reminds me of alcohol, almost like a wine cooler. I pour it in a wine glass when we have friends over and it gives you an amazing feeling from all the benefits it provides. GTS brand is my favorite!

Lauren Nastasi is a health enthusiast who has always had a passion for wellness. She chronicles her journey towards healing through a vegan diet on her blog Ginger is The New Pink. Numerous people living with and without diseases have contacted her in response to her candid account of life with her disease. Lauren enjoys creating healing meals, exercising, yoga, hiking, bike riding, reading and spending time with her husband and pug.

I’m so thrilled to share with you today the wisdom of Ani Kaspar. You can learn more about her book that details the story of healing her breast cancer naturally here. When I heard of her brave decision to stop chemo, and feed her body what it needs to heal, and believe in the healing power of her own body– I knew I had to ask her some questions to share with you here!

What form of exercise do you do and how often?

Daily exercise is essential to sacred and miraculous wellness. The beautiful, so very intimate connection of mind, body and soul is what I call well-being. When you exercise you invite not only bodily moments of grace, but you also surrender your mind’s busy-bee activities, and engage your rich soul’s deepest divinity. The miracle of wellness, health and Being is actively allowed when you exercise. I consider exercise a holy act, and an act that dances my entire Being, lovingly and sportively. Daily I practice Kundalini yoga as taught by Gurmukh of Golden Bridge Yoga. I cannot more highly recommend a practice for whole health and deep soul empowerment. My connection to nature is strong so ocean swimming, snorkeling, and long sunset walks along the beach are my chosen methods of spending more time in nature’s radiance, abundance, and harmony. Daily I choose the best option for my personal wellness. Literally, often I will simply ask myself: what do you need today? God/dess is inclusive, so whatever answer arrives incorporates what each cell in my body desires, what the destiny of my soul chooses, and what motion stills my mind and engages my heart most deeply.

What are the three most major things you do to keep your life in balance (stress free)?

1. Each morning when awaken, after drinking freshly juiced lemon water, I meditate. Having studied many traditions, I’ve developed a personal mediation that is flexible and resonates with where I am in the moment. My mediation is fluid, alive and filled to the brim with soft love. I allow myself to be led into a state of still grace and remain there for as long as I am able given the day’s events. Always in the early afternoon personal affirmations close to my center of Being are recited to enhance the day and my connection to Being.
2. I also practice what I call moment-to-moment intentional thinking. The more continually I focus upon choices that are most loving, beneficial and truthful for my soul, the more I am in alignment with God/dess or the divine. The more I align with divine frequencies, the more miracles cascade upon my life, the more paradise on earth is created before my grateful eyes. The subtle power of moment-to-moment intentional thinking is amazing – it is, I have found, the instant manifestation of loving grace in our lives.
3. Most importantly I love. I choose to love – myself, my life, all aspects of being in our world today, and every one I encounter in my life, regardless of superficial differences or dis-agreements. I choose to love. Love is the masterpiece piece in healing, in health and well-Being. Always love, and love more!

What are your core supplements?

Bio SuperFood, E3-Live, Marine Phytoplankon, Quinton Marine Plasma, DIM-Plus, Protective Breast Formula, CoQ10, Zyflamend, Chorella, Spirulina and other major superfoods. I focus exclusively on organic, whole foods based supplements to super-nourish my body.

What kind of diet do you eat?

While I respect the incredible living foods movement, I found after many years of following a living foods lifestyle, that 100% raw doesn’t best suit my Being. Now I follow what I call a bio-compatible diet: 80% organic, living foods, with lots of greens, sprouts and anti-cancer specific foods and 20% organic, cooked food, always specific for anti-cancer effects.

Some of the best anti-cancer foods and diets are listed in a few fabulous books: ‘Anti-Cancer: A New Way of Life,’ ‘Beating Cancer with Nutrition,’ Nature’s Cancer-Fighting Foods,’ and ‘Foods to Fight Cancer.’ Ingest each of these books and you can create the best diet choice for your body, your type of cancer or other dis-ease and begin deep physical healing.

I prefer 80% living foods because when I eat living foods, I consume the vibrant energy of the greatest life-supporting force in or galaxy, the sun. I also alkalize my body and build my blood by ingesting the great green God/dess – chlorophyll. I could write a book about the miraculous benefits of chlorophyll. However, I believe we all by now know that a plants blood, or chlorophyll, is akin to our own. With every bite of a strong chlorophyll based food, your body is deeply replenished and refreshed. The very best sources of chlorophyll are green grass, algae and plankton. I eat and drink as much as I can of these miraculous “sun foods.” I believe we all should, given the state of our “food supply” and its vital loss of nutrients. Along with ingesting “sun food” I ingest “water food.” Pure, truly unprocessed living water if possible, is critical to well-Being.

Often dis-ease is allowed a foothold simply because we are dehydrated. We need to drink, daily, as much living, pure water as possible, to help the body cleanse, to replenish our cells with necessary oxygen, and to engage our soul’s “fluidity” or capacity for transformation. I prefer natural spring water.

Always before I eat or drink I thank the element, all who have contributed to its gift of nourishment to me, and love deeply the sacred grace of the life the food or water gifts me.

What do you have to say about people who are afraid of taking the alternative route to healing cancer?

I believe in the right to choose. I believe what is right for me may be wrong for you. We are one, but we are individual. God/dess supports our diversity with her love and her grace, moment to moment, breath to breath. Our purpose is to understand deeply who we are, what nurtures us, and what blesses us. In a medical system committed to authentic healing and wholeness, we would be allowed the amazing myriad choices Gaia offers us.

We also would be offered the practices necessary for us to make the wisest, most authentic choices for our well-Being. We know what is best for us. We truly do. Healing medicine facilitates our deepest, most authentic knowing. I believe our immortal existence is about choice, moment to moment, breath to breath.

Whatever you choose is perfect for you, for your soul’s journey and growth, and for your deepest healing. Even if the end result – to which we remain unattached – is ‘transformation,’ the term I use for death. You have the right to choose what most benefits you as an eternal Being, not only as a human being. I believe dis-ease, healing and death, all to be energy state changes. Love or true life is the immortal pulse choosing a given state simply to experience the limitlessness of Being.

What is the most important thing to you in keeping a healthy home?

Love is the most important element to creating and keeping a healthy home. Without love, all else fails. You can eat the best, most organic and pristine anti-cancer foods, use only the most organic and natural personal and house care products, live in the greenest house possible, however, without love, of self, of others, of all that is, has ever been and ever shall be, without love with out conditions, we miss the mark in creating a healthy home. Home is where the heart is – Si?

Ani Kaspar is a pioneering advocate of non-invasive, alternate cures for cancer. She’s a humanitarian, seeker of truth and conduit for healing. Ani’s humanitarian call to action “Compassionate Cure for Cancer®” asks cancer patients worldwide to request the modern medical community investigate and deliver natural, less invasive methods of treating and curing cancer. She is a four-year thriver of intra-ductal carcinoma-the most prevalent breast cancer in the world. Today, Ani consults, conducts educational seminars, workshops and retreats, and is a life coach and international speaker. After abandoning Wall Street in 2005, she founded BodyByBlissTM, an international wellness consultancy. She is the creator of a unique, self-exploration method called IS® Intuitive Sovereignty. Ani is fifty-one years old and lives blissfully in Rincon, Puerto Rico with pelicans, coconuts and butterflies.

Nothing is worse then throwing money away on a health product that is ineffective. I’m going to address this matter that runs rampant in the natural health industry today!

Here are some examples of dodgy health supplements:

Echinacea products
In my post Alternative Antibiotics that Leave no “Superbugs” Behind! Health Expert Jon Barron says:

“I’ve gone to health food stores and bought 30 brands of Echinacea, tested them and actually when I did this 10 years ago I found only one that had any activity at all. 29 of them, the only Echinacea of value was the word that was on the label. There was nothing inside.”

Spirulina
Spirulina is tricky as I recently found out. With spirulina you need it from a really pure source and even then it’s possible to get a bad batch.

My aunt, Dr. Simm (doctor of Oriental Medicine) knows soooo much and always has the latest, best health products in her home. I trust her research and product selection 100%! Her favorite quality health products now are Purium Health Products– I’m most interested in correcting my spirulina purchase with her Carob Mint Spirulina (yum!).

I’m sure there are many more products we need to beware of before buying. Remember just because it’s for sale in a health food store, doesn’t mean it’s the effective quality product you could be buying.

So stop throwing your money away on health products– buy the best and ignore the rest!:

Dr. Simm’s Purium Health Products

Now two of the most powerful health websites I know of and believe to have a wide range of quality products are:

Dr.Mercola’s Online Store

Mike Adams “the Health Ranger’s” Online Store

What’s your experience with ineffective products?

I’d love to hear from you on any experience you have had with this topic!

This is an update to this post, “My Spring Health Kick– the products I picked out to help…”

Well it’s been about 2 weeks taking all the supplements I ordered and I’m not sure this is going to well! I have a metallic taste in my mouth, from what I’m guessing is either the spirulina or the “Crystal Energy” drops, trying to cleanse heavy metals from my system.

I’ve been taking the MSM powder once a day and the crystal energy drops have been in every glass of water I drank and the “Health Force” “Manna” Spirulina powder I take only once every other day mixed in my salad or in a smoothie.

So I’ve consulted with my father, a Clayton College graduate, and he says spirulina is tricky because the source of it matters. I still feel I bought a quality product however. It is without pesticides and is very potent (“therapeutic doses” it states)– maybe just too therapeutic for me!? He said the metallic taste is from the spirulina drawing out the heavy metals from my system, but that when you are cleaning heavy metals out at this rate you also need to be taking something to pull it out of your system like psyllium husks for example. He recommends stopping both the water drops and the spirulina and introduce them back to see which one is causing it.

Next I consulted my Aunt, Dr. Simm. She also expressed concern that my spirulina was possibly not from a good source. She highly recommends her brand of spirulina powders instead, “Purium Health Products”, which can be found here.

So I will continue taking the MSM powder, which HAS helped with the inflamed pain in my body, and stop the crystal energy drops and spirulina and re-introduce the water drops first and see how the metallic taste goes. If the spirulina is causing it, I’ll try Aunt Simm’s products.

Though I really like the crystal energy drops because it HAS made my water really thirst quenching as it promised. Maybe I just need to drink less of it or maybe I will find out it isn’t causing the metallic taste at all. I will let you know which is the culprit soon!

* Update- July 2nd *

Well it’s been almost 2 months since my last update and spring has sprung and summer is here already! So the culprit was the spirulina. Sunfoods was super awesome about it tho and sent me in it’s place, raw cacao powder, which I’ve been dying to try! It’s delicious! I make smoothies out of it with rice milk and bananas. Great coffee replacement and very nourishing.

I’m happy to report that with all the msm lotion and MSM powder I ordered, my body aches are gone and with the proper hydration (crystal energy supplement), my headaches too! And the cacao has helped me cut back on coffee I’m back to yoga class too! Bring on the summer, I’m ready!

I use a parasite cleansing herbal tincture twice a year for about 3 weeks.

Lately I’m using a herbal tincture of boldo and curcum which is a known folk remedy for infections and parasites of the stomach and the intestines (a three week treatment).

I’m used to the bitter taste so I just take it straight and swish it around in my mouth for about 30 seconds so it can absorb into my system through the inside of my cheek skin.

Some signs you might have internal parasites are:

• Lack of appetite
• Poor vision
• Itchy rectum
• Fatigue
• Intestinal malfunction
• Foul breath
• Bloating
• Yellow skin
• Sleep problems
• Poor memory
• Irritability
• Unexplained weight gain
• Skin problems

I don’t always do a fast along with it but that is definitely going to make your parasite cleanse more effective. Sugar especially should be avoided during your parasite cleanse. You can learn more about fasting from Dr. Sachi’s interview.

I have a confession, I’ve never felt the most unhealthiest than I do now. I believe in a little help from our super food friends and keeping our nutrition in balance, but let’s face it– life is stressful and it’s easy to fall off the wagon and drink 3 cups of coffee and one alcoholic beverage daily! Perhaps from this nasty habit, is why my body is feeling achy and inflamed. It’s very hard to wake up in the morning– I’m groggy and achy (and yeah, stumbling for the coffee first thing instead of water). Coffee ain’t the only thing brewing, I always feel a headache brewing as well.

I decided I need to not only cut back on the bad habit but supplement my body with what it needs to recover. So I headed over to sunfood.com and prescribed myself with the following items. I’m anxiously awaiting their arrival and I’ll explain why I chose the products I did and how I expect them to help me. I hope I have great results to share later!

I’ll try not to complain too much about what ails me, but hoping I’m not the only one who feels like crap and figured this could help someone in the same boat as me!

Water isn’t hydrating enough?!

Naturally I recognize I should drink enough water. And I do! But I can drink 4 glasses in a row and not feel hydrated. For some reason my bottled water that I have delivered in 5 gallon jugs just isn’t wet enough?! To solve this issue I bought “Crystal Energy“. I’ll try to keep the description simple and not scientific. Crystal Energy is in liquid form and you put 40 drops per each 32 oz. of water, and it reportedly makes your water more hydrating. Tiny mineral clusters developed by
Dr. Patrick Flanagan apparently create the negative ions to make your water more thirst quenching. That’s exactly what I’m looking for!

Every health nut needs a quality greens powder!

When I used to drink plenty of raw juices and wheat grass I felt much better. I’ve been looking for a quality greens powder to add to my smoothies or just sprinkle in whatever I can think of! I know green powders are excellent blood purifiers and would help balance out my acidic ph level and inflamed limbs. There were a few choices on sunfood.com but I felt the spirulina powder by Healthforce was what my body was craving. Spirulina is blue green algae.

The benefits of Spirulina I’m expecting are:

• It contains chlorophyll which is identical to our body’s hemoglobin molecule whose job is to oxygenate our blood. So taking spirulina powder can help oxygenate my blood which in turn cleanses my blood (from toxins) which in turn helps protects me not only from getting sick, but from pollution and aging as well.
• It contains a a long-chain Omega-6 fatty acid which reduces aches and pains due to joint inflammation which I’m certain I have from being hunched over the computer all day and just generally living a modern life in an urban city. Omega-6 helps hair, nails and skin so it’s a beauty related as well!
• believe it out not, it’s a complete protein!
• it also contains an essential amino acid tryptophan, which creates seratonin, which should help balance my mood and make me more able to deal with stress, because lately, I can’t handle much stress!

Buy the spirulina powder at sunfood.com

Those yoga sessions just aren’t loosening me up anymore!

I admit my yoga mini sessions only last about 20 minutes but I’m still doing them fairly regularly 3 times a week at least and I only feel temporary relief. Yeah I should do longer sessions but a little help couldn’t hurt? Enter MSM Powder 16 oz. (Methyl-Sulfonyl-Methane). Modern farming and cooking food removes MSM from our food. It helps flexibility, so yoga should be more enjoyable and I’ll practice longer and it helps sore muscles heal which I need to not discourage me from taking jogs and long yoga sessions on a out of shape body. Again it is also a beauty product as it helps build collagen for smoother skin. I already have had great success taking MSM pills for my old ankle injury (tendon on inner ankle bone suffered a deep cut from a rock 10 yrs ago) which if I don’t take MSM will throb and act up. So I feel the powder form will take me back to those results I felt from taking the pills by replacing the chore of taking pills and will be more economical.

Buy the MSM powder at Sunfood.com

Wish me luck!

I’ll do a follow up post in a few months and let everyone know how this is working out. I am setting out to do a gradual change, nothing drastic like a fast or all raw foods diet. I can’t shock my body into that lifestyle again from the state it is in now. My goal is to cut back my bad habits and live more in balance and moderation and use these supplements as aids to help me feel less miserable as I do that!

I chose products which were in liquid form because I believe not only is it more economical, but that they absorb into the body easier this way.

I’ve written an update to this post here.

Without sounding too much like a broken record, I will briefly mention that antibiotics kill both good and bad bacteria. Then when we killed off all our good bacteria we have to work to repopulate them. Even worse than this though is the fact that antibiotics don’t always kill ALL bad bacteria. What ever wasn’t killed is immune to antibiotics and then a great environment for an overpopulation of bad resistant bacterias (aka “superbugs”) is created.

Many natural alternative medicines exist that are proven more effective than traditional antibiotics. However it’s important to know how to pick the quality alternative medicines that actually work. Some of them will be outlined below- along with tips.

Echinacea

Echinacea is a safe natural antibiotic alternative that is best absorbed in the form of an herbal tincture. It shouldn’t be taken longer than 10 days or so as your body can then become immune to it. Two dropper fulls are usually taken orally and swished around in the mouth for about 15 seconds. It’s best to consult with an herbalist to make sure you are getting a high quality echinacea product as many echinacea tinctures are out on the market and some are duds. A good echinacea tincture should numb and tingle your mouth.

Health Expert Jon Barron says:

“I’ve gone to health food stores and bought 30 brands of Echinacea, tested them and actually when I did this 10 years ago I found only one that had any activity at all. 29 of them, the only Echinacea of value was the word that was on the label. There was nothing inside.”

Garlic

Raw garlic peeled and exposed to oxygen for about 5 minutes before taking internally is a potent way to unleash the healing properties of garlic. Bacterias and Viruses cannot build a resistance to garlic! So it might take longer than a day like traditional antibiotics to work, but it doesn’t leave any traces of superbugs around.

Goldenseal

A more powerful herbal “antibiotic” that originated in Native American Indian medicine. Goldenseal is a potent treatment for more severe needs but note that goldenseal used regularly will indeed deplete good bacteria too.

Colloidal Silver

Not an herb, but actually a liquid suspension of microscopic particles of silver. It reportedly disables the enzyme that one-celled bacteria, viruses and fungi need for their oxygen metabolism leaving no resistant superbugs behind. Health Expert Jon Barron states that taken internally, Colloidal Silver can also kill good bacteria but recommends it for extreme situations.

and take your probiotics after any viral/bacteria treatment

It is always recommended to do a round of probiotics afterwards to repopulate friendly bacteria. More on that here.

Sources

Herbs, Tinctures, Antibiotics and Probiotics, by Health Expert Jon Barron (his product website is Baseline Nutritionals where you can purchase high quality herbal solutions.)

Colloidal Silver -The Rediscovery of a Super Antibiotic?

In case you haven’t read my post on Magical Magnesium Miracles, do so now to learn why magnesium is essential to over 700 functions of the body!

I’ve done some research and turns out you best apply magnesium chloride on your skin in order to reap the benefits. Sure, many products derived from large bodies of water such as the Pacific Ocean, the Great Salt Lake, and the Dead Sea contain magnesium chloride. However for a truly therapeutic health miracle, this un-pure source will not suffice due to mankind’s use of fossil fuels and synthetic chemicals- which ensure every body of water on this planet contains measurable levels of toxins.

I said it before. This product is uber-pure! The highest quality source of magnesium you can find! How Pure? Well get this- the magnesium is extracted from the Ancient Zechstein Seabed, some 1500 to 2000 meters deep in the interior of the earth where it has remained isolated from external forces for the past 250 million years, unexplored until now. Genuine Zechstein magnesium is exclusive to the Ancient Minerals brand of topical magnesium products.

Ancient Minerals carries three products for Therapeutic grade magnesium chloride supplementation in the form of an magnesium oil spray, gel or bath flakes.

The uses for Ancient Mineral’s products include:

• Sprayed on wrinkled skin will, in due course, begin to smooth them out
• Massaged into arthritic joints will frequently render almost instant reprieve from pain.
• Magnesium flakes in a hot bath will impart a very relaxing soak while delivering a vast amount of magnesium to your cells. Great for restless legs.

When applied directly to the skin, is transdermally absorbed and has an almost immediate effect on chronic and acute pain.

I’ve personally been using the spray and it’s my new go to magic potion!

I’ve used it for:

• massaging my boyfriend’s lower back pain induced from running
• I spray it liberally all over my body and rub it in and sit in a bath robe for about a half hour and then enter the shower. I think of it as a day trip to the dead sea or similar hot spring resorts!
• I spray it on my facial acne- it stings a bit but in a good way. feels like going to the ocean, which is great for acne!
• I use the gel in the shower on days I don’t do the pre-spray session

I’ve also heard of using it as a foot soak and of using the gel instead of the spray for massage on sensitive people.

Results I have seen:

• my boyfriend’s back pain went away after a few massages with the product
• my dry patches on my arms and shoulders (tinea versicolor) have gone away!

I’m looking forward to more discoveries as I use this product.

Photo by BurningQuestion

As spring has sprung I’m feeling a serious need to some spring cleaning, not just in my home, but my body! Dr. Sachi (A Doctor of Oriental Medicine- whom you may remember from our last interview: Fit, Fabulous, Over 50…and Sharing Secrets!!) runs many fasting retreats and shares some tips with us below:

In Dr. Sachi’s Words:

I’m often doing a detox- no one can avoid it now, especially children. ADD and autism are mostly due to deficiency and toxicity of our environment.

Children need to start eating detoxifying foods such as bitter greens that support liver function at a young age, otherwise it’s very hard getting a small child to eat such things!

The liver is the largest organ responsible for detoxification. Things that support liver function for example are:

• dandelion
• milk thistle
• broccoli rabe
• basically most things with bitter tastes

In Chinese Medicine, meals should have all 5 elements. Bitter is one of them!

Parasite Cleansing

After the importance of cleansing the liver we need to consider parasites in our intestines. We have a higher incidence of parasites due to travel and imported produce. It used to be we only dealt with our own parasites, but now we are getting world parasites.

things that combat parasites in daily use are spices such as:

• turmeric
• garlic
• ginger

These are great detoxifiers and help to kill parasites.

Fasting

Another important key to detox is fasting. I fast one month out of the year.

Either I do:

• Three 10 day fasts
• Two 2 week or Four 1 week fasts at each season- whatever my body tells me.

During my fast I just drink liquids with lots of raw vegetable drinks. No supplements or vitamins are taken at this time.

Please read more about Sachi’s Fasting Retreats and check out her interview Fit, Fabulous, Over 50…and Sharing Secrets!!